On ‘Oh No, There Goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the City in Postwar Japanese Popular Culture’
Tsutui’s essay speaks to the way the destruction of the cityscape has been harnessed in Japanese popular culture- especially in the genre of kaiju eiga- and can be read as a desire for societal reset, safe spectacle, and yet still a faith in the city’s reconstructive abilities. The choice of buildings that are used in montages, paths of destruction or under direct assault in the various Godzilla or King Kong iterations are deliberate choices. These buildings or clusters of iconic sites are often a particular framing of a city, and can represent industries, institutions or demographic presences in an urban landscape, as well as provide visual codes through their textures. Be that architectural nods to histories of colonialism, recent booms of wealth in sleek skyscrapers, or the more monotonous forms of domestic estates, these elements all communicate associations and a definition of the city as place to the viewer. With this definition, there is more significance and room for critique then given to chosen sites of destruction and the ability for these spaces to be reconstructed later.
Name: Elinor Russell
UID: 3036000422
I appreciate your comprehensive analysis, which covers your insight into the monster-themed films and the deeper meaning behind this cultural representation. I would suggest discussing the concept of “destruction & reconstruction” by combining it with Abbas’ essay: “Tokyo or Hong Kong—tend to be a mixture of all three kinds outlined in Isozaki and Asadas typology: they are real, surreal, and hyperreal all (P.77).” Hong Kong and Japan were facing “disappearance” even though they are under the distinguishable circumstance. So, how did films present these two sorts of “disappearances” differently and similarly (like the ghost film in Hong Kong Vs. the monster film in Japan)?