Yamanot.es: A music box of train station melodies from the JR Yamanote Line

A couple of months ago, riding the subway through Ginza Station for the first time in a while, I noticed that the door-closing melody was from the 1949 song Ginza Kankan Musume [1, 2]. I’m normally not very familiar with Japanese pop music, but I happen to have the song on a playlist I listen to together with my five-year-old grandson. It brought a smile to my face, as it’s a cheerful, very slightly risqué song from the early postwar period, when Japanese popular culture was enjoying renewed freedom. It was fun to hear it in a subway station in 2025.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYpdBcso3A

[2] https://g.co/gemini/share/d584c36b99ab

I don't know how to describe this, but Japanese enjoy putting a little bit of joy into every thing, like Ronald McDonald, but real.

This probably has a philosophical underpinning in Animism, almost everything is anthropomorphized and given a "soul", personality. This has the affect of humanizing the most utilitarian parts of day-to-day life, commuting, a tax office, etc.

I think it's more to do with the fact that the official ethos is all about staunch sacrifice in the face of continuous suffering and inflexible rules. People end up trying to get some relief any way they can, looking for a bit of joy in every corner of society where they won't feel judged harshly.

As the rare Japanese on here who speaks English, the amount of theory-crafting from English-speakers about how and why Japanese do this or that is borderline hilarious. Just shows how different our cultures are. Most people don't realize that the way they view the world is through their own ethnocentric lens.