Author: Jordan Sand
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520280377
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Preserved buildings and historic districts, museums and reconstructions have become an important part of the landscape of cities around the world. Beginning in the 1970s, Tokyo participated in this trend. However, repeated destruction and rapid redevelopment left the city with little building stock of recognized historical value. Late twentieth-century Tokyo thus presents an illuminating case of the emergence of a new sense of history in the city’s physical environment, since it required both a shift in perceptions of value and a search for history in the margins and interstices of a rapidly modernizing cityscape. Scholarship to date has tended to view historicism in the postindustrial context as either a genuine response to loss, or as a cynical commodification of the past. The historical process of Tokyo’s historicization suggests other interpretations. Moving from the politics of the public square to the invention of neighborhood community, to oddities found and appropriated in the streets, to the consecration of everyday scenes and artifacts as heritage in museums, Tokyo Vernacular traces the rediscovery of the past—sometimes in unlikely forms—in a city with few traditional landmarks. Tokyo's rediscovered past was mobilized as part of a new politics of the everyday after the failure of mass politics in the 1960s. Rather than conceiving the city as national center and claiming public space as national citizens, the post-1960s generation came to value the local places and things that embodied the vernacular language of the city, and to seek what could be claimed as common property outside the spaces of corporate capitalism and the state.
Tokyo Vernacular
Author: Jordan Sand
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520280377
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Preserved buildings and historic districts, museums and reconstructions have become an important part of the landscape of cities around the world. Beginning in the 1970s, Tokyo participated in this trend. However, repeated destruction and rapid redevelopment left the city with little building stock of recognized historical value. Late twentieth-century Tokyo thus presents an illuminating case of the emergence of a new sense of history in the city’s physical environment, since it required both a shift in perceptions of value and a search for history in the margins and interstices of a rapidly modernizing cityscape. Scholarship to date has tended to view historicism in the postindustrial context as either a genuine response to loss, or as a cynical commodification of the past. The historical process of Tokyo’s historicization suggests other interpretations. Moving from the politics of the public square to the invention of neighborhood community, to oddities found and appropriated in the streets, to the consecration of everyday scenes and artifacts as heritage in museums, Tokyo Vernacular traces the rediscovery of the past—sometimes in unlikely forms—in a city with few traditional landmarks. Tokyo's rediscovered past was mobilized as part of a new politics of the everyday after the failure of mass politics in the 1960s. Rather than conceiving the city as national center and claiming public space as national citizens, the post-1960s generation came to value the local places and things that embodied the vernacular language of the city, and to seek what could be claimed as common property outside the spaces of corporate capitalism and the state.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520280377
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Preserved buildings and historic districts, museums and reconstructions have become an important part of the landscape of cities around the world. Beginning in the 1970s, Tokyo participated in this trend. However, repeated destruction and rapid redevelopment left the city with little building stock of recognized historical value. Late twentieth-century Tokyo thus presents an illuminating case of the emergence of a new sense of history in the city’s physical environment, since it required both a shift in perceptions of value and a search for history in the margins and interstices of a rapidly modernizing cityscape. Scholarship to date has tended to view historicism in the postindustrial context as either a genuine response to loss, or as a cynical commodification of the past. The historical process of Tokyo’s historicization suggests other interpretations. Moving from the politics of the public square to the invention of neighborhood community, to oddities found and appropriated in the streets, to the consecration of everyday scenes and artifacts as heritage in museums, Tokyo Vernacular traces the rediscovery of the past—sometimes in unlikely forms—in a city with few traditional landmarks. Tokyo's rediscovered past was mobilized as part of a new politics of the everyday after the failure of mass politics in the 1960s. Rather than conceiving the city as national center and claiming public space as national citizens, the post-1960s generation came to value the local places and things that embodied the vernacular language of the city, and to seek what could be claimed as common property outside the spaces of corporate capitalism and the state.
Tokyo
Author: Barbara E. Thornbury
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498523684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213
Book Description
Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City is a collection of eight essays that explore Tokyo urban space from the perspective of memory in works of the imagination—novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and films. Written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the book focuses on texts produced in Japan since the 1980s. The closing years of the Shōwa period (1926-1989) were a watershed decade of spatial transformation in Tokyo. It was also a time (in Japan, as elsewhere) when conversations about the nature of memory—historical, cultural, collective, and individual—intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experienced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in studies on Tokyo with a literary-cultural orientation.
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498523684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213
Book Description
Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City is a collection of eight essays that explore Tokyo urban space from the perspective of memory in works of the imagination—novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and films. Written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the book focuses on texts produced in Japan since the 1980s. The closing years of the Shōwa period (1926-1989) were a watershed decade of spatial transformation in Tokyo. It was also a time (in Japan, as elsewhere) when conversations about the nature of memory—historical, cultural, collective, and individual—intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experienced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in studies on Tokyo with a literary-cultural orientation.
Genre and the City
Author: Michael Shapiro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317982398
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
This book’s chapters analyze aspects of urban politics with a combination of critical thinking (influenced by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Henri Lefebvre, and Achille Mbembe, among others) and readings of artistic genres (film, literature, and architecture). The coverage of cities includes, Tokyo, Paris, New York, Nairobi, Boston, Berlin and Hong Kong.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317982398
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 132
Book Description
This book’s chapters analyze aspects of urban politics with a combination of critical thinking (influenced by Walter Benjamin, Jacques Ranciere, Henri Lefebvre, and Achille Mbembe, among others) and readings of artistic genres (film, literature, and architecture). The coverage of cities includes, Tokyo, Paris, New York, Nairobi, Boston, Berlin and Hong Kong.
An Armchair Traveller's History of Tokyo
Author: Jonathan Clements
Publisher: Haus Publishing
ISBN: 1909961590
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
With almost 13 million residents, Tokyo is now as much an icon of modernity as it is a city, with its neon-lit billboards, futuristic technology, and avant-garde fashion scene. But the long and fascinating history of Japan’s modern capital encompasses much, much more, and in An Armchair Traveller’s History of Tokyo, Jonathan Clements sketches the city’s amazing trajectory from its humble beginnings as a group of clearings in a forest on the Kanto plain all the way to its upcoming role as host of the 2020 Olympic Games. Tokyo, meaning “Eastern Capital,” has only enjoyed that name and status for 150 years. Before that, it was a medieval outpost designed to keep watch over rich farmlands. But this seemingly unassuming geographical location ultimately led to its status as a supercity. Though the imperial court ruled Japan from the sleepy city of Kyoto, the landowners of the Kanto plain where Tokyo lies held the true wealth and power in Japan, which they eventually asserted in a series of bloody civil wars. The Tokyo region became the administrative center of Japan’s Shogun overlords and the site of a vibrant urban culture home to theaters, taverns, and brothels. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, it became Japan’s true capital, home to the emperors, the seat of government, and a site of rapid urban growth. Anyone who’s ever longed to look upon Mount Fuji, embody the bravery of the Samurai, or savor the world’s finest sushi will find themselves transported from the comfort of their armchair while reading Clements’s account of Tokyo.
Publisher: Haus Publishing
ISBN: 1909961590
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
With almost 13 million residents, Tokyo is now as much an icon of modernity as it is a city, with its neon-lit billboards, futuristic technology, and avant-garde fashion scene. But the long and fascinating history of Japan’s modern capital encompasses much, much more, and in An Armchair Traveller’s History of Tokyo, Jonathan Clements sketches the city’s amazing trajectory from its humble beginnings as a group of clearings in a forest on the Kanto plain all the way to its upcoming role as host of the 2020 Olympic Games. Tokyo, meaning “Eastern Capital,” has only enjoyed that name and status for 150 years. Before that, it was a medieval outpost designed to keep watch over rich farmlands. But this seemingly unassuming geographical location ultimately led to its status as a supercity. Though the imperial court ruled Japan from the sleepy city of Kyoto, the landowners of the Kanto plain where Tokyo lies held the true wealth and power in Japan, which they eventually asserted in a series of bloody civil wars. The Tokyo region became the administrative center of Japan’s Shogun overlords and the site of a vibrant urban culture home to theaters, taverns, and brothels. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, it became Japan’s true capital, home to the emperors, the seat of government, and a site of rapid urban growth. Anyone who’s ever longed to look upon Mount Fuji, embody the bravery of the Samurai, or savor the world’s finest sushi will find themselves transported from the comfort of their armchair while reading Clements’s account of Tokyo.
Vernacular Industrialism in China
Author: Eugenia Lean
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered with chemistry in his private studio, used local cuttlefish to source magnesium carbonate, and published manufacturing tips in how-to columns. In a rapidly changing society, Chen copied foreign technologies and translated manufacturing processes from abroad to produce adaptations of global commodities that bested foreign brands. Engaging in the worlds of journalism, industry, and commerce, he drew on literati practices associated with late-imperial elites but deployed them in novel ways within a culture of educated tinkering that generated industrial innovation. Through the lens of Chen’s career, Eugenia Lean explores how unlikely individuals devised unconventional, homegrown approaches to industry and science in early twentieth-century China. She contends that Chen’s activities exemplify “vernacular industrialism,” the pursuit of industry and science outside of conventional venues, often involving ad hoc forms of knowledge and material work. Lean shows how vernacular industrialists accessed worldwide circuits of law and science and experimented with local and global processes of manufacturing to navigate, innovate, and compete in global capitalism. In doing so, they presaged the approach that has helped fuel China’s economic ascent in the twenty-first century. Rather than conventional narratives that depict China as belatedly borrowing from Western technology, Vernacular Industrialism in China offers a new understanding of industrialization, going beyond material factors to show the central role of culture and knowledge production in technological and industrial change.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231550332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254
Book Description
In early twentieth-century China, Chen Diexian (1879–1940) was a maverick entrepreneur—at once a prolific man of letters and captain of industry, a magazine editor and cosmetics magnate. He tinkered with chemistry in his private studio, used local cuttlefish to source magnesium carbonate, and published manufacturing tips in how-to columns. In a rapidly changing society, Chen copied foreign technologies and translated manufacturing processes from abroad to produce adaptations of global commodities that bested foreign brands. Engaging in the worlds of journalism, industry, and commerce, he drew on literati practices associated with late-imperial elites but deployed them in novel ways within a culture of educated tinkering that generated industrial innovation. Through the lens of Chen’s career, Eugenia Lean explores how unlikely individuals devised unconventional, homegrown approaches to industry and science in early twentieth-century China. She contends that Chen’s activities exemplify “vernacular industrialism,” the pursuit of industry and science outside of conventional venues, often involving ad hoc forms of knowledge and material work. Lean shows how vernacular industrialists accessed worldwide circuits of law and science and experimented with local and global processes of manufacturing to navigate, innovate, and compete in global capitalism. In doing so, they presaged the approach that has helped fuel China’s economic ascent in the twenty-first century. Rather than conventional narratives that depict China as belatedly borrowing from Western technology, Vernacular Industrialism in China offers a new understanding of industrialization, going beyond material factors to show the central role of culture and knowledge production in technological and industrial change.
Kabuki's Nineteenth Century
Author: Jonathan Zwicker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192890972
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Kabuki's Nineteenth Century examines the theater culture of nineteenth-century Japan from the perspective of the history and materiality of the book, the nature of reception, and the making and making use of images. The aim of this book is to rediscover the kabuki theater of nineteenth-century Japan by shifting our critical focus from performance to print and the public sphere, and thus embedding theater history within the larger world of printed matter by means of which theatricality circulated beyond the stage and through which performance was most often consumed. Fundamental to Kabuki's Nineteenth Century is a reconsideration of the nature of the printed archive itself. The book argues that the archive of printed material related to the theater in nineteenth-century Japan (playbills, actor critiques, theater guides, maps, actor prints, calendars, and broadsheets) is something more than—and more complicated than—a set of materials out of which we might reconstitute the always transient event of performance. Rather, the archive constitutes an object of inquiry unto itself, an object that reveals as much about the interrelations between and among various printed media and genres circulating beyond the confines of the theater as it does about what happened on stage. Even as we use these materials to examine the history of performance, a series of different questions might be asked: what can the production, consumption, and collecting of this enormous body of printed matter tell us about such problems as the role of print in everyday life, the construction of specialized knowledges, and the manner in which a culture archives itself?
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192890972
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Kabuki's Nineteenth Century examines the theater culture of nineteenth-century Japan from the perspective of the history and materiality of the book, the nature of reception, and the making and making use of images. The aim of this book is to rediscover the kabuki theater of nineteenth-century Japan by shifting our critical focus from performance to print and the public sphere, and thus embedding theater history within the larger world of printed matter by means of which theatricality circulated beyond the stage and through which performance was most often consumed. Fundamental to Kabuki's Nineteenth Century is a reconsideration of the nature of the printed archive itself. The book argues that the archive of printed material related to the theater in nineteenth-century Japan (playbills, actor critiques, theater guides, maps, actor prints, calendars, and broadsheets) is something more than—and more complicated than—a set of materials out of which we might reconstitute the always transient event of performance. Rather, the archive constitutes an object of inquiry unto itself, an object that reveals as much about the interrelations between and among various printed media and genres circulating beyond the confines of the theater as it does about what happened on stage. Even as we use these materials to examine the history of performance, a series of different questions might be asked: what can the production, consumption, and collecting of this enormous body of printed matter tell us about such problems as the role of print in everyday life, the construction of specialized knowledges, and the manner in which a culture archives itself?
Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique
Author: Sonia Ryang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135995907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study which challenges the conventional view of Japanese studies in general and the Anglophone anthropological writings on Japan in particular. Sonia Ryang explores the process by which the postwar anthropology of Japan has come to be dominated by certain conceptual and methodological and exposes the extent to which this process has occluded our view of Japan.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135995907
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
Japan and National Anthropology: A Critique is an empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study which challenges the conventional view of Japanese studies in general and the Anglophone anthropological writings on Japan in particular. Sonia Ryang explores the process by which the postwar anthropology of Japan has come to be dominated by certain conceptual and methodological and exposes the extent to which this process has occluded our view of Japan.
Seoul
Author: Ross King
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824873319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Seoul is a colossus both in its physical presence and the demand it places on any intellectual effort to understand it. How did it come to be? How can a city this immense work? Underlying its spectacle and incongruities is a city that might be described as ill at ease with its own past. The bitter rifts of Japanese colonization persist, as does the troubled aftermath of the Korean War and its divisions; the economic “Miracle on the Han” that followed is crosscut by memories of the violent dictatorship that drove it. In Seoul, author Ross King interrogates this contested history and its physical remnants, tacking between the city’s historiography and architecture, with attention to monuments, streets, and other urban spaces. The book’s structuring device is the dichotomy of erasure and memory as necessary preconditions for reinvention. King traces this phenomenon from the old dynasties to the Japanese regime and wartime destruction; he then follows the equally destructive reinvention of Korea under dictatorship to the brilliant city of the present with its extraordinary explosion of creativity and ideas—the post-1991 Hallyu, the Korean Wave. The final chapter returns to questions of forgetting and memory, but now as “conditions of possibility” for what would seem to underlie the present trajectory of this extraordinary city and culture. Seoul can be read, King suggests, in the context of the hybrid ideas that have characterized Korean cultural history. It may be their present eruption that accounts for the city of contradictions that confronts the contemporary observer and that most extraordinary of Korean phenomena: the rise of an alternative, virtual world, eclipsing both city and nation. Has the very idea of Korea been reinvented even as the weakly defined nation-state slips away?
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824873319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
Book Description
Seoul is a colossus both in its physical presence and the demand it places on any intellectual effort to understand it. How did it come to be? How can a city this immense work? Underlying its spectacle and incongruities is a city that might be described as ill at ease with its own past. The bitter rifts of Japanese colonization persist, as does the troubled aftermath of the Korean War and its divisions; the economic “Miracle on the Han” that followed is crosscut by memories of the violent dictatorship that drove it. In Seoul, author Ross King interrogates this contested history and its physical remnants, tacking between the city’s historiography and architecture, with attention to monuments, streets, and other urban spaces. The book’s structuring device is the dichotomy of erasure and memory as necessary preconditions for reinvention. King traces this phenomenon from the old dynasties to the Japanese regime and wartime destruction; he then follows the equally destructive reinvention of Korea under dictatorship to the brilliant city of the present with its extraordinary explosion of creativity and ideas—the post-1991 Hallyu, the Korean Wave. The final chapter returns to questions of forgetting and memory, but now as “conditions of possibility” for what would seem to underlie the present trajectory of this extraordinary city and culture. Seoul can be read, King suggests, in the context of the hybrid ideas that have characterized Korean cultural history. It may be their present eruption that accounts for the city of contradictions that confronts the contemporary observer and that most extraordinary of Korean phenomena: the rise of an alternative, virtual world, eclipsing both city and nation. Has the very idea of Korea been reinvented even as the weakly defined nation-state slips away?
The Production of Heritage
Author: Alan Chandler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429663234
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
In this important book, the authors unpack the theoretical and practical issues around the development of heritage sites, critically dissecting key conservation benchmarks such as the ICOMOS guidelines, BS 7913 and the RIBA Conservation Plan of Work to reveal the mechanics of heritage guidance, its advantages and conceptual limitations. Underpinned by an active understanding of the conservation philosophy of William Morris, the book presents five case studies from the UK and North and South America that speak about different facets of heritage value, such as urban identity, commodification, authenticity, materiality and heritage as an intellectual and ethical framework. Heritage is never neutral; its definition is privileged yet its influence is political. Art, landscape and archaeology all offer examples of how the operational ideas of adjacent disciplines can influence an integrated idea of heritage conservation, and how this is communicated in order to determine significance and share in its custodianship. This book provides insights into how to identify and challenge these limitations, expanding inclusion by describing tactics for changing how people can relate to and build on the past. Clearly written for all levels of readership within the conservation professions and community custodians of heritage buildings and places, the book provides strategies and tactics for understanding the heritage significance of materials, their fabrication, detail and use. The narratives that historic fabric contains can help shape the meaningful involvement of local people, providing a roadmap for those navigating the double-bind of using the past to underpin the future.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429663234
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
In this important book, the authors unpack the theoretical and practical issues around the development of heritage sites, critically dissecting key conservation benchmarks such as the ICOMOS guidelines, BS 7913 and the RIBA Conservation Plan of Work to reveal the mechanics of heritage guidance, its advantages and conceptual limitations. Underpinned by an active understanding of the conservation philosophy of William Morris, the book presents five case studies from the UK and North and South America that speak about different facets of heritage value, such as urban identity, commodification, authenticity, materiality and heritage as an intellectual and ethical framework. Heritage is never neutral; its definition is privileged yet its influence is political. Art, landscape and archaeology all offer examples of how the operational ideas of adjacent disciplines can influence an integrated idea of heritage conservation, and how this is communicated in order to determine significance and share in its custodianship. This book provides insights into how to identify and challenge these limitations, expanding inclusion by describing tactics for changing how people can relate to and build on the past. Clearly written for all levels of readership within the conservation professions and community custodians of heritage buildings and places, the book provides strategies and tactics for understanding the heritage significance of materials, their fabrication, detail and use. The narratives that historic fabric contains can help shape the meaningful involvement of local people, providing a roadmap for those navigating the double-bind of using the past to underpin the future.
Teaching Postwar Japanese Fiction
Author: Alex Bates
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 160329595X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199
Book Description
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 160329595X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 199
Book Description
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation's changing relationship to other Asian countries and to the West. This volume will help instructors introduce students to novels, short stories, and manga that confront postwar Japanese experiences, including the suffering caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the echoes of Japan's colonialism and imperialism, new ways of thinking about Japanese identity and about minorities such as the zainichi Koreans, changes in family structures, and environmental disasters. Essays provide context for understanding the particularity of postwar Japanese literature, its place in world literature, and its connections to the Japanese past.