EALC154 - Topics in Japanese Art: From Edo To Tokyo

Topics vary from semester to semester. For the Fall 2020 semester, the topic will be: From Edo to Tokyo. How did a fishing village with a ramshackle castle become an early modern megalopolis over the course of a century? How did that city modernize rapidly, rebuild, and rebuild again to become one of the most technologically advanced urban environments in the world? In this course we will study the development of the city of Edo and its transformation into Tokyo through its urban planning, architecture, and visual arts. Starting with the formation of the shogun's city, Edo, we'll look at castles, mausolea, paintings, and other works to track the uses of architecture and art in the service of political power. At the same time, the long-time imperial capital of Kyoto (Miyako) and other regions actively expanded artistic modes, making this one of the most dynamic eras in Japanese art history, and a new urban population supported other forms of architecture and visual arts, including gardens, paintings, ceramics, and prints. In the final weeks of the course, we will consider how Edo became Tokyo, and how the city was rebuilt through modernization and land reclamation as well as after the 1923 earthquake and the Allied firebombing of WWII. And how did the postwar boom once more transform Tokyo, while also retaining traces and spaces of this earlier part of the city? Finally, we'll think about the ways in which the Olympics in 1964 and 2020 put the city