1,721,117 research outputs found
A Sense of the City. Modes of Urban Representation in the Works of Nagai Kafū (1879-1959)
No full textIn A Sense of the City, Gala Maria Follaco examines Nagai Kafū’s (1879-1959) literary construction of urban spatialities from late Meiji through the early Shōwa period. She argues that Kafū’s urban critique was based on his awareness of the cultural sedimentation of the cityscape and of the complex relationship that it bore with the historical framework of modern Japan.
With the overall aim to define Kafū’s position within pre-war Japanese literature, Follaco touches upon key issues such as memory, class difference, and language ideologies; draws connections between his sojourn abroad and strategies of “mapping” the city of Tokyo in his literature; and takes into account works previously understudied, including his biography of Washizu Kidō and his photographs
La città in Asia: letture critiche degli spazi urbani antichi e moderni
No full textNella storia, le città si sono trasformate facendo propri modelli di piani cazione e sviluppo nati altrove. Ma le città sono spazi radicati in contesti speci ci e richiedono, per garantire il benessere dei residenti, che si riservi pari attenzione a principi universali e realtà locali.
Da Calcutta a Gerusalemme, da Ahmedabad a Pechino, da Shenzhen a Tel Aviv, da Mumbai a Tokyo, La città in Asia propone casi di studio relativi alla macro-area asiatica che, con una prospettiva transdisciplinare, illustrano aspetti cruciali del rapporto tra uomo e spazio urbano. Astrazioni e rappresentazioni delle città prese in esame chiariscono l’importanza di valori immateriali in grado di generare senso di appartenenza e soddisfazione nelle comunità locali, quindi di migliorare condizioni di vita e qualità di beni e servizi, e sottolineano la capacità di spazi e fenomeni urbani di innescare narrazioni e raccontare il mondo in cui viviamo
Nagai Kafū ga egaita saundosukēpu. Shōwa shoki no sakuhin ni okeru oto no zuzōsei
No full textNagai Kafū’s Soundscapes:
An Iconology of Sound in his early-Shōwa Writings
FOLLACO Gala Maria
It is very well known that urban spatialities play a crucial role in Nagai Kafū’ s oeuvre. As scholarship both inside and outside Japan has demonstrated, the world described by Kafū is first and foremost an urban world. Urban space, in his work, does not only encapsulate manyfold and deep meaning, but helps clarify important themes related to the broader one of “modernity”, such as “self”, “society”, and “identity”.
Further, the significance of sound ̶ especially music ̶ in his literature has been thoroughly discussed, showing to what extent this author valued music and incorporated it in his writing, from the juvenile years he spent abroad through his most representative novel ̶ "A Strange Tale from East of the River" (1937).
This paper draws on the 'Soundscape' theory formulated by R. Murray Schafer and others in order to analyze the form and function of urban sounds in Kafū’s representation of Tokyo in the fast-changing context of early-Shōwa Japan.
In particular, it focuses on the soundscapes described in “The Voice of the Bell”, “The Ditch” and “Notes from Terajima” (1936)with the aim of discuss- ing his literary influences and the relationship of these zuihitsu with "A Strange Tale", and to gauge the impact of modern urban transformations on Kafū’s writing
Introduzione
No full textNella storia, le città si sono trasformate facendo propri modelli di pianificazione e sviluppo nati altrove. Ma le città sono spazi radicati in contesti specifici e richiedono, per garantire il benessere dei residenti, che si riservi pari attenzione a principi universali e realtà locali.
La città in Asia propone casi di studio relativi alla macro-area asiatica che, con una prospettiva transdisciplinare, illustrano aspetti cruciali del rapporto tra uomo e spazio urbano. Astrazioni e rappresentazioni delle città prese in esame chiariscono l’importanza di valori immateriali in grado di generare senso di appartenenza e soddisfazione nelle comunità locali, quindi di migliorare condizioni di vita e qualità di beni e servizi, e sottolineano la capacità di spazi e fenomeni urbani di innescare narrazioni e raccontare il mondo in cui viviamo
Le foglie morte. Il tema della vecchiaia nell’opera di Nagai Kafū a partire da due saggi del 1943-44
No full textMy contribution explores the meanings and literary influences behind the “fallen leaves” motif and the “old man” pose in the writings of Nagai Kafū (1879-1959). Starting from two short essays published in the first half of the 1940s, I will analyze a number of fiction and non-fiction works written from 1908 through 1937 in order to demonstrate that the theme of ageing has much deeper connotations than one could expect, and that the author resorted to it with a view to criticizing Japan’s path modern society
Il romanzo dell’inquietudine. Città, media e affettività nella narrativa giapponese contemporanea
No full text“It’s not the World, it’s You”: (Re)humanizing Patterns in Higuchi Ichiyō’s Fiction Writing
No full textHiguchi Ichiyō’s (1872-1896) portrayal of late nineteenth-century teenagers just about to cross the border between childhood and adulthood, in "Takekurabe" (1895), revealed her artistic talent and sensitivity towards societal change. Although she has often been essentialized as a figure of the past, still relying on traditional values and structures, Ichiyō’s writing revolves around conflicting worldviews typical of the Meiji period, that she scrutinizes, and upon which she elaborates, through a very specific device: characterization. While her familiarity with the classics is undeniable, it should be stressed that, in her literature, conventional motifs are systematically endowed with new meanings, a dynamic process that ultimately invites an empathetic reading of each character’s story; this particular outlook enables the reader to acknowledge them as figures embodying positions that contrast with, and are critical of the traditional structures and relations in which they are imbricated. This happens, for instance, in "Yuki no hi" (1893), a story underrated in mainstream scholarship but whose value lies, as I argue, in its being a transitional work and an early manifestation of Ichiyō’s concern with the paralyzing effects of social relations. My contribution focuses on two pairs of works whose characters provide a material, visible dimension to crucial notions of modernization: "Yuku kumo" (1895) and "Wakaremichi" (1896), a sophisticated meditation on agency, and "Utsusemi" (1893) and "Yamiyo" (1894), where the motif of mental instability helps illuminate the unconscious conflicts and traumas of the modern individual
To the lighthouse: urban solitude and mediated relationships in Akunin, by Yoshida Shūichi
No full textIn his literature, Yoshida Shūichi (Nagasaki, 1968) presents a critique of contemporary
urban life as an alienating experience occurring in delocalized and
dehumanized spaces; his acclaimed novel Akunin (Villain, 2007) depicts secondary
cities and peripheries where mobile phones, websites, dating services, street
networks and mass media mark the edges of a postmodern cartography of urban
Japan whose main features are an inescapable sense of solitude, the complexity
of intersubjectivity and human relationships and the segmentation of selfhood.
Authors of the last decades appear specifically concerned with solitude,
and Yoshida represents a telling example of this tendency, because solitude is,
in his works, first and foremost the incapacity and unwillingness to deal with
otherness: such a pessimistic view conveys a profoundly critical stance vis-à-vis
the current state of global communities and raises key questions about the
meaning of life and emotions in contemporary society
Tōkyō, una metropoli asiatica. Trasformazioni e rappresentazioni del paesaggio urbano nel Novecento
No full textIn Japan the fascination with height has always been mitigated by the need for stability and resilience in areas notoriously vulnerable to seismic events. Tokyo boasts an impressive number of skyscrapers and tall buildings, with a futuristic skyline that has now become iconic, but such a profusion is grounded in a long-established research agenda aimed at ensuring safety and preventing disasters. Urban developers, in the last 150 years, have been tackling these issues while running a modernization project based mainly on Western standards. The ever-changing cityscapes have been fueling the imagination and expectations of their inhabitants, leading to a massive and diverse literary – and, more extensively, cultural – production that offers valuable insights into the effects of urban change on people’s life and mind. My contribution will consider writings, films, and songs that deal with this transformation and reveal tensions and conflicts within Japanese cities from the 1860s to the present
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