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Images of Crowds
Jul. 7th, 2011 08:44 amIn her "Culture Share" series, Juliette Wade blogs about subways in Tokyo. The French public transportation system didn't feel all that different to me, but since I live in a rural area, any big city is a strange and forbidding place. I loved this description of the crowds:
The crowds are not like American crowds. First of all, I found I was taller relative to the crowd than I was used to being in the US. This was useful for finding my way, because it meant I could look above most heads if I stood on tiptoe. Second of all, these crowds are very homogeneous. Yes, sometimes you may see someone dressed in formal kimono or school uniform, etc. but the height and appearance of the people is much more uniform than I've ever seen in the US. Third, the crowds are strikingly quiet. People generally do not talk when in a crowd, and will use low voices even with the friends they travel with. When they speak on cell phones, they speak so quietly I can hardly imagine how the people on the other side can hear them. The result is these hordes of people moving in near-silence (which can be disconcerting for an American at first). Fourth, the rules of personal space are just different from those of the US. A Japanese person interacting with you in a private context with lots of room will tend to stand at bowing distance, i.e. further away than an American, who will typically stand at handshake distance. In the subways, however, the borderline of personal space moves to the skin. People move along their own trajectories as if no one else were there, and will often enough walk right through your shoulder with no acknowledgment that they have done so.
When I read this, I got the image of people of striking uniformity in features and dress, colliding with one
another in perfect silence and perfect indifference. I don't mean that's my impression of Japanese crowds, but where my mind took the unfamiliar elements. Then I ask, how would this have come about? (I'm remembering that classic Star Trek episode with the critically overpopulated planets and the people outside the model of the Enterprise shuffling past one another. That's one way to depict "close quarters." But what if there were some entirely different explanation? I think of them moving in a sort of shrunken-distance Brownian motion, as if the only way they have to orient themselves is by bumping into one another. And maybe their primary senses are tactile/kinesthetic and telepathic-by-contact, so they move through space like one of those multi-cellular colony organisms (I'm thinking Volvox).
My mind is doing strange things this morning.
The crowds are not like American crowds. First of all, I found I was taller relative to the crowd than I was used to being in the US. This was useful for finding my way, because it meant I could look above most heads if I stood on tiptoe. Second of all, these crowds are very homogeneous. Yes, sometimes you may see someone dressed in formal kimono or school uniform, etc. but the height and appearance of the people is much more uniform than I've ever seen in the US. Third, the crowds are strikingly quiet. People generally do not talk when in a crowd, and will use low voices even with the friends they travel with. When they speak on cell phones, they speak so quietly I can hardly imagine how the people on the other side can hear them. The result is these hordes of people moving in near-silence (which can be disconcerting for an American at first). Fourth, the rules of personal space are just different from those of the US. A Japanese person interacting with you in a private context with lots of room will tend to stand at bowing distance, i.e. further away than an American, who will typically stand at handshake distance. In the subways, however, the borderline of personal space moves to the skin. People move along their own trajectories as if no one else were there, and will often enough walk right through your shoulder with no acknowledgment that they have done so.
When I read this, I got the image of people of striking uniformity in features and dress, colliding with one
another in perfect silence and perfect indifference. I don't mean that's my impression of Japanese crowds, but where my mind took the unfamiliar elements. Then I ask, how would this have come about? (I'm remembering that classic Star Trek episode with the critically overpopulated planets and the people outside the model of the Enterprise shuffling past one another. That's one way to depict "close quarters." But what if there were some entirely different explanation? I think of them moving in a sort of shrunken-distance Brownian motion, as if the only way they have to orient themselves is by bumping into one another. And maybe their primary senses are tactile/kinesthetic and telepathic-by-contact, so they move through space like one of those multi-cellular colony organisms (I'm thinking Volvox).My mind is doing strange things this morning.
