Suchergebnisse

It is common to associate the emergence of modern mass culture with the modernising city. In Japan the discourse on cities focuses to a large extent on Tokyo because of its role as national capital. Capital cities in particular are both political and symbolic centres of the nation and in many cases also centres of production and consumption. Very often narratives of Japan's modernity are linked with the question of how Tokyo became the political centre of the nation on the one hand and how modernization changed urban spaces on the other. There exists a huge body of journalistic and feuilleton-like texts on Tokyo addressing the needs of the urban masses for information about city life. A lot of these texts had a wide circulation when they had been published but as most of them are not categorized as 'novels' (shôsetsu), i.e., 'high culture', they have received but scarce attention from scholars. An important example of such kinds of texts are the Tôkyô hanjôki (Reports on the prosperity of Tokyo), a genre that is rooted in the popular culture of the late Edo period. I here explore two representative examples, the Saishin Tôkyô hanjôki (The Most Up-to-Date Report on the Prosperity of Tokyo; 1903) and the Dai Tôkyô hanjôki (Report on the Prosperity of Greater Tokyo; 1928) in order to find out how the specific experience of Tokyo's modernity is conceptualized there. Published at important stages in Japan's process of modernization, both texts reveal images of Tokyo which open up important angles on mass situation and the experience of modern city life at different points of time. Particular emphasis will be laid on the question of what kind of knowledge about urban life and culture is transmitted and what kinds of urban spaces are mainly represented.

Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), the paradigm of a late-Meiji intellectual, travelled to America and France from 1903 to 1908. He was sent abroad by his father to gain modern, Western knowledge that would help him to make a career after his return. But Kafū used his time abroad for his own purpose as much as he could. He studied French, observed current mainstreams in American and European art and literature, and became a passionate admirer of Western music, especially the opera. Those who went abroad created the mainstream of criticism against the official modernization policy of Japan. This criticism, which grew especially strong after the Russio-Japanese war, was countered by the government with censorship and oppression. This article analyzes Nagai Kafū's cultural criticism as expressed in his extremely polemical and critical Kichōsha no nikki [Diary of one who returned to Japan; 1909]. After his return in the summer of 1908, Kafū published several short stories and essays attacking Japan's modernization for its lack of authenticity and its neglect of Japan's own culture. For Kafū, as for many others, Meiji Japan was nothing but a superficial copy of the West, and the Meiji period a »time of destruction«. In this diary-like essay the narrator draws a convincing picture of Japan's disordered cultural situation in the late Meiji period through dialogues with five people. Two of the characters and the narrator himself represent Kafū's diverse opinions on the process of modernization. From his point of view, Japan's original autochthon culture has to be found in the arts of the Edo period, which in his day where only preserved in the amusement districts. The »diary« already foreshadows the author's later dedicated works on the arts of the Edo period.

1. Introduction / Christoph Brumann, Christian Dimmer and Evelyn Schulz -- 2. Urbanisation, city and city system in Japan between development and shrinking : coping with shrinking cities in times of demographic change / Winfried Fluchter -- 3. The colonial appropriation of public space : architecture and city planning in Japanese-dominated Manchuria / Anke Scherer -- 4. Re-uniting a divided city : high-rises, conflict and urban space in central Kyoto / Christoph Brumann -- 5. Re-imagining public space : the vicissitudes of Japan's privately owned public spaces / Christian Dimmer -- 6. Citizen participation and urban development in Japan and Germany : issues and problems / Carolin Funck, Tsutomu Kawada and Yoshimichi Yui -- 7. Indifferent communities : neighbourhood associations, class and community consciousness in pre-war Tokyo / Katja Schmidtpott -- 8. Who cares about the past in today's Tokyo? / Paul Waley -- 10. Walking the city : spatial and temporal configurations of the urban spectator in writings on Tokyo / Evelyn Schulz -- 11. Shrinking cities and liveability in Japan : emerging relationships and challenges / Andre Sorensen.

Urban Spaces in Japan explores the workings of power, money and the public interest in the planning and design of Japanese space. Through a set of vivid case studies of well-known Japanese cities including Tokyo, Kobe, and Kyoto, this book examines the potential of civil society in contemporary planning debates. Further, it addresses the implications of Japan's biggest social problem – the demographic decline – for Japanese cities, and demonstrates the serious challenges and exciting possibilities that result from the impending end of Japan's urban growth. Presenting a synthetic approach that reflects both the physical aspects and the social significance of urban spaces, this book scrutinizes the precise patterns of urban expansion and shrinkage. In doing so, it also summarizes current theories of public space, urban space, and the body in space which are relevant to both Japan and the wider international debate.

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