The Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity: Dwelling in Passing (New Studies in Modern Japan)

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. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction From Condition to Situation For the Urban Planetary Urban Cartographies: Atmosphere, Envelope, Shelter Modernologio Ornamentalism Urban Dwelling Planetary Coevalness Outline of Chapters Note About Japanese Names Notes Chapter 1: Encounters with the Planetary: Mori Ōgai’s’ Cartographic Writing National Landscapes of Movement Deconstructing the Baedeker Subject Cartographic Fictions From the Station to the Storehouse Notes Chapter 2: The View from the Near-Suburb: Tayama Katai’s Musashino The View from the Near-Suburb The Scene of Musashino Urban Landscapism Travelogue Writing, Planetary Souths, and Urban Studies Notes Chapter 3: From Production to Attitude: Cartographic Heterotopia in Kafū’s Fair-Weather Clogs The Tokyo Stroller Heterotopia as Method Tokyo of Waters The River Sumida: Flooding the Littoral City Notes Chapter 4: Of Modernology and Parks: Kon Wajirō’s Theory of Urban Ecologies Modernologio The Urban Situation The Urban as Environment The Biopolis in the Age of Rationality The Case of the Inokashira Park Notes Chapter 5: The Urban Voyant in the New Guidebook to Greater Tokyo Urban Mappings Tokyo Barracks How to Dwell in Tokyo? Urban Monsterology The Planetary Spectacle of Urban Speed Notes Conclusion Notes Bibliography About the Author