Woman Rescued From Train Tracks

A woman who fell off a platform at JR Shinjuku Station in Tokyo was pulled from the Yamanote Line tracks by two bystanders Tuesday afternoon, said one of the rescuers, Canadian Robert Wright.

The woman was taken to a hospital by ambulance, said Shinjuku Fire Station spokeswoman Yukie Yamasue, who declined to reveal the woman's name or the seriousness of her injuries.

Wright, 31, an ad salesman for English magazine publisher Business World Corp., told The Japan Times he heard someone yell and saw a woman who appeared to be a Japanese in her 30s or 40s falling off the platform at around 1:40 p.m.

Wright, who had just exited a Sobu Line train on the same platform, said he ran about 4 meters to the spot where the woman had fallen, jumped down onto the tracks and lifted her onto the platform with the aid a Japanese man.

At least 10 other people in the area saw her fall but did nothing, Wright said, adding he doesn't know where the Japanese man who joined him came from.

"The reaction of people was like nothing out of the norm happened," Wright said. "Helping in a situation like that is a serious matter. I was angry with people standing around there and doing nothing."

The next Yamanote Line train arrived about a minute and a half after the two men got the woman off the tracks, Wright said.

Wright was uncertain whether the woman had attempted suicide or simply lost her balance.

A TERRIBLE generality here, but here goes: believe me, Japanese "reflexes" are frequently very very slow in emergency situations. Everything is usually just so peaceful and quiet and low key in life in Japan, and people do not expect sudden happenings, that they are frozen and just observe when some situation does break out. Hence a guy can end up stabbing 10 people before being disarmed, whereas all kinds of Americans would be tackling or throwing things at such a person to disable him, even if he were armed with a revolver. In Japan, a terribly over-analytical nature and people in general. Good hearts, but pondering a little too deeply trying to make sense of suddenly changing things, when one's fundamental instinctual nature (such as in the case of the Good Canadian) should kick in. I myself have "sprung into action" on a number of occasions here; only to be bewildered by those around me staring and doing nothing and coming around to the reality a good minute or two after me, the Westerner.

They may have also thought she was committing suicide, and did not want to get "involved" because to have done so would have placed them at a police box for several hours helping on forms and eyewitness reports, and heaven knows, "work (and those at work) is waiting."

Sad sometimes.

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