They roam the land from Hokkaido to Kyushu, scoffing at the laws that govern ordinary people. They trespass on private land, endangering the lives of others. They steal and cheat, curse and fight — most often with one another. They are not yakuza gangsters but Japanese trainspotters, the latest and most unexpected of the country’s social nuisances.
In Britain, trainspotting anoraks have a reputation for dorky docility that makes them objects of condescending affection, rather than disdain. In Japan they are regarded with growing suspicion after a history of incidents in which railway enthusiasts have been responsible for disruption, crime and even injury in their pursuit of the perfect photograph of new and spectacular trains.
Japanese YouTube has numerous films of mobs of toritetsu, as amateur train photographers are known, clustering perilously on narrow platforms and swearing angrily at one another as a choice piece of rolling stock trundles past.
Enthusiasts known as soshiki-tetsu or “funeral dorks” packed the platform as the “Doctor Yellow” high-speed shinkansen train arrived at Tokyo Station for the last time in January this year
STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
There are regular stories about trainspotters being caught on off-limits property owned by railway companies in the quest for the perfect shooting spot. But recent incidents make toritetsu sound more like heroin users feeding an uncontrollable addiction than enthusiasts pursuing an innocent hobby.
In mid-June, two toritetsu got close to the tracks of the renowned Cassiopeia Journey, a sleeper train passing on a rare journey through northern Japan, causing the delay and cancellation of services.
Two weeks later, police in Osaka arrested six men at the World Expo in Kansai for allegedly stealing more than a hundred items worth 410,000 yen (£2,070) from souvenir shops. The suspects, all in their early twenties, were members of a toritetsu gang from Tokyo who reportedly shoplifted to support their trainspotting habit. As well as entering the Expo on children’s tickets, they exploited their knowledge of trains to travel from Tokyo to Osaka on a ¥150 (75p) platform ticket rather than the full fare of ¥13,870 (£70). Sitting in different carriages they communicated by phone to warn of the approach of the inspector, and vaulted the ticket gate at the other end.
Train-themed keychains collected by an enthusiast
PHILIP FONG/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
“Among railway enthusiasts, there are quite a few who know precisely when stations become unmanned, which stations lack staff, and where security is lax,” one railway employee told the weekly magazine Shincho last week. “Some of them target these times and stations to fare dodge. Worse still, there are groups that share such information amongst themselves. It’s readily available online, which is such a nuisance for railway companies.”
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Nor is that the worst of it. In 2019, four schoolboys threw smoke bombs onto a railway bridge in Tokyo because they wanted to photograph the rare phenomenon of an emergency stop. Two years later, a dispute among young toritetsu almost ended in tragedy when a trainspotter knocked down a boy, causing a fractured skull.
Japan has more than 18,600 miles of railway tracks, equivalent to about three quarters of the circumference of the planet. Along their course, passengers travel for a total of 250 billion passenger miles a year, the equivalent of 75 million journeys a day. Forty-five of the world’s 50 busiest stations are in Japan.
All of this offers rich opportunities for trainspotters, who are to be seen on platforms, bridges, on hills and overhanging balconies, armed with notebooks, phones, timetables and cameras. One of the best known rail enthusiasts is Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister, although he has shown no signs of taking his hobby to dangerous or criminal extremes.
Shigeru Ishiba, the Japanese prime minister, with a model of a sleeper train he travelled in many times
Trainspotters classify themselves according to a dazzling range of categories. One online taxonomy of trainspotting identifies 36 desperate breeds, including yomi-tetsu (yomi means read and tetsu rail) —armchair enthusiasts who collect books and timetables. Onkyo-tetsu seek to record the sounds of various trains. Sharyo-tetsu love the physical structure of locomotives and carriages.
Eki-tetsu appreciate stations, and ekiben-tetsu love the packed lunch boxes for travellers sold in station kiosks, which specialise in local delicacies. Tetsu-ko are female trainspotters —a minority, although a growing one. The final journeys of train services that are being discontinued attract soshiki-tetsu, or “funeral dorks”. Most numerous of all are the toritetsu or “rail snappers”.
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Conscious of the dangers, railway companies have attempted to divert their energies to benign ends. The East Japan Railway Company started the Toritetsu Community, a social network that rewards law-abiding trainspotters by publishing their photographs in calendars. A railway company in Saitama prefecture north of Tokyo, has organised tetsu-kon, or rail matchmaking parties, for anoraks in search of love.
Sagami Railways in Kanagawa prefecture has held workshops showing toritetsu how to improve photographs by digitally removing visual clutter from their photographs. A frequent cause of nerd rage is when oblivious passers-by “photobomb” shots at the crucial moment of a train’s passing.
“Hobbies are originally meant to enrich people’s lives,” the conservative Yomiuri newspaper wrote in an anxious editorial. “Rail fans should strongly be aware that aggressive behaviour is tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot.”
AloJapan.com