The Rickshaw and the Railroad: Human-Powered Transport in the Age of the Machine

FAIN: DOI-293689-23

University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)
Kate Linette McDonald (Project Director: January 2023 to present)

Research and writing leading to a scholarly monograph about the modern history of transportation technology in Japan.

The Rickshaw and the Railroad examines the intellectual and social history of transportation in nineteenth through twenty-first century Japan. It argues that transportation is a keyword of modern history. It is a contested concept that historical actors and historians alike use to symbolize the past, define the modern and pre-modern eras, and critique the present and envision the future. Interweaving the histories of rickshaw pullers with human-car railway pushers, truck drivers, and parcel delivery workers, The Rickshaw and the Railroad shows that, (a) for over one hundred years, the promise that cheaper and faster transportation would benefit society at large has been used to override the concerns of those who sought to protect transport as a livelihood; and, (b) on a broad scale transport change has continually reproduced, rather than eliminated, the need for precarious human labor in transportation systems.