Tokyo trains, in all their overcrowded glory, come with quite a few not-so-unspoken rules. Putting your phone on silent ('manner mode'), not stretching out your legs, and not talking loudly are some of these, all designed to not inconvenience or be a nuisance (meiwaku) to others around you. According to railway giant Tokyu Corporation, one of these other meiwaku is women putting on make-up on the train, and they've now started a campaign to stop any and all scrambling to get ready for the day ahead while on the train.
First off, we wonder how common mobile make-up application really is – we honestly don't see that many women do this on our way to work. Worse, Tokyu's method has proven more than a bit controversial, with their new ad featuring a girl starting off with 'Women in the city are pretty. But sometimes, they're ugly', and then launching into a full-fledged rap-rant about how horrible women are for putting on make-up during their commute and, in effect, how bad their manners are. Ouch. And posters stating the same thing have been sighted along the Setagaya line.
Curiously, the video was posted over a month ago but has only kicked up a Twitter storm this week, with thousands of retweets and reactions to the Youtube clip. Many disagree with the campaign, and don't see the problem. 'If it was about spilling make-up powder, I'd get it, but a train company really has no right to call me ugly', says one Twitter user, with another commenter asking if 'dancing that violently on the train isn't more of an inconvenience? Is this a joke?'
But Tokyu Corp does seem to have struck a nerve, as a poll on Netgeek illustrates: 78% of the nearly 4,500 respondents (quite a few of them male, we suspect) felt that applying make-up on the train truly is an inconvenience and should be stopped. Others likened the act to 'a man shaving in public', and vilified those who commit such a horrid faux pas as 'having no manners'.
Tokyu apparently only got the latter memo, and say that as they've had positive reactions too, they see no reason to retract the campaign. Ladies (sorry men with make-up, you seem to have been left out of the equation completely), hide your lipstick – or wave it in protest.