Over recent years cultural geography has refrained the parameters within which landscape and human agency are examined. Textual sources, social conditions, and ideological programmes are all seen as having a bearing on the shape of the environment and the human reaction to it. This thesis considers landscape change on the periphery of Tokyo known before 1868 as Edo) within the general framework of this new cultural geography and the specific context of the history of Japan's largest city. Situated in the northeastern outskirts of the city on the banks of its main river, Miukvjima was before about 1900 a place of recreation and diversion. Its temples, shrines, and ornamental gardens were a favoured site for blossom viewing and, in general terms, for dad, trips from the city centre. Around the turn of the century, however, factories were built, and the area was transformed within a few decades into an industrial periphery specializing in the manufacture of textiles, leather, matches, and other light industrial goods. The thesis contains two principal arguments, The first relates to the process of landscape creation and appreciation It is argued that the Japanese sensibility to space is informed by an innate appreciation of its symbolic content and by an exceptionally close assdciation between place itself and its textual and pictoral representation, The second relates to the process of urban change in the context of a modernising city. it is argued that alternative views of the urban environment arose but that, despite these differing interpretations, open space did not become an arena for contention. By examining the nature and process of urban change as well as perceptions of a chosen environment, the thesis sets out the structural context of rapid social transformation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:389065 |
| Date | January 1969 |
| Creators | Kamhi, David Joseph |
| Publisher | SOAS, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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