Urban Infrastructures of Passenger Comfort: Designing Mobility Experiences on Tokyo’s Railway Network, 1945-2010

This paper traces the history of efforts to shape passenger experience aboard Tokyo’s urban railways through transport design and policies in the second half of the 20^th century. It examines the development of passenger comfort-focused design interventions and organizational strategies pursued by Japan’s national railway provider JNR and its privatized successor JR East on Tokyo’s urban railway network. Popular accounts have often tied the improvement of passenger experience aboard JNR trains to the organization’s 1987 privatization. In contrast, this paper shows that efforts to achieve passenger-oriented transport design reach back much further but have been held back by structural challenges. Looking at transport provider initiatives to build the “hardware” (i.e. physical transport infrastructure) and “software” (i.e. passenger-staff interactions) of mobility services in the Greater Tokyo area, the paper explores how transport operator policies and initiatives shaped the experience of moving through the city as a railway passenger. It draws on Japanese primary (e.g. industry publications, newspapers reports, etc.) and secondary sources to analyze the processes of quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement that shaped the development of Tokyo’s urban railway system. The paper thus provides insights into the development of – and mobility experiences facilitated by – the railway network as an urban infrastructure that is central to the operation of socio-economic life in Japanese society as well as (inter)national imaginaries of Japanese urban modernity. It contributes to the study of East Asian cities, urban mobilities, public transport, and infrastructures.