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Paper short abstract:

Eki-mae [in front of a station] is more than a simple direction or location, but a social space that serves different purposes and is used by a broad variety of beings. This paper discusses everyday practices enacted at different eki-mae in Tokyo by drawing on multisensory fieldwork-data.

Paper long abstract:

'Eki-mae' [in front of a station] is more than a simple direction or location: It is a social space and institution that serves different purposes and is used by a broad variety of beings. It is a waiting area, a meeting point and place of disperse, but also allows for intended and unintended encounters, convivial gatherings and conflicts and opens a space of possibilities.

While Marc Augé (1995) rendered train stations as an example of characterless "non-lieux" [non-places], I argue, that eki-mae, the space between the station and the city, is a different case. I draw upon Setha Low's (2009) concept of embodied space to emphasise the "everyday practices" (cf. de Certau 1984) and individual perceptions that create a "lived space" (cf. Lefebvre 1990).

Using multisensory fieldwork-data which address smellscapes as well as sonic traces and haptic stimuli, I portray different locations in Tokyo and discuss them to highlight common features and explicate the historical and spatial peculiarities and trajectories (cf. Sand 2013). The change of social environment and role as well as transportation mode and vehicle are deliberated through the everyday practices of waiting, meeting and leaving. By doing so, I connect the findings of recent studies regarding rail transport and urban mobility (Fisch 2018, Kaima & Bissell 2020) with a sensory aware anthropology (Hansen 2018; Pink 2012) to contextualise the interwoven state of humans, machines and places.

By expanding the frontiers of critical urban studies to overlap with social, political and psychological phenomena, this paper should stimulate a discussion about the interwoven mechanics of everyday life, mobility and urban space. Based on my case studies this paper shows, that eki-mae - these places in front of stations - are a rewarding spot to study social behaviour in urban Japan and to reflect about changes and pressing problems in contemporary Japanese society. Through its multi-sited approach, this paper aims at critically rethinking the upcoming challenges in the field of interdisciplinary studies of a mobile and changing urban Japan.