Performing the Village Square in Interwar Japan

Toward a Hidden History of Public Space

Bibliographic Data

ID3644553
AuthorsHoyt Long (0000-0002-8562-5426, University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume70
Issue3
Pages754-777
Publication date2011-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1017/s0021911811000891
OpenAlexW2046315981
LanguageEN
References cited22

Histories of public space generally assume a strong correlation between the health of a nation's civil society and the vibrancy of its public sites, in so much as the latter provide an observable venue for free assembly and popular protest. This essay, while not opposing such a view, offers a corrective to the kind of history it encourages, wherein public space appears politically relevant only at its most visible moments. Framing the analysis is Japanese provincial writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) and his "Poran no hiroba" (Poran's Square), which survives as a piece of school theater and an evolving prose narrative about a rural youth who reclaims for his agrarian community a site of shared assembly. By interrogating public space as an object of the literary and theatrical imagination, specifically in the context of interwar rural Japan, the author argues that its less visible aspects have much to tell us about its relation to civil society, both perceived and actual, in the waning years of "Imperial Democracy

Agrarian society · Archaeology · Art · Civil society · Democracy · Framing (construction) · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public space · Public sphere · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Japanese History and Culture · Law

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