A Keio Student's Commuter Pass Case During the War

2025/01/10

In March 1943, a Keio student in his second year of the Faculty of Economics Preparatory Course in Hiyoshi passed away suddenly from tuberculosis. His parents had placed their hopes in their healthy second son rather than their sickly eldest son, and despite their poverty, they had secured help from relatives to send him from Prefectural Second Middle School (now Tachikawa High School) to the Keio University Preparatory Course. His mother, deeply grieving his death, visited the Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration) in Mita and asked the President to write an epitaph. Shinzo Koizumi readily agreed, and the tombstone bearing his calligraphy was erected in Tama Cemetery.

His mother continued to cherish the memory of her second son, and in 1981, when her grandson entered Keio University, she entrusted him with this commuter pass case belonging to her late son, which she had kept for a long time. Now, 80 years later, the aged pass case still contains his student ID, identification card, and timetable, in addition to his commuter pass.

The student's name was Gyo Takano, born in 1922. The student ID is from the 1942 academic year and bears the name of "Keio University President Shinzo Koizumi," with an embossed seal from the Office of Student Services on the photograph. Student IDs are rarely extant today because they were typically collected and discarded upon promotion or graduation.

The commuter pass was for the route between Hiyoshi and Ogikubo, with notations indicating it went via "Namikibashi," meaning taking the Toyoko Line to Shibuya, and via "Okubo," meaning transferring from the Yamanote Line to the Chuo Line at Shinjuku. "Namikibashi" was located between Shibuya and Daikanyama stations on the Toyoko Line, but it was damaged in the Great Yamanote Air Raid in May 1945 and became an abandoned station.

The timetable card includes not only the subjects but also the start times and classroom numbers for classes that required moving from the main classroom. "Essay" and "Story" were English classes, and the two consecutive periods of "Kyoren" on Friday afternoons refer to military drill. The back of the card features an advertisement for "TM Tailor," a uniform shop that was located in Mita.

Each of these items may be trivial fragments of daily life during the war, but in fact, it is precisely such things that teach us what is not easily understood later even if one tries to research it. They contain the threads to delve deeper into that era, sometimes revealing the very essence of the times. We should value such intuition, while always maintaining the capacity to think about and feel by whom and why these items were left behind.

The student who was entrusted with this pass case went on to work for Keio University after graduation and became the Administrative Director of the Fukuzawa Memorial Center last autumn, and the pass case was placed in the center's storage. (Exhibited at the Keio History Museum "Fukuzawa Memorial Center New Acquisitions Exhibition 2025" (January 10 – February 8))

(Takeyuki Tokura, Associate Professor, Keio University Fukuzawa Memorial Center for Modern Japanese Studies)