Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868–1940 (Spatial Habitus: Making and Meaning in Asia's Architecture)

Can an imperial city survive, let alone thrive, without an emperor? Alice Y. Tseng answers this intriguing question in __Modern Kyoto,__ a comprehensive study of the architectural and urban projects carried out in the old capital following Emperor Meiji’s move to Tokyo in 1868. Tseng contends that Kyoto—from the time of the relocation to the height of the Asia-Pacific War—remained critical to Japan’s emperor-centered national agenda as politicians, planners, historians, and architects mobilized the city’s historical connection to the imperial house to develop new public architecture, infrastructure, and urban spaces. Royal births, weddings, enthronements, and funerals throughout the period served as catalysts for fashioning a monumental modern city fit for hosting commemorative events for an eager domestic and international audience. Using a wide range of visual material (including architectural plans, postcards, commercial maps, and guidebooks), Tseng traces the development of four core areas of Kyoto: the palaces in the center, the Okazaki Park area in the east, the Kyoto Station area in the south, and the Kitayama district in the north. She offers an unprecedented framework that correlates nation building, civic boosterism, and emperor reverence to explore a diverse body of built works. Interlinking microhistories of the Imperial Garden, Heian Shrine, Lake Biwa Canal, the prefectural library, zoological and botanical gardens, main railway station, and municipal art museum, among others, her work asserts Kyoto’s vital position as a multifaceted center of culture and patriotism in the expanding Japanese empire. Richly illustrated with many never-before-published photographs and archival sources, __Modern Kyoto__ challenges readers to look beyond Tokyo for signposts of Japan’s urban modernity and opens up the study of modern emperors to incorporate fully built environments and spatial practices dedicated in their name.

Why and how did Korean religious groups respond to growing rural poverty, social dislocation, and the corrosion of culture caused by forces of modernization under strict Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945)? Questions about religion's relationship and response to capitalism, industrialization, urbanization, and secularization lie at the heart of understanding the intersection between colonialism, religion, and modernity in Korea. Yet, getting answers to these questions has been a challenge because of narrow historical investigations that fail to study religious processes in relation to political, economic, social, and cultural developments. In Building a Heaven on Earth, Albert L. Park studies the progressive drives by religious groups to contest standard conceptions of modernity and forge a heavenly kingdom on the Korean peninsula to relieve people from fierce ruptures in their everyday lives. The results of his study will reconfigure the debates on colonial modernity, the origins of faith-based social activism in Korea, and the role of religion in a modern world.

Building a Heaven on Earth, in particular, presents a compelling story about the determination of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), the Presbyterian Church, and the Ch'xc5x8fndogyo to carry out large-scale rural movements to form a paradise on earth anchored in religion, agriculture, and a pastoral life. It is a transnational story of leaders from these three groups leaning on ideas and systems from countries, such as Denmark, France, Japan, and the United States, to help them reform political, economic, social, and cultural structures in colonial Korea. This book shows that these religious institutions provided discursive and material frameworks that allowed for an alternative form of modernity that featured new forms of agency, social organization, and the nation. In so doing, Building a Heaven on Earth repositions our understandings of modern Korean history.

Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 14 Measurements and Conventions 18 Introduction 20 Chapter One: A New Imperial Garden and Imperial Shrine 42 Chapter Two: Beginnings of a Cultural Park in Okazaki 85 Chapter Three: Enthronements and Exhibitions 130 Chapter Four: Commemorative Projects as Urban Landmarks 180 Epilogue 228 Notes 240 Selected Bibliography 268 Index 280 A New Imperial Garden And Imperial Shrine -- Beginnings Of A Cultural Park In Okazaki -- Enthronements And Exhibitions -- Commemorative Projects As Urban Landmarks. Alice Y. Tseng. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 249-259) And Index.