Managing passenger conduct on Tokyo’s urban railway network: transport provider “vigilance” or customer service?

Public transport providers often attempt to prevent passenger behaviours they consider dangerous, deviant, or otherwise undesirable through the use of media technologies. For example, railway companies worldwide employ posters and notices to convey desirables codes of passenger behaviour, thus orienting and directing mobility practices. This talk introduces the case of ‘manner poster’ campaigns by Tokyo railway providers: colourful and comic posters targeting a wide range of behaviours which are believed to interfere with the transit system’s safe and smooth operation, or cause nuisance to other passengers, and which form a near-ubiquitous presence in urban public transport environments in the Japanese capital. The talk examines the logics and considerations that shape such efforts to manage passenger conduct, situating them between transport provider/passenger vigilance and ideals of customer service. It draws on interviews with transport and design professionals involved in the production of manner poster campaigns, industry publications and a visual analysis of posters.

Christoph Schimkowsky is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo. He was awarded a PhD in Sociological Studies from the University of Sheffield (UK) in 2022 for his work on poster campaigns employed by Japanese railway companies to inscribe behavioral expectations into public transport environments. Building on this, his current postdoctoral project explores the development of codes of transit etiquette on Tokyo’s urban railway network since 1945. Christoph holds degrees from SOAS (University of London), Waseda University (Tokyo), and the University of Göttingen. His PhD thesis was awarded the Charles Alfred Fisher Prize by the University of Sheffield's School of East Asian Studies. Christoph’s research has appeared in Mobilities, Japanese Studies, and Visual Communication, among others.

Der Vortrag findet in Präsenz statt. Ort: Japan-Zentrum der LMU, Seminargebäude am Englischen Garten, Oettingenstr. 67, 80538 München, Raum 151.