The Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity

Christophe Thouny

doi:10.5771/9781666929317

Summary

The Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity: Dwelling in Passing analyzes everyday experiences in Tokyo during the 1910s and 1920s, showing how urban literature and urban ethnography both tried to come to terms with an emerging planetary situation defined by both ongoing movement and an intensification of local experiences. This book argues that modern urban experiences are not primarily a question of alienation, consumerism, or national life but first one of dwelling, and in particular “a dwelling in passing”. Looking at the work of the Japanese urban ethnographer Kon Wajirō in relation to early 20th century literary mappings of Tokyo in Japanese literature such as Mori Ōgai’s 1912 novel Youth to Tayama Katai’s 1916 The Tokyo Near-Suburb, Christophe Thouny argues for the need to reconsider these texts in terms of a speculative genealogy of local answers to an insistent planetary situation.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2023
ISBN-Print: 978-1-6669-2930-0
ISBN-Online: 978-1-6669-2931-7
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 272
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figures No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 34
Chapter 1: Encounters with the Planetary: Mori Ōgai’s’ Cartographic Writing No access Pages 35 - 66
Chapter 2: The View from the Near-Suburb: Tayama Katai’s Musashino No access Pages 67 - 108
Chapter 3: From Production to Attitude: Cartographic Heterotopia in Kafū’s Fair-Weather Clogs No access Pages 109 - 152
Chapter 4: Of Modernology and Parks: Kon Wajirō’s Theory of Urban Ecologies No access Pages 153 - 192
Chapter 5: The Urban Voyant in the New Guidebook to Greater Tokyo No access Pages 193 - 236
Conclusion No access Pages 237 - 244
Bibliography No access Pages 245 - 270
About the Author No access Pages 271 - 272