Keitai in Public Transportation

Introduction

Despite an often oppressive crush of humanity, trains and subways in Japan are remarkably quiet. Although many passengers type into their keitai keypads or scroll through pages on tiny screens, nobody is talking on their keitai. Even the sounds leaking from a young person’s Walkman are considered a violation of this norm of silence. Pervasive announcements and signage prod commuters towards behavior that minimizes their audible presence in this shared space, but the subtle interactions between passengers are the most effective mechanisms for maintaining this social order. Say a ring tone breaks this silence, or somebody sitting in a subway car starts a keitai conversation. Most likely, people nearby will glance quickly at the source of the noise. If the offender speaks particularly loudly, they may get a glare or an expression of disapproval (even if there are ladies chatting more loudly in the next seat). This kind of scene is a familiar one in everyday life in urban Japan.

Keitai have suffered from a bad reputation, particularly regarding their use in public places. Although keitai use is restricted in other public places, trains and buses are the sites of the most intensive efforts at regulating use. In the initial adoption period in the early nineties, keitai were more often objects of envy rather than public regulation. However, after keitai became widely adopted by youth from 1996 on, public transportation facilities have stepped up their efforts to dictate limits to keitai use. The current social consensus is that “voice calls should be avoided but keitai e-mail on public transport is okay.” These norms for keitai usage on trains and buses are the result of a decade-long process of developing social standards and regulations.

Keitai in Japanese Trains Today

In our observations of the frequency of different forms of keitai use on trains, we found that the general social norm of “no voice, e-mail okay” was borne out in the actual practice of passengers. For example, one 41-minute observation on a busy train line represented the highest volume of usage that we recorded. During the period of observation, there were 37 in stances of observable keitai e-mail usage (including both receiving and sending e-mail), and 4 instances of voice calls. In a 30-minute observation with the lowest volume of usage, there was one voice call and 10 instances of keitai e-mail use. The overall average of keitai voice calls in any given 30-minute span is 1-2 calls.

In our 24 interviews with keitai users, almost all responded that they would freely engage in e-mail exchanges but were hesitant to make and receive voice calls. For example, interviewees described how they might decide not to answer a voice call if the train was crowded, or they might move to a less crowded location to take a call, or they might take the call but cut it right away. Most also responded that they were annoyed when somebody took a voice call on a train and talked in a loud voice. These responses were consistent across all age groups.

Keitai manners in trains in Japan are part of a broad palette of behaviors that are policed explicitly and persistently by public transportation institutions. Most similar to the issue of keitai is the problem of noise pollution through Walkmans that have been the subject of controversy and regulation since the eighties (du Gay et al. 1997). In addition, in stations and on trains, posters illustrating appropriate and inappropriate behaviors are pervasive, as are announcements cautioning, directing, and instructing passengers towards certain behaviors. Posters illustrate and warn against such transgressions as leaning a wet umbrella on another passenger’s leg, eating or applying make-up, feeling up female passengers, getting fingers pinched by train doors, taking up too much space on seating, or leaving a backpack on rather than holding it one’s arms at a more unobtrusive level. Announcements warning against running through closing train doors are repeated as each train is about to leave the platform. As passengers get off the train at each station, announcements remind them not to forget anything on the train. Even more than buses, trains in urban centers are characterized by precise technical and social regulation and very low rates of disorder whether it is poor manners, a late train, graffiti, or litter.

Keitai Involvements

In addition to the formal efforts of public transportation institutions to keep trains and passengers running in good order, passengers engage in ongoing acts of mutual surveillance, regulation, and sanctioning that keep other passengers in line. Even before the advent of the keitai, passengers on Japanese public transportation regulated behavior through mutual surveillance, so it is not surprising that these practices have extended to keitai usage as well. In Goffman’s (1963) terms, the space of the train is a well-defined social situation, with specific expectations of mutual “involvement” or participation in the space. Deviance from these expectations is noticed and acted upon by other passengers, often through non-verbal displays.

Most instances of keitai voice calls resemble this kind of scene: The phone is in silent mode, and the receiver decides to take the call, but conveys through an introverted gaze and posture and low voice that she is trying to minimize disruption to the social situation of the public space. She also makes use of what Goffman (1963: 38042) might call a “portable involvement shield,” a prop—in this case a magazine—“behind which an individual can safely do the kind of things that ordinarily result in negative sanctions.” In this case, there the keitai user is clearly demonstrating her understanding of the behavioral expectation of the social situation, even while transgressing it, she is subject to only mild sanctioning by those in the vicinity. In other cases, a passenger might display respect for the social situation by moving from a crowded area to a more vacant area while taking the call.

The social situation of “riding a train” is constructed and maintained through these kinds of ongoing interactions and displays. When a keitai user “unavoidably” has to take a call in a train, the situation demands that they continue to display involvement and respect toward the shared setting by performing their taking of the call as a secondary involvement. If they don’t display the appropriate level of involvement and consideration to the social situation, then they are subject to more visible forms of sanctioning by other passengers. Drawing from Goffman (1959), Ling describes public mobile phone use as “interacting on a double front stage,” where the user must manage accountabilities to both the online conversation and the local setting. He suggests that “the verbal and the gaze/gestural effects can be used in opposite ways for various publics.”

Ged Murtagh (2001) describes some of the non-verbal ways in which other passengers indicate what they feel to be appropriate or inappropriate in terms of other passengers’ involvements with mobile phones. He points to gaze, posture (changing direction of the face or upper body) as subtle negotiations that construct shared context and the implicit boundaries of what constitutes “a public nuisance.” The most common form of non-verbal sanctioning behavior is the gaze. Glancing or glaring at a keitai user is a way for other passengers to engage in public regulation of behavior. The following interview excerpt gives some sense of behavioral expectations and the effectiveness of the gaze as sanctioning behavior.

(College student, 20 years old, female, Osaka)
Interviewer: What to you think are the situations and places that keitai should not be used?
Interviewee: On the train, I try not to make voice calls.
Interviewer: What if you get a call?
Interviewee: I do answer it…
Interviewer: When that happens, do you, like, try to appear apologetic? Maybe covering your mouth with your hand?
Interviewee: Yes.
Interviewer: If people around you started glancing at you, would that bother you?
Interviewee: Hm. Probably if somebody looked at me, I would stop.
Interviewer: If another passenger is making a voice call, what do you think?
Interviewee: Hm. If they talk just for a short time in an apologetic way, I think maybe that’s okay? But if there is like a high school girl talking in a way loud voice, then it pisses me off. I think they should cut it out.

Even as the keitai has been adopted by Japanese of all ages and social stripes, there is still a gap between different social actors, such as youth, business users, train companies, and the elderly, in their sense of what is appropriate keitai use. For example, in the Kansai region of southern Japan, the announcements on trains about keitai use are not as strict as those in the Kanto region, and were implemented later. In our interviews and observations, we also saw that passengers in the Kansai region were more forgiving about keitai usage on trains. According to Shunji Mikami (2001), age also colors how people view keitai usage. In the case of “a crowded bus or train” 50% of 16-19 year olds and 58% of 20-24 year olds felt that “you should never use a keitai and should turn it off,” in contrast to 81% of those aged 50-54 and 88% of those aged 55-59. In other words, older people had a stricter sense of how keitai should be used.

It is difficult to posit a uniform standard for how keitai should be use in trains, and actual keitai usage is keyed to the tendencies of particular users situated in specific contexts. Perception has also changed along with the evolving landscape of keitai adoption. We turn now to examine the current state of social understanding of appropriate keitai use in trains developed over the course of the mid nineties to the present.