TY - JOUR
T1 - Information society on track
T2 - Communication, crime, and the bullet train
AU - Abel, Jessamyn R.
N1 - Funding Information:
I would like to thank Kathlene Baldanza, Anatoly Detwyler, Maia Ramnath, and Jonathan Abel, as well as the journal’s editors and anonymous reviewers, for reading previous versions of this article and making valuable suggestions for improvement. I am grateful to Penn State’s Center for Humanities and Information and its director, Eric Hayot, for providing the time and intellectual scaffolding to tackle this project. Research for this article was supported by the Japan Foundation and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Funding Information:
I would like to thank Kathlene Baldanza, Anatoly Detwyler, Maia Ramnath, and Jonathan Abel, as well as the journal?s editors and anonymous reviewers, for reading previous versions of this article and making valuable suggestions for improvement. I am grateful to Penn State?s Center for Humanities and Information and its director, Eric Hayot, for providing the time and intellectual scaffolding to tackle this project. Research for this article was supported by the Japan Foundation and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Society for Japanese Studies.
PY - 2021/6/1
Y1 - 2021/6/1
N2 - This article considers Japan’s first bullet train line, completed in 1964, within the context of an emerging “information society.” Developed for the industrial economy, the line was reinterpreted by urban planners and fiction writers as both a central infrastructure of the postindustrial society and a symbol of its promise and dangers. Infrastructure became a tool for grappling with fundamental socioeconomic changes. This essay is an intellectual and cultural history of two intersecting tracks, explaining how information became a lens through which infrastructure was read and how the bullet train became a key for understanding social change.
AB - This article considers Japan’s first bullet train line, completed in 1964, within the context of an emerging “information society.” Developed for the industrial economy, the line was reinterpreted by urban planners and fiction writers as both a central infrastructure of the postindustrial society and a symbol of its promise and dangers. Infrastructure became a tool for grappling with fundamental socioeconomic changes. This essay is an intellectual and cultural history of two intersecting tracks, explaining how information became a lens through which infrastructure was read and how the bullet train became a key for understanding social change.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85114223838
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85114223838#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1353/jjs.2021.0045
DO - 10.1353/jjs.2021.0045
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85114223838
SN - 0095-6848
VL - 47
SP - 349
EP - 379
JO - Journal of Japanese Studies
JF - Journal of Japanese Studies
IS - 2
ER -
