By TOMOKO OTAKE
Staff writer
Uniformed officials of East Japan Railway Co. are solemnly but methodically at work. Their train has just made an emergency stop after running over a middle-age man, who is either unconscious or dead. The driver radios the control office in central Tokyo, from where police and an ambulance are alerted. The driver jumps off the train and checks the brakes. The conductor moves along the train to make sure all the passengers are OK.
Then the pair have the unenviable job of attending to the victim until the emergency services arrive. It is they who must administer first aid – or move the body off the tracks and put a white sheet over it.
“Pick up the scattered body parts, if there are any,” a senior official calls out to others gathered there.
Fortunately, it’s only a mock accident. But the atmosphere is tense as a dozen acting conductors and drivers simulate a jinshin jiko (literally, a “human accident,” but most are suicides) one recent afternoon at the railway company’s training center in Omiya, Saitama Prefecture. The acted-out drama was part of an intensive, two-day retraining course all train crew undergo every two years.
To bring a sense of reality to the experience, the officials drove an actual train to the site, where a doll stuffed with 50 kg of sand had been placed on the tracks.
“It is our fate to encounter jinshin jiko and a mechanical breakdown,” said Takashi Aso, a former driver and training instructor who was at the controls three times when his train hit someone.
Speedy recovery
No doubt it is because of the sense of duty that Aso describes, that – come rain or shine or “human accident” – Japan’s trains almost always run on time.
And JR East’s staff are proud of their speedy recovery work. (Company officials revealed, with much hesitation, that 18 jinshin jiko took place on the Yamanote Line last year – surprisingly few as that may seem to many Tokyoite