Characters in The Girl Watcher and The Human Chair :: Tayama Katai Edogawa Rampo

Uncanny Reactions to modernisationSugita Kojo of Tayama Katais The Girl Watcher (1907) and the chair maker in Edogawa Rampos The Human Chair (1925) react to new ways of life in a similar, vulgar manner. Both stories include aspects of society new to that era Trains and chairs, respectively. These pieces from the Meiji & Taisho period, a period where stories began to express the characters thoughts, depict the grandness of understanding novel and foreign aspects of daily life by masking how these modern ways of living may be used inappropriately.Sugita, the jockstrap in The Girl Watcher, has several responsibilities his job, wife, and children. However, his passion is stick withing young, wealthy girls on trains. Yes. Why does he choose this particular hobby? These girls attend high-priced high schools and can be considered modern in both historic period and appearance. According to lecture, trains were a new space where tidy sum of different sociable classes mixed, and people had to learn to act appropriately and how to look at other passengers. Right With much practice, Sugita has figured out how to watch young women on trains, abusing this new form of travel Its too direct to watch them face on, whereas from a distance itslikely to arouse peoples suspicions therefore, the most convenient seat to occupy is nonpareil diagonally opposite (Katai, 175). Yes. This is one of my favorite quotes in the story. Sugita is not an ordinary man, his passing play is odd and he is unpleasant to the eye. However, he lives a mundane and depress life writing for a magazine. Sugita watches girls to restore his passion for life, to engage in the modern world was there no one who would embrace him in her white arms? If only someone would, then he was legitimate he would discover lifein hard work. Fresh note would flow through his veins (page 180). He wishes he could be rescued. Young women cue Sugita of his youth, of things he wanted to do unless never did, such as make passionate love. Katai may be saying that once things modernize, one must become entirely modern to survive in society. Sugita lives in a modern house, wears western clothes (considered modern at the time), but he does not live a modern life he was coming out in his same old way along his same old route, wish his same old hat (Katai, 170).