Train Stations in Japan & China: Similarities & Differences in Spatial Design and Functionality

On May 10^th, twenty doctoral students from the Peking University Research Center for Contemporary Japan along with a total of 17 students from the University of Tokyo and GRIPS visited Tokyo Station and held an academic exchange.

The Peking University Research Center for Contemporary Japan is an educational program that was established on the basis of an agreement between The Japan Foundation and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China with the aim of producing Chinese specialists and researchers with a high level of knowledge and expertise concerning Japan. Faculty members from GRIPS are in charge of curriculum talks and the provision of lectures, and this year (its 12^th year), the center has accepted 20 doctoral students from social science faculties at Peking University. The exchange held on this day was part of a two week educational visit to Japan to wrap up the curriculum, and the aim of it was to allow the students to observe actual Japanese society and deepen their understanding of it based on the knowledge they had acquired over the course of six months of lectures at Peking University.

On the day, they considered the differences and similarities between Japan and China in terms of the spatial design and functionality of railway stations through a visit to Tokyo Station, a lecture, and a discussion, and JR East and GRIPS professor Hitoshi Ieda were involved in the planning the event with the aim of enabling dialog and interaction between students.

After a briefing on Tokyo Station by Professor Ieda and students on the Infrastructure Policy course, the students were guided around Tokyo Station by JR East staff, after which the students from Peking University gave a presentation about Beijing South Railway Station. The subsequent group discussion that was held based on the knowledge and information gained from these activities saw a lively exchange of opinion despite the discussion lasting only 30 minutes, and Professor Ieda (who has overseen lectures given at Peking University so far) was very impressed by the passion of the Peking University students.

Oktay Kurtuluş, a doctoral student from GRIPS on the Security and International Studies Program, said that through the discussion with the Chinese students he was able to discover many new things about infrastructure and urban planning – things that are not in his area of expertise – in a short space of time. “In particular, I now thoroughly understood that whereas Tokyo Station was designed in consideration of the movement of people, Beijing South Railway Station was designed with waiting time in mind, much in the same was as an airport. I also get the impression that as Tokyo Station is located close to the Nihombashi bridge which forms the starting point of the Edo period ‘Five Highways’ meaning commerce and people have gathered and settled around this area, Japanese history and railways are linked together,” he explained. He went on to note that the biggest thing that he gained from meeting the Peking University students was the wonderful friends he made, friends that he hoped to keep in touch with in the future.

Text: PR Team, Planning Office