There is a particular olive-green velvet used on the upholstery of the Hankyu railway cars that has not changed in seventy years. It absorbs light rather than reflecting it, so that even under the fluorescent tubes of the midnight express out of Umeda, the interior retains the hushed atmosphere of a private study.
Passengers do not speak. They do not merely refrain from speaking; they practice a communal withholding of sound. Newspapers are folded with surgical origami into sixths so as not to graze an adjacent shoulder. Umbrella tips are rested precisely between one’s own shoe leather, catching drips on rubber mats.
To ride this train when the rain turns to sleet outside the window is to witness a civilization that values spatial courtesy above individual declaration.