This study explores some of the urban visions inherent in Japanese
colonial modernity in Manchuria and how they represented important
aspects of the self-consciously modernizing Japanese state. Perceiving the
northeastern Chinese city of Changchun as a tabula rasa upon which to erect
new and sweeping conceptions of the built environment, Japanese used the
city as a practical laboratory to create two distinct and idealized urban milieus,
each appropriate to a particular era. From 1905 to 1932 Changchun served as a
key railway town through which the Japanese orchestrated informal empire;
between 1932 and 1945 the city became home to a grandiose, new Asian
capital. Yet while the facades the town and later the capital—as well as the
attitudes of the state they upheld—contrasted markedly, the shifting styles of
planning and architecture consistently attempted to represent Japanese rule
as progressive, beneficent, and modern. More than an attempt to legitimize
empire through paternalistic care, however, Japanese perceptions of these
built environments demonstrate deeper significance. Although Japanese
intended Changchun's two built environments to appeal to subject
populations, more fundamentally they were designed to appeal to Japanese
sensibilities in order to effect change in Japan itself.
Imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved
policies of dominance and exploitation that included a range of endeavors
central to the creation of contemporary societies. It is in part because Japanese
believed they were acting progressively in places like Changchun that many
Japanese in the postwar era have had difficulty acknowledging the entirety of
Japanese activities on the mainland in the first half of the twentieth century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10902 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Sewell, William Shaw |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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