Train Delay

Last Sunday, Sandy, Naomi and I caught the train home after a day out Ikebukuro. Sand and I, in a particularly lazy/hung-over Sunday mood decided to stay on the train one stop to go grab a video at the local store. But unfortunately our carriage didn't make the station and we stopped just short. We waited for a while confused by the Japanese announcements over the speakers, complaining about the inconvenience. After a while people started walking through the train because the first few carriages were at the platform, so we followed suit. When we got to the front people were milling about watching something outside the windows, curiosity got the better of me so I had a look too, just in time to see them covering the body of a suicide victim. We stood in shock as we watched them carry it away and I wondered why it took 10 fire trucks to clean up the mess. Naturally this lead to discussion about the value of life in Japan, total confusion as to how one person’s life could get so bad they felt jumping in front of a train was their only option and some internet research on suicide in Japan:

In Japan over 32,000 people per year commit suicide (3 times higher than the nations road death tolls) victims are predominantly overworked or financially troubled “salarymen” although recently there has been a rise in youth suicide with the advent of “suicide clubs” online. So, with an average of 88 people per day knocking themselves off there are systems in place to minimise delay. Our train was held up approximately 25 minutes before carrying the disgruntled passengers on their way. This delay however has considerable ramifications. Tokyo has a population of over 12.5 million people. 90% of those people use the train as their primary method of transport.

*The financial cost to train companies of just one suicide can be astronomical. For example, in January 1999, a businessman jumped in front of a train at JR Harajuku Station. He was seriously injured, but survived the experience. His suicide attempt halted 26 JR Yamanote Line trains, delayed 54 others and caused the temporary suspension of operations on the entire Yamanote and Saikyo lines. It was estimated that this one single suicide attempt disrupted the journeys of about 160,000 commuters.

It seems trivial to bitch about the train being delayed when the cause was human demise, but one late train here can cause chaos. Approximately 3.5 million people pass through Shinjuku station per day. Peoples here time their days to the minute, they are stressed and overworked, I watch people having anxiety attacks on the platform when the train is one minute late let alone half an hour. If they want to lower the suicide rate then they should start by reducing the insane amount of overtime companies expect their employees to do. But anyway, somebody has to pay for this mortal inconvenience. The families of suicide victims are charged somewhere between 90 thousand and 1 million Australian dollars for delay and clean up costs.

So my advice to those terminally depressed: If it’s all getting too much take the day off work, go see a professional, do the adult thing and sort your shit out. Don’t be a cunt and jump in front of a train for innocent bystanders and railway staff to scoop up your sloppy remains off the tracks. Nobody wants to see that shit.

*J. Sean Curtin (Fellow, GLOCOM)
http://www.glocom.org/special_topics/social_trends/20040319_trends_s72/index.html

Authors note: Apologies for the absence of anything light-hearted, fun or boozy in the above blog, oh and also for the word cunt… sorry, but they are.

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