Ruined Maps: The Urban Revolution in Japanese Fiction, Documentary, and Photography of the 1960s and 1970s

This dissertation examines a period of profound social and historical change in Japan from the vantage points of fiction, documentary, and photography during the 1960s and 70s. This dissertation provides an interdisciplinary exploration of the lived experience of Japan's Cold War urbanization as depicted in works which offer critical perspectives on the transformative possibilities of cultural practice during moments of radical change. Literary and historical accounts of Japanese cultural production during the years of "rapid economic growth" describe a decline in social and political engagement, and at the same time, the demise of literature as the privileged medium of national culture in the face of diverse new forms of visual and other media. I argue in these chapters that rather than "decline" and "demise," the definitive aspect of cultural production in these decades was a diversification of political and cultural alternatives which disclosed an uncharted topography of resistance and contested the reconstructive vision of nation-state and capital.;Chapter one outlines the magnitude of the social historical transformations wrought by Japan's urbanization and integration into the Cold War geopolitical order to outline the relationship between urban revolution and critical media practice as found in Oe Kenzaburo's 1967 novel, Silent Cry and Ogawa Productions's 1972 documentary, Sanrizuka -- Construction of Iwayama Tower. Chapter two explores the methods of counter-mapping depicted in Tsuchimoto Noriaki's 1964 documentary, On the Road: A Document and Abe Kobo's 1967 novel, Ruined Map, which contested the reconstructive vision of nation-state and capital heralded by the 1964 Tokyo Olympic spectacle. Chapter three examines photographer and critic Nakahira Takuma's engagement with the landscape to outline the intersections between the expanding urban terrain, media, and language that were mobilized in his work from 1970's For a Language to Come to 1973's Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary . Chapter four charts the resistant topography of exposure and exchange between polarized worlds which Nakahira excavated through his critique of Japan's homogenized social space after Okinawa's "reversion" to Japanese sovereignty in 1972.;Together, these chapters reconsider the dynamic forms of exchange between social historical transformation and cultural production which defined Japan's passage from the postwar to the contemporary periods.