Tomoko Tamari

Cultural Studies in Japan An Interview with Shunya Yoshimi

This interview focuses on the history and current developments of cultural studies in Japan. Shunya Yoshimi is one of the leading figures in cultural studies in Japan since its introduction in the mid-1990s. He is currently engaged in the task of developing cultural studies in Asia with younger generations of scholars and to this end has helped established a new type of cultural movement, Cultural Typhoon, as well as contributing to expand Asian cultural studies networks, such as Inter Asia Cultural Studies. He argues that cultural studies has been questioning the relationship between meaning and power in everyday life through a variety of concrete and practical fields. In fact, he argues, it is inevitable for cultural studies to ask questions about the politics, if we in cultural studies are to develop actual knowledge of cultural production and consumption today. Hence, it is essential to investigate the micro-politics of bodies in relation to macro-political processes. In the case of Japan, working on cultural studies within an existing discipline also means engaging in experiments, which ultimately could have the potential to undermine existing disciplines from within.

The Phenomenology of Architecture: A short Introduction of Juhani Pallasmaa

This piece focuses on the work of Juhani Pallasmaa who introduces phenomenological aspects of kinesthetic and multisensory perception of the human body into architecture theory. He argues that hand-drawing is a vital spatial and haptic exercise in facilitating architectural design. Through this process, architecture can emerge as the very ‘material’ existence of human embodied ‘immaterial’ emotion, feelings and wisdom. Hence, for Pallasmaa, architecture can be seen as an artistic practice, which entails multisensory and embodied thought in order to establish the sense of being in the world.

The Department Store in Early Twentieth-century Japan: Luxury, Aestheticization and Modern Life

Abstract The aim of this paper is to shed light on the innovative luxury marketing strategies of the early Japanese department store, Mitsukoshi, which created a new type of spectacular and sensual consumer space combined with Western style building and interior design. Mitsukoshi was also a new, attractive urban public space in which Japanese women began to enjoy luxury settings, enact new types of personae and learn to enjoy new aesthetic sensibilities and experiences. This paper also considers the contribution Mitsukoshi made in providing new ideas about Western lifestyles in line with Japanese government-led policies, such as the reform of everyday life movements, as well as the store’s own attempts to educate customers into the minutiae of westernized home and interior design. This promoted a new idea of “being modern” and led to the combination of new forms of aesthetic experience with a greater democratization of luxury, which gradually permeated everyday life. Finally, the paper analyzes the Ryukokai, the Mitsukoshi think tank, which brought together a powerful set of cultural specialists and intermediaries to create a distinctive ‘Mitsukoshi taste’ with its associated brand image.

Reflections on the Development of Cultural Studies in Japan

Although Japan had its own distinctive ‘pre-history’ of cultural studies, which produced some excellent research on popular culture, which can be traced back to the 1920s, the current state of cultural studies has been criticized by conventional mainstream academics; whereas the younger generation has been attracted by cultural studies as a new academic trend. An important new development in cultural studies in Japan is Cultural Typhoon. This new movement seeks to avoid institutionalization and create an alternative academic public sphere alongside broadened cultural practices, social activities and political interventions. Cultural studies in Japan can be seen as a part of a new diversity in cultural studies, which has some potentialities to move beyond the academy and open new dialogical spaces for communication and cultural intervention.

Body Image and Prosthetic Aesthetics

The success of the London 2012 Paralympic Games not only revealed new public possibilities for the disabled, but also thrust the debates on the relationship between elite Paralympians and advanced prosthetic technology into the spotlight. One of the Paralympic stars, Oscar Pistorius, in particular became celebrated as ‘the Paralympian cyborg’. Also prominent has been Aimee Mullins, a former Paralympian, who became a globally successful fashion model by seeking to establish a new bodily aesthetic utilizing non-organic body parts. This article examines how the modern discourse of prostheses has shifted from the made-up and camouflaged body to the empowered and exhibited body to create a new cultural sensitivity in terms of body image – prosthetic aesthetics. Prosthetic aesthetics oscillates between two polarized sensitivities: attractiveness/‘coolness’, which derive from the image of a perfect human-machine synthetic body, and from abjection/the uncanny, which is evoked by the actual materiality of the lived body incorporating a lifeless human-made body part.

Metabolism: Utopian Urbanism and the Japanese Modern Architecture Movement

The Fukushima catastrophe has led to important practical and conceptual shifts in contemporary Japanese architecture which in turn has led to a re-evaluation of the influential 1960s Japanese modern architecture movement, Metabolism. The Metabolists had the ambition to create a new Japanese society through techno-utopian city planning. The new generation of Japanese architects, after the Fukushima event, no longer seek evolutionally social change; rather, the disaster has made them re-consider what architecture is and what architects can do for people who had everything snatched from them by technology (nuclear power station) and nature (earthquake and tsunami). Drawing on the architectural projects of Tange Kenzo and Metabolists in the 1960s and Ito Toyo’s ‘Home-for-All project’ in 2011, the paper explores this major paradigm shift in Japanese architectural theory and practices.