Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City - Paperback

by Jeffrey Angles (Contribution by), Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt (Contribution by), Mark Pendleton (Contribution by)

Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City is a collection of eight essays that explore Tokyo urban space from the perspective of memory in works of the imagination--novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and films. Written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the book focuses on texts produced in Japan since the 1980s. The closing years of the Showa period (1926-1989) were a watershed decade of spatial transformation in Tokyo. It was also a time (in Japan, as elsewhere) when conversations about the nature of memory--historical, cultural, collective, and individual--intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experienced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in studies on Tokyo with a literary-cultural orientation.

Author Biography

Barbara E. Thornbury is professor of Japanese studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Studies at Temple University.