Urban Planetary and Tokyo Modernity

Christophe Thouny is associate professor of visual culture and media studies, modern literature, and critical theory at Ritsumeikan University.

Shifting between Kon Wajiro’s own work and that of central literary figures around him, and between Kon’s 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 Kon’s approach, and also puts it into action. Along the way he carries us through some of the central threads of Kon’s 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 change—including today. This is a deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking work.

• Chapter 1: Encounters with the Planetary: Mori Ogai’s Cartographic WritingChapter 2: The View from the Near-Suburb: Tayama Katai’s MusashinoChapter 3: From Production to Attitude: Cartographic Heterotopia in Kafu’s Fair-Weather ClogsChapter 4: Of Modernology and Parks: Kon Wajiro’s Theory of Urban EcologiesChapter 5: The Urban Voyant in the New Guidebook to Greater Tokyo