Millions shunt through Tokyo railway station

Press, 30 July 1986, Page 51

Millions shunt through Tokyo railway station

By

JIM ABRAMS

NZPA-AP Tokyo The flood of humanity begins in the early hours of the morning — multitudes of workers heading for their jobs, dawn vellers and midnight drunks, young runaways heading nowhere in particular.

Some 1.3 million passengers a day pass through Tokyo’s Shinjuku station. That’s more than twice the number handled by any other railway station outside Japan. They once hired college students to help push commuters into the packed cars at Shinjuku, easily the world’s busiest passenger train hub. Now the 431 rugular employees do the cramming.

“We have five rush hours every day,” said Mr Masahiro Kato, of the stationmaster’s office.

Traffic was so heavy that the metal handpunches used to punch tickets wear out and must be replaced every three days, he said. Railway workers clean up some 300,000 cigarette butts every day. The bustling complex in the high-rise, low-life environs of Shinjuku is getting busier, with new rail lines linking the suburbs and the city government planning to abandon its buildings near the Imperial Palce for a new home near the station. The first rush hour begins about 4.30 a.m. when the station opens and redeyed carousers who missed the last night train begin making their way home or back to the office.

Shinjuku has thousands of drinking and eating establishments. It is home to an infamous red-light

district of massage parlours, peep shows and love hotels, and is a principal centre for Tokyo’s gay nightlife. About 8 a.m., the sea of commuters descends on Shinjuku, some headed for the cluster of 50storey office skyscrapers just west of the station, others changing to subways or the 29-stop Yamanote line, a surface railroad that makes a loop around the city.

Between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. comes the next wave: housewives and young people heading for the department stores, boutiques and discount electronics shops that surround the station.

The reverse flows come at 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., the big homebound rush, and midnight to 1 a.m. when bar-hoppers dash for the last trains home.

In addition to Japan National Railways’ 12 platforms for commuter, intercity and long-distance lines to western and northern Japan, Shinjuku is the hub for two subway lines and three private commuter lines.

The Alps Plaza, at the entrance to platforms for lines to the central Japan mountains, is thronged on week-ends by thousands of young people in designer ski gear, Tyrolean mountaineering garb and

Little League baseball uniforms.

Colour-coded signs are a help but even some long-time residents of Tokyo, particularly foreigners, say they have never fully mastered the station’s bewildering multi-storey maze of corridors, stairways, escalators, shops, department stores, ticket offices and rail platforms.

Crime and vandalism are rare on Japanese trains but Mr Ichiro Watanabe, assistant chief of station security, said his office handled 704 cases of picked pockets last year, making 76 arrests.