Originalni naučni rad
UDC: 911.3:502/504(520)
DOWNLOAD .pdf

Paul Waley
University of Leeds, Leeds

Abstract: Tokyo’s insertion into the ranks of world economic and cultural centres alongside New York, London and Paris was both sudden and dramatic. The mechanics that gave rise to the material transformation of the city are by now well known. Little, however, has been said about the discursive process that saw Tokuo re-scripted as one of the world’s ‘capitals of sool’, an enduring change that resisted the long economic downtum. This transformation has been facilitated through the use of a series of images and metaphors that appear and reappear in textual descriptions. In this article, I re-create the play and counterplay that lies behind these metaphors, and in doing so group them into three overall tropes: Tokuo as city of villages; Tokuo as city of transience; and Tokuo as textual city. I argue that each of these tropes can be read as a ‘positive’ equivalent of a previously (and sometimes contemporaneously) existing negative counterpart and that in each of them lies a reference point to the Other of Western cities. Tokuo, I conclude, stands re-scripted as an exemplar of a new sui generis urbanism.
Key words: Tokuo, urban, image, metaphor, representation, landscape.

CITIRAJTE (Cite this article):
Waley, P. (2007). Re-Scripting the City: Tokyo from Ugly Duckling to Cool Cat. Herald, 11, 24‒44.