Bus Conductor Day

What Is Bus Conductor Day?

Every February 2nd is "Bus Conductor Day" (バスガールの日, Basu Gāru no Hi) in Japan. On February 2, 1920, Japan's first female bus conductors began work on the buses of Tokyo Shigai Jidōsha (東京市街自動車), a private company later renamed Tokyo Noriai Jidōsha and nicknamed the "Blue Bus" (it was absorbed into Tokyo's municipal buses, today's Toei Bus, during wartime consolidation). Thirty-seven women aged 19 to 30, who had finished training on January 31, began serving between Shinjuku and Tsukiji, collecting fares, announcing stops, and assisting passengers. Their starting pay of 35 yen was considered high at the time. These pioneering women were the first "bus girls" (バスガール, basu gāru) — a term of affectionate familiarity that became their professional designation and a recognized figure of urban Japanese life through the mid-20th century.

The Bus Girl: A Modern Working Woman

Japan's 1920 bus conductors were pioneers of female professional employment in the modern public service sector. Working in uniform on city buses, interacting with the public, and managing the practical operations of fare collection and passenger management, they represented a new kind of working woman visible in the urban public sphere. The "bus girl" became a recognizable cultural figure — appearing in fiction, film, and popular song as a symbol of modern urban femininity and the changing role of women in Japanese society during the Taisho era's relatively liberal cultural atmosphere.

The Decline of the Bus Conductor

For decades, Japanese buses were operated by a two-person crew: a driver and a conductor (車掌, shashō) who collected fares, announced stops, and managed the door. The gradual shift to one-person operation — in which drivers collect fares themselves using automated fare boxes — eliminated the bus conductor role through the 1970s and 1980s. The "bus girl" as a professional category has largely disappeared, though the cultural memory of the figure remains in Japanese nostalgic media and popular culture references.

Women in Japanese Transport

The 1920 bus conductors were early entrants in a long history of women's participation in Japan's transportation sector. Female railway conductors, station workers, and eventually drivers have become common in Japan's public transit systems, continuing the expansion of women's roles in public-facing transportation work that the bus conductors of 1920 pioneered.

Fun Facts

• "Bus Girl" in song: The 1957 hit "Tokyo no Basu Gāru" (東京のバスガール, sung by the first Columbia Rose), with its line "発車オーライ" (hassha ōrai, "departure, all clear"), fixed the bus girl's image in postwar cultural memory.
• "White-collar girls": The company's conductors wore Western-style uniforms with white collars and berets and were nicknamed "shiroeri-jō" (white-collar girls); when Tokyo's municipal buses hired female conductors in 1924, theirs were called "akaeri-jō" (red-collar girls).
• First female drivers: While female bus conductors appeared in 1920, female bus drivers (バス女性運転手) were much rarer — appearing only in the latter decades of the 20th century as women entered what had been exclusively male driving professions.