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- Title
URBAN SPACE AND CULTURAL ARCHETYPES: A VIEW ON THE JAPANESE CITY.
- Authors
Broner-Bauer, Kaisa
- Abstract
This paper analyses cultural and aesthetic phenomena and their inherent meanings within the Japanese city. In the introduction, I first briefly define the key concepts used in the analysis: cultural archetype, collective memory, and cultural identity. I will approach the theme from a comparative point of view by examining Japanese urban features and archetypal principles in contrast to the European city. Early Japanese urbanisation centred around imperial palaces, with the first cities founded by successive emperors from the 7th century onwards in the Nara region, near present-day Kyoto. The orthogonal plan for the imperial capital was copied from the contemporaneous Chinese dynasties. Spatial organisation was hierarchical, imperial quarters were located at the northern end of the central south-north axis of the city, and the most prestigious plots were around the Emperor's palace. Kyoto, the historical Heian-Kyô, was founded as the imperial capital in 794. Tokyo, the historical Edo, became a "castle city" in 1457 when a military castle was built, and subsequently the capital when the shôgun moved government from Kyoto to Edo in 1603. The shôgun's castle, the centre of power, intertwined with the hierarchical urban order spiralling around it. Edo gradually became a modern capital, Tokyo, while Kyoto remained the traditional centre of high culture and the seat of the powerless Emperor until 1868. The Japanese city is a cultural metaphor. Psychological uncertainty, due to the country's location in a precarious earthquake and volcanic zone, and an awareness of the perishability of life based on Buddhist philosophy, have all deeply influenced both Japanese culture and the Japanese mind. Emptiness, the Taoist ideal linked to Buddhist thinking, is also reflected in the urban space. For instance, a Japanese city has no designated urban centre whereas in the European city this is a culturally and economically accentuated place. In this paper, I also analyse the Japanese spatial concepts ma and oku, along with their archetypal manifestations in urban tissue and street scape. While ma means experiencing space in time, oku refers to the hidden dimension of the urban experience, or the psychological state of processing a path whereby the urban core remains hidden and only partially discovered. Regardless of Japan's recent historical and economic development, the cultural characteristics of urban spaces have not changed a great deal. Tokyo is still a mosaic city of small village-type communities with an inherent feeling of togetherness. Hidenoby Jinnai has called this phenomenon an "ethnic continuity" whereby the new and the old are mixed in an ethnic order.
- Subjects
KYOTO (Japan); CITIES &; towns; COLLECTIVE memory; BUDDHIST philosophy; EARTHQUAKE zones; CULTURE; SEISMIC event location; PUBLIC spaces
- Publication
Baltic Journal of Art History, 2023, Vol 25, p129
- ISSN
1736-8812
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.12697/BJAH.2023.25.06