Dr. Jessamyn Abel is an Associate Professor of Asian Studies and History at Penn State. Her lecture presents her book Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train as a part of the 2025 History Workshop in the Department of History. The 2024 Modern Japan History Association Book Prize winner explores 1960s Japan through the window of the bullet train, showing how infrastructure operates beyond its intended use to perform cultural and sociological functions. 

Available in-person or online via zoom as well! For a link to the zoom meeting, please email a.takenaka@uky.edu

Abstract: 

Touted as a symbol of the "new Japan” when it opened in 1964, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen—the first bullet train, dubbed the "dream super-express"—represents the bold aspirations of a nation rebranding itself after military defeat, but also the deep problems caused by the unbridled postwar drive for economic growth. This talk will trace contrasting meanings assigned to high-speed rail in order to find the ways in which it prompted a reimagination of identity on the levels of individual, metropolis, and nation in a changing Japan.