Residual Futures: The Urban Ecologies of Literary and Visual Media of 1960s and 1970s Japan

Franz Prichard's book "Residual Futures" explores how Japanese filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other artists responded to the rapid urbanization of Japan in the postwar years. It examines critical works of documentary film, fiction, and photography that interrogated Japan's urbanization and integration into the U.S.-dominated geopolitical system. Prichard's interdisciplinary approach provides a new perspective on the infrastructural aesthetics and entangled urban and media conditions of the global Cold War.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 23 April 2019
Publisher: Columbia University Press

In the postwar years, Japan experienced a significant urbanization surge, extending from its historical central cities to the farthest corners of the archipelago. During the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese literary and visual media delved deeply into the complexities of cities and the challenges they faced, exploring the profound implications of this rapid transformation for the nation. In his groundbreaking work, Residual Futures, Franz Prichard offers a pioneering analysis of the artistic expressions that emerged from this intense urbanization. Through meticulous mapping, Prichard explores how Japanese filmmakers, writers, photographers, and other artists grappled with the intricate ecologies of this transformative process.

Residual Futures delves into a selection of critical works that shed light on Japans urbanization and integration into the U.S.-dominated geopolitical system. Prichard examines the profound impact of documentary filmmaker Tsuchimoto Noriakis portrayal of the urban "traffic war" and the extensive remaking of Tokyo for the 1964 Olympics. He also discusses the vivid depictions of infrastructure and urban sociality in the novels of writer Abe Kōbō, as well as the radical notions of landscape that emerge from the critical and photographic work of Nakahira Takuma. Prichard's meticulous readings unveil the shifting dynamics between urban materialities and subjectivities, as well as the diverse ecological, political, and aesthetic vocabularies of urban change.

Presented as a novel cultural history of critical urban discourse in Japan, Residual Futures adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Japanese literary and visual media. It provides a vital new perspective on the infrastructural aesthetics and the entangled urban and media conditions of the global Cold War. By examining the artistic expressions that emerged from this period of rapid transformation, Residual Futures contributes to our understanding of the complex interplay between urbanization, media, and cultural practices in Japan and beyond.

Weight: 392g
Dimension: 155 x 230 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231191319