That is a nice one.

I'd call that the local train too. And yes, westering is still a word. I might go for "western" there myself.

---L.

I'm not an expert on Japanese rail terminology, but your description of 郊外電車 would be what I would call a commuter train in American English (which is linked on Wikipedia to the entry for 通勤列車 or 通勤電車).

A local train, for me, is any train (including long-distance and metropolitan types) that stops at all stations; its opposite is an express train (or "limited" in long-distance branding).

Wikipedia redirects 郊外電車 to インターアーバン, a nonmetropolitan tram (or streetcar or trolley, depending on your variety of English): most of those are light rail systems in modern AmE.

Not that any of this matters any (your translation is just fine), but I just wonder if the imagery was intended as a train of weary workers traveling home at the end of the day, or a single lonely car somewhere in the middle of the rice paddies.

LNH: Good to have it confirmed! I wavered over "western" but I guess I wanted that gradual movement.

Brian: Those are good points. It was indeed the single lonely car through the paddies I was thinking of, and I *think* given the timeframe that was probably more likely than the postwar commuting sardine-can, but it's hard to be sure.

郊外 and 'suburban' are dictionary definitions that deserve to be laid to rest.

A 'suburb' in English (especially in Australian English, I suspect) refers to almost anything outside of the CBD. English even allows you to talk of 'inner city suburbs'. What Japanese refers to as 郊外 seems to refer more often to what we would call the 'outskirts' or 'environs' of a city. In Chinese, the expression 郊区 is even more explicit in this regard; it refers to non-urban, non-built up areas _outside_ the urban/built-up areas.

What this means for our 郊外電車 I'm not sure. In the Taishō era, I suspect (without any supporting evidence) that the expansion of 'suburban' railways was a prelude to spreading urbanisation. Lines were built to surrounding areas and (IIRC) railway companies were given rights to land along the lines, which resulted in the proliferation of railway-related retailing and other businesses in Japan (your Seibu's, Hankyu's, Tokyu's, etc.).

Interesting point, Bathrobe. You're right: Australia's use of "suburb" is very much related to Australia's relatively tiny- and isolated-ass cities. It's a challenge to point to something that's "a suburb of Tokyo" in the same way that Broadmeadows is a suburb of Melbourne.

One thing I try to be wary of when reading things written this early is that the truly "local" lines (not just commuter trains to Tokyo or other huge regional centers) were apparently much more prominent back then. I'm not sure if this is because Tokyocentricism wasn't sufficiently advanced, proto-JR East didn't have the absolute size to dominate mindshare, or what, but I am given to understand that my mental image of "the Japanese train system" is nothing like what most of these writers had in mind.

What this poem evokes for me is a memory of my time in semi-rural Saitama and the local lines there, but whether even that is close to what Rigen saw I could not say.

In the Kansai, private railways -- Hankyū, Hanshin, Keihan, Kintetsu -- play a much more prominent role than JR (the old 国鉄). This is in contrast to Tokyo, where the private railways indeed seem to be local systems feeding into JR.

If you want a feeling for how things were in the Taisho period, Wikipedia can be a useful resource since, in typically Japanese fashion, many articles on local government areas list historical details (with dates) concerning administrative changes (from 村 to 市, etc.) and the establishment of major local landmarks like universities, etc. Since the Japanese have been as guilty of reorganising and tidying up place names as anyone else, it can be a real eye-opener to see the evolution that led to the modern situation that we tend to take for granted.

I decided to check Wikipedia articles on private railway companies. Interestingly, the time of Kinoshita Rigen's life coincides with the beginnings of the private local railways.

At the article on the Keikyū company we read that "The Kanto region's first electric train (the nation's third, after Kyoto Electric Railway and Nagoya Electric Railway) rolled in January 1899". Modern Keikyu "connects inner Tokyo to Kawasaki, Yokohama, Yokosuka and other points on the Miura Peninsula", which is interesting given that the poet spent his last days in Kamakura.

The original Seibu Railway was founded in 1894 and "began service on the Kawagoe Railway line between Kokubunji and Kawagoe that December", although if the first electric train in Tokyo only started service in 1899, the first Seibu trains were presumably steam trains.

Tōbū was founded in 1897. Wikipedia gives no information on the railway's first lines.

Tōkyū was only founded in 1922 as the Meguro-Kamata Electric Railway.

I have a very strong feeling that many of the places where these railways ran were not yet urbanised at the time, so the picture of electric trains running through rice paddies to Yokohama, Kawagoe, or Kamakura would have been an accurate one.

Unconsciously I was using English Wikipedia. Japanese Wikipedia articles have much more detailed information on early suburban rail networks. (Sorry for the multiple posts.)