Postwar Tokyo: Reality and Imagination through the Camera
Postwar Tokyo: Reality and Imagination through the Camera
Friday, March 30 at 3:30 pm
Michelson Theater
721 Broadway, 6th Floor
Tokyo developed out of the ruins of war into a sprawling city of 10 million people in only a quarter of a century. It was a process of change – from the capital of a military empire that once invaded East Asia to the subject of occupation by U.S. armed forces and further to an Olympic host and consumer city where young people enjoy economic “wealth.” It is important to know that this process of change was recorded in countless photographs, documentary films, TV programs and so on. In other words: visualized through the gaze of the camera, whether from/to the U.S. or from/to the Emperor. In this lecture, Shunya Yoshimi (University of Tokyo) will show a history of dynamic exchanges between the development of Tokyo and the diverse practices of visualizing its urban environment throughout the postwar era.
Shunya Yoshimi is Professor of Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies at University of Tokyo.
Moderated by Yongwoo Lee (NYU, East Asian Studies). Co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies and the Asian Film and Media Initiative.
Free and open to the public.
Shunya Yoshimi
Edwin O. Reishauer Visiting Professor, Harvard University
Professor, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, The University of Tokyo
Born in Tokyo in 1957, Shunya Yoshimi is a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (III). He has also served in multiple positions at The University of Tokyo, including Dean of Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies; Vice President of the University of Tokyo; Chairman of the University of Tokyo Newspaper; Chairman of University of Tokyo Press, etc. He studies contemporary Japanese cultural history, everyday life, and cultural politics from the perspective of dramaturgy. His major works include Dramaturgy of the Urban (Kawade Bunko), The Politics of Exposition (Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko), Cultural Sociology in the Media Age (Shinyosha), Voice of Capitalism (Kawade Bunko), Cultural Studies (Iwanami Shoten), Invitation to Media Cultural Studies (Yuhikaku), Expo and Postwar Japan (Kodansha Gakujutsu Bunko), Pro-America, Anti-America (Iwanami Shinsho), Post-postwar Society (Iwanami Shinsho), What is University? (Iwanami Shinsho), Atoms for Dream (Chikuma Shinsho), Out of America (Kobundo), Abolition of Humanities? (Shueisha), Geopolitics of Visual City (Iwanami Shoten), Scales of History (Shueisha) etc.