[Hobby 001]Eternally loved railroad models- Japanese are enthusiastic for its delicate miniature

Eternally loved railroad models- Japanese are enthusiastic for its delicate miniature

Current Japan embraces hundreds of “maniac” cultures; “anime” (animation), “manga” (comics), games, costume-plays, to mention just a few. Besides those, middle-aged and elderly Japanese are particularly addicted in railroad models.
You might imagine popular gage 00 (1/76, gage width 16.5mm) or gage HO (1/80, gage width 16.5mm), smallest gage Z (1/220, gage width 6.5mm) when you talk about railroad models, but the most favored size in Japan is gage N (1/148-160, gage width 9mm). Why is this? There might be variety of reasons, even so the largest reason is its size of gage N.

It wouldn’t bother you much if you are only to have a few gage O train models (1/48, gage width 29.9mm) as an interior. However, once you start imagining about laying lines for your trains to run around and reviving familiar sceneries around those lines, the space you need for your world would become boundless. Not to mention people in the world with great gardens and huge rooms, hardly any lucky Japanese could realize their fantasy in this tiny little country.

As you might know, the housing situation in Japan is terrible. Most rental apartments where business bachelors in urban areas squeeze themselves in are called “one-room apartment” just as its name, do not even have any partition to separate bed rooms, kitchen and store space. Families could not manage to own a house and have one room each for all family members. In Japan, it’s no more than a dream for maniacs to have a special room just to place their railroad model. Thus they usually secure spaces under their beds or in the closets for their dear dioramas as if they live in a Ninjya’s gadget-full premise. Gage N fitted these housing situations in Japan. And what is more, its delicacy ideal for a diorama, made up Japanese’s preference to gage N rather than smaller gage Z.

With this thing and that, gage N railroad model diorama targeted on middle-aged and elderly people is a hot item in Japan. Exquisitely done with reasonable price 483-609 yen (4-6US$), gage N diorama “Streets of the old days collection” (http://www.tomytec.co.jp/hobby/machi/index.html) by traditional Japanese toy maker TOMYTEC is a recent huge hit. Major publisher Kodansha’s “Making Showa period’s railroad model” (http://shop.kodansha.jp/bc/tetsudomokei/) is in great demand too. By collecting fascinating models attached to weekly published magazines, the reader will be able to complete a little railroad town in fifty weeks. The size of the whole town would be just 60 x 45cm- excellent to keep it under your bed!
“Fine-made while compact” is one of the important elements Japanese demands for toys as well as for all industrial goods.

＜Metabo Shogun (General Metabolic Syndrome)＞

References
Kodansha, “Making Showa period’s railroad model” (Weekly magazine) http://shop.kodansha.jp/bc/tetsudomokei/
TOMYTEC, “Streets collection” http://www.tomytec.co.jp/hobby/machi/index.html