Create A Sense Of Arrival

train station

is the spiritually empty center of the Japanese neighborhood.

In thls enormous city, really an urban terricory, ehe name of each diserier is diseiner, kno\'.'n, placed on ehe raeher empry map (ehe sereers are nor named) like a news flash; ir assurnes rh ar srrongly signifying idenriry wh ich Prousr, in his fashion, has explored in his Place Names. If the neighbvrhood is quite Iimired, dense, contained, terminared beneatlt its name, ir is because ie has a center, bur this center is spirirually empry: usually it is astation.

city

geography

Japan

neighborhood

train

, in Japan, is a void, an empty point of affluence around which each district is collected.

Thus each districr is collecred in thc \oid of irs sration. an empty poinr-of-affluence of all irs occupations and its plea_ sures.

semiotics

Japanese culture

Japanese architecture

, in Japan, is a prosaic, center-location whose concentration is constantly thwarted and undone by transition and departure.

The ]apanese station is crossed by a thousand functional trajeccories, ftOm the.: journey co the purchase, from the garment tO fuod: a train can open omo a shoe stalL Dedicated co commeree, co rransitivn, co deparrure, and yet kept in a unique struerure, the station (moreover, is that whar this new complex sh'uld be called)) is stripped of that sacred character which ordinarily qualifies the major landmarks of our cities: eathedrals, town halls, historical monumems. Here the landmark is emirely prosaic; no doubt the market is also a cemral sire of the Western city; but in Tokyo merchandise is in a sense undone by the station's instability: an incessant departure th\"<uts !ts concentration; one might say that it is only thc prcp<irarory substance of the package and rhat thc package itself is ordy tbe pass, thc ticket which permits departure.

train station, n.Definitions

train station