Japan: The Basics contains many photographs (all taken by me) to help with the discussions in the book. I have previously done individual posts on each of the photos that were in the first edition that are not in the second edition (a list of all the photographs in the first edition can be found here). I am now doing posts on all of the photos that appear in the second edition of Japan: The Basics using the tag Photo in Japan: The Basics 2 (all of the photographs can be found here). I’ve already done a series of posts on all the photos that appear in both editions of the book, and a series of posts on those photos where there was an equivalent picture in the first edition but which has been updated for the second edition. This is the next post in a series of posts about those photos which are new to Japan: The Basics.
The following picture is Figure 6.2c in the second edition of Japan: The Basics.
The photo is a poster at a station provides tips to people on how they can help blind passengers.
I had originally planned on a very different picture than this for the book. Blind solo traveller Maud Rowell has been travelling around Japan since June 2022 and I had been following her posts on Instagram. I had also reached out to Maud after hearing her being interviewed in an episode of the “Beyond Japan Podcast” (see “Infrastructure for the Blind), after which I had read Maud’s excellent book Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness.
With me travelling out to Japan in January 2023 to do fieldwork for updating Japan: The Basics, we had been hoping to meet up to discuss Maud’s trip and so that I could bring in much more discussion about disabilities in Japan into Japan: The Basics. Unfortunately, Maud had to return to the UK for a few weeks and so we were unable to meet in January. I was then back in Japan in May and we looked again into the possibility of meeting up, but our busy itineraries wouldn’t quite match up. However, we did finally meet up back in the UK in August 2023, just as I was finishing off the manuscript for Japan: The Basics, allowing me to discuss and check some parts of the book that discuss disabilities.
As we did not meet up in Japan, it was not possible to get a photo of Maud using some of the infrastructure, such as at a station, in Japan: The Basics as I had been planning. However, while I was travelling around in January 2023, I saw the poster in the photo above and when I decided that I still wanted to include some photos related to disabilities in the book, I realised that this one would particularly well.
As I have discussed in the post Discussing Disabilities – The Responsibility of Authors and Academics, I think it is really important that all academics and authors look to include discussion on disabilities – it’s not something that should be left to those with disabilities, nor should we make assumptions about whether authors of texts that deal with disabilities have a disability themselves or that the text has a particular agenda related to disabilities. It is also time that TV programmes and movies did a much better job to include characters with disabilities – but doing it in a way that fully integrates them into the story rather than being a tick box exercise. I have discussed this also in my article Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different? and when considering movies such as 252 Seizonsha Ari (２５２生存者あり)(Nobuo Mizuta, 2008), known as 252: There Are Survivors or 252: Signs of Life in English.
Although I didn’t meet up with Maud during either of my 2023 trips to Japan, you will see some influence of her style of taking some videos, looking at the way the sun and light changes between branches of trees for example, if you look at some of those that I have included as Highlights on Instagram – for example see this one that was about a trip to Oshima and this one that includes my first visit to Todoroki Ravine Park in Tokyo which Maud herself had done and recommended. Both of these Instagram Highlights come from my January 2023 trip during which I read “A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveler” by Jason Roberts which is about James Holman (see also Inspirational People), himself a blind traveller who is an inspirational figure for Maud and after whom a scheme has been established which was funding Maud’s trip .
Maud’s influence on the content of Japan: The Basics is not limited to the parts on disabilities. One project that Maud has also worked on was a video about the impact of Japan’s closed borders in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. This subject features in the final chapter of Japan: The Basics, and I include a link to the film that Maud was involved with, which I also discuss in the post Nothing Splendid About Japan’s Isolation.
See also Barrier Free – Wheelchair Usage At Stations (Photo in “Japan: The Basics” (2nd Edition)) and Barrier Free – Supporting The Deaf (Photo in “Japan: The Basics” (2nd Edition)).
Christopher P. Hood 
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