Tokyo's Railway Urbanism: Weaving the Infrastructure of an Alternate Modernity

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The major metropolises of contemporary Japan present a highly distinctive form of urban
modernity, one that appears to be formed according to logics and operations quite
different from that of more familiar Western examples. Although much of this can be traced to patterns set during Japan’s history of urbanization from the 16th through 19th centuries, a key part of this urbanism’s enduring distinctiveness lies in the central role that mass transit has played, particularly rail and subway systems, in the construction of both the form and experience of the modern Japanese city during the 20th century. This paper delves into a particularly significant period in the development of Tokyo's transportation infrastructure – the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s. It seeks to excavate the intersection between the emerging discourses and formal languages of modernism that energized artistic traffic between Japan and Europe in the 1920s, and
the rapid expansion of the city in the aftermath of the 1923 earthquake. The emergence of a self-consciously “modern” urban life was tied to the building of suburbs and the widespread expansion of rail-based commuting between home, work, and shopping, and among the architects and planners who built this infrastructure there were many devotees and advocates of modernist thinking in architecture and urban planning. Although often
overlooked as culturally arid and symbolically mute, such infrastructure presented a field of operation where aesthetic, social, and technological aspects of architectural modernism could combine.

Julian Worrall is an architect, critic, and scholar based in Tokyo. His work as an architect has included periods with Klein Dytham Architecture in Tokyo and the Office for
Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam. Since 2009, he has been Assistant Professor of
Architecture and Urban Studies at The Institute for Advanced Study at Waseda University, where he is developing a research-based critical practice focused on the conditions and possibilities of contemporary urbanism in Asia. His first book, a portrait of contemporary Tokyo through its buildings entitled 21st Century Tokyo: A Guide to
Contemporary Architecture, is being published by Kodansha International and will appear early 2010.

Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Olin, Room 102
Sponsored by: Asian Studies Program
Contact: 845-758-7808
E-mail: long@bard.edu
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