The Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity: Dwelling in Passing [Hardcover]

The Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity: Dwelling in Passinganalyzes 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 Wajiro in relation to early 20th century literary mappings of Tokyo in Japanese literature such as Mori Ogais 1912 novelYouthto Tayama Katais 1916The 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.Christophe Thounyis associate professor of visual culture and media studies, modern literature, and critical theory at Ritsumeikan University.

Shifting between Kon Wajiros own work and that of central literary figures around him, and between Kons time and our own, this book does much to redress the lack of English-language scholarship on Kon and his idiosyncratic but broadly influential writings. Thouny provides an incisive reading of Kons approach, and also puts it into action. Along the way he carries us through some of the central threads of Kons work, from a re-reading of the idea of dwelling as a liberating condition, to an insistence on the ongoing importance of urban form as the only real site within which to find real potential for openness and changeincluding today. This is a deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking work. Thomas Looser, New York University

In this expansive book, Christophe Thouny brings a planetary perspective to urban studies in a highly generative reading of Tokyos urban milieu. Taking urban ethnographer Kon Wajiroló*