Railroad literature on suitable places : How the Japanese government railways forged an "old China" travel culture

Abstract

This empirical study on advertising campaigns and the art of running trains in distant places finds its theoretical significance in a view of history where real and imagined geographies interact. The railroad companies of the Japanese Empire did much more than transport passengers and carry freight: their express trains embodied a particular view of a world centered on racial, nationalist and dynastic myths. Modernity as ideology and the everyday experience of colonialism combined in Manchuria to generate a particular perception of China as a decadent and romantic culture.