Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City

212 Pages·2017·31.19 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Angles

Tokyo

Tokyo
Memory, Imagination, and the City
Edited by
Barbara E. Thornbury
Evelyn Schulz
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Contents
Introduction vii
BarbaraE.ThornburyandEvelynSchulz
1 PullingtheThornsofSuffering:RememberingSugamoinItō
Hiromi’s“TheThorn-Puller” 1
JeffreyAngles
2 PavaneforaDeadPrincess,orExploringGeographiesofthe
City,theMind,andtheSocial:FujitaYoshinaga’sTentenand
MikiSatoshi’sAdriftinTokyo 25
KristinaIwata-Weickgenannt
3 OnMöbiusStrips,Ruins,andMemory:TheIntertwiningof
PlacesandTimesinHinoKeizō’sTokyo 45
MarkPendleton
4 MappingEnvironmentsofMemory,Nostalgia,andEmotionsin
“TokyoSpatial(Auto)biographies” 69
EvelynSchulz
5 HeldHostagetoHistory:OkudaHideo’s“OlympicRansom” 97
BruceSuttmeier
6 TheTokyoCityscape,SitesofMemory,andHouHsiao-Hsien’s
CaféLumière 117
BarbaraE.Thornbury
7 RemakingTayamaKatai’sFutoninNakajimaKyōko’s
FUTON:RemembranceandRenewalofUrbanSpacethrough
theArtofRewriting 137
AngelaYiu
v
vi Contents
8 TheChildofMemory:CityscapesinTsushimaYūko’sShort
Fictionofthe1980s 159
EveZimmerman
Index 179
AbouttheEditorsandContributors 187
Introduction
Barbara E. Thornbury and Evelyn Schulz
The Meiji Restoration in 1868 brought an end to the Tokugawa shoguns’
two-and-a-half-century hegemony and marked the formation of Japan as a
modernnation-statewithTokyoasitscapital.KnownasEdountiltheResto-
ration, the city has consolidated its role as the central locus where multiple
discoursesonJapanese national identity andhistory are generatedandinter-
act. Tokyo as it is experienced today is mapped with numerous mnemonic
sites that represent its multilayered past. They are locations where critical
narratives of nation-building, modernity, and globalization continue to take
shape—and deleted or buried narratives of the city and its people are being
resuscitated.Amazeof spatialmemoryarchives, Tokyoembodiesplaces of
identityaswellasalterity.
Tokyo: Memory,Imagination, andtheCity isacollection of eight essays
written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan,
andtheUnitedStates.BylookingatTokyourbanspacefromtheperspective
ofmemoryinworksoftheimagination—novels,shortstories,poetry,essays,
and films—we hope to open up new ways of thinking about the city. The
book’sfocusisontextsproducedinJapansincethe1980s.Theclosingyears
of the Shōwa period (1926–1989) were a watershed decade of spatial trans-
formationinTokyo.Itwasalsoatime(inJapan,aselsewhere)whenconver-
sationsaboutthenatureofmemory—historical,cultural,collective,andindi-
vidual—intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that
works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experi-
enced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in
(and, we think, helps fill the need for) studies on Tokyo with a literary-
culturalorientation.
vii
viii BarbaraE.ThornburyandEvelynSchulz
MEMORYANDTHECITY
In his introduction to Urban Memory: History and Amnesia in the Modern
City, Mark Crinson captures what we, too, mean by “urban memory” as it
relates to Tokyo: “Urban memory can be an anthropomorphism (the city
having a memory) but more commonly it indicates the city as a physical
landscapeandcollectionofobjectsandpracticesthatenablerecollectionsof
the past and that embody the past through traces of the city’s sequential
building and rebuilding” (2005, xii). Twice massively destroyed (by earth-
quake and war) and rebuilt during the twentieth century—and, for decades
now,willinglytearingdownandrebuildinginthenameofprogress—Tokyo
todayisaplacewhereobjectsofrecollectionareperhapsfewerandharderto
recognize than those of other major cities. “Whatever vestiges of Edo had
survivedtheRestoration,”JamesWhitepointsout,“vanished”afterthe1923
Great Kantō Earthquake (2011, 16). Some decades later, Tokyo, like other
Japanese cities, Carola Hein notes, rose “from the utter destruction of the
Second World War with astounding speed” leaving behind “few direct re-
mindersofthewar”(2003,1)—and,itcanbeadded,fewdirectremindersof
the city as it existed prior to that time. Tokyo, as scholars repeatedly point
out, “is notably bereft of physical monuments. Collective memories, yes;
monuments, no” (White 2011, 21). Tokyo is even notably bereft of the not-
so-monumental structures (such as historic buildings) that symbolize and
makevisiblethecity’spast.WhatTokyodoeshaveinabundanceisworksof
the imagination that are both the product of and the embodiment of memo-
ry—andcanbecountedamongthe“practicesthatenablerecollectionsofthe
past” that are a key part of Crinson’s definition of urban memory. In spatial
terms,suchtextsprobedeeplyintoeverycornerofTokyotofindandreveal
the city’s sites of memory, to borrow historian Pierre Nora’s suggestive
phraselieuxdemémoire(1996–1998[1984–1992])—and,bydoingso,them-
selvesbecomemetaphoricalsitesofmemory.
Initssubjectmatterandtheoreticalapproach, “MemoryandCity:PortB
andtheTokyoOlympics,”achapterinPeterEckersall’sbookPerformativity
and Event in 1960s Japan: City, Body, Memory, provided a model for our
project. In it, Eckersall reveals ways in which the theatre director and actor
TakayamaAkira(b.1969)andhisTokyo-basedtroupePortB“exploreshow
thelayersofhistoryremaininthepresentasakindofsubstratumthatcanbe
made visible and be critically evaluated through the medium of contempo-
rary arts” (2013, 134). Looking specifically at Takayama’s 2007 perfor-
mance piece Tōkyō/Orinpikku (trans. Tokyo/Olympics), Eckersall writes that
it “reactivates a sense of historical awareness among audiences and cuts a
swathe through the socio-political terrain of the city of Tokyo” (Ibid., 139).
Tokyo/Olympics was structured as an actual tour of 1964 Tokyo Olympics-
relatedsites,“takingaudiences[bybus]toplaceswherememoriesofthepast
Introduction ix
and the archelogy of the present might be found in a kind of dialogue about
thecitythenandnow”(Ibid.,146).
The texts on which our chapters focus have an analogous effect, taking
people—through words printed in books and images recorded on film—to
different partsof thecity wheredialoguesbetweenthepastandpresenttake
place.InTokyo,whichisnowpreparingtohostthe2020Olympics,the1964
Olympic games “have long been a subject of complicated acts of memory”
(Ibid.,150)—whichisalsothetopicofachapterinthisvolumethatlooksat
OkudaHideo’s2008novelOrinpikkunominoshirokin(“OlympicRansom”).
Again,toquoteEckersall:
Tokyo/Olympics figures our sense of temporality to give a sense of the past
sitting alongside and in immediate contrast with the globalizing present-day
world. By placing bodies into local spaces and emphasizing the contrast be-
tweentheglobalpostmoderncityandthebrokenfragmentsofacitylivingin
thepast,Tokyo/Olympicsworksagainsttheinevitabilityofaglobalizingflat-
teningoutofhistoryandculture...[and]canbereadasacorporealrecupera-
tionofthedisconnectedthreadsofhistory....InTokyo/Olympics,placeand
time become more blended and, perhaps contradictorily, more interrupted.
Somethingotherthanwhatonenormallyexpectsisproducedfromthiscrack-
ingopen of history.Small moments ...glossedoverbytheintensityof the
pastarerevivedinthepresent.Thepointisnottomeasureeverythingbutto
makeitvisibletotheimagination....Tokyo/Olympicscanbeunderstoodasa
workparticularizingdailyexperiencesofspaceandhistory.(Ibid.,158)
Asthefollowingchaptersshow,Tokyoisrepletewithallsortsofmemo-
ries. The memories are individual, calling forth and shaping stories about
livesspentinthecity.And,theyarecollective,drawingtheirlifebloodfrom
historical events that took place in or affected the culture of the city—per-
haps not directly experienced by the writers and directors whose work is
discussed, but nevertheless remembered by them in different ways. Within
thechapterstherearereferences,forexample,toTokyo’sEdopast,the1923
earthquake, the wartime air raids, Japan’s colonization of Taiwan, the post-
war Occupation, the 1964 Olympics, and the bubble- and post-bubble eras.
All of us as contributors to this project proceed from the assumption that
“[m]emory is not a simple record of events but a dynamic process that
alwaystransformswhatitdredgesupfromitsdepths”(Obrist2014,57).
TOKYOSINCETHEEIGHTIES
Thechaptersinthisbooklookatworkthatemergedagainstthebackdropof
“world city Tokyo”—whichisto say,Tokyoof the1980sandtheyearsthat
have since followed. The bursting of the asset bubble in the early nineties
temporarily slowed, but did not stop, the spatial remaking of Tokyo—in