Tokyo Tramcar Novels
Naoya Shiga is thought to be one of the best authors in Japan in the modern era.
Recently I read some short novels written by Shiga. And two of them are focused on tramcars.
In one novel, a little girl was hit and killed by a tramcar running in Tokyo City (before WWII). It was watched by some road maintenance workers. They happened to see the little girl running from her mother to the middle of the street where tramcar rails were provided. Then a driver of a coming tramcar tried to stop the vehicle by using a winding type of brake before applying the more effective emergency brake. So, it could not stop before the girl.
The mother got shocked and could not even come to the separated body of the girl. Her little head was severed from her tiny body. The mother was just watching the scene of the bloody accident with the pale face.
To the police on site, the driver alleged that he tried the emergency brake but it was too late. A person in charge of handling accidents of the tramcar company came in a hurry to the place and tried to make less a degree of responsibility of the driver and the company. "It was too sudden and it was impossible for the tramcar to avoid the tragedy though the driver used the emergency brake," he argued.
Finally the driver was taken to the police but his negligence looked like covered by his excuse. And the road maintenance workers all saw the proceeding of the event. They also worked for the tramcar company so that they did not blame the driver before policemen on site. But it made them experience grave trauma. The author depicted how they behaved after work of the day. It was somehow a desperate novel at heart.
In another novel staging a tramcar, Shiga focused on passengers in a tramcar vehicle. It was a hot summer day, and they all looked unpleasant. Especially a young utility worker sitting before the main character of the story looked like in bad temper. Then suddenly a white butterfly flew in from a wheel window. It danced in the air of the car to finally settle on a sheet of a commercial poster as the hero watched.
Subsequently, the hero saw, from a wheel window, a little boy running to the route ahead. The driver put the emergency brake to effect, though it was too late. Passengers all got alerted. They jumped off from the halted tramcar to see what happened to the boy.
The boy was, however, safely caught by an iron net installed at the lower head of the vehicle. He was scooped into the net without damage. Family members of the boy came around the tramcar. Then, the boy started to cry. The young worker, one of the passengers, picked him up from the net. Then the boy discharged his urine.
After all the passengers returned to the inside of the tramcar, the driver started it. Everybody was joking about urine on the shirt of the young worker. He took off the shirt and wrung it, laughing. Everybody now didn't look so unpleasant in the heat of summer of Tokyo City. But the hero realized that the white small butterfly which had been resting on a poster had gone.
I just don't know which novel was written first, but a life-saving story is more pleasant to read for most of readers and probably the author himself.
Naoya Shiga (1883 – 1971) was a Japanese novelist and short story writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan.
Shiga was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 1949.
Shiga suffered the fate of many authors who are successful in their early years, combined with the fatal weakness of authors specializing in the autobiographical novel – after a while there is little or nothing left to write about. During the last 35 years of his life he occasionally appeared as a guest writer in various literary journals, where he reminisced about his early association with various Shirakaba school writers, or his former interest in Christianity, but he produced very little new work. He died of pneumonia, after a long illness, at the age of 88. His grave is at the Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoya_Shiga
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