Osaka Modern

"e;Images of the city in literature and film help constitute the experience of modern life. Studies of the Japanese city have focused on Tokyo, but a fuller understanding of urban space and life requires analysis of other cities, beginning with Osaka. Japan's "e;merchant capital"e; in the late sixteenth century, Osaka remained an industrial center-the "e;Manchester of the East"e;-into the 1930s, developing a distinct urban culture to rival Tokyo's. It therefore represents a critical site of East Asian modernity. Osaka Modern maps the city as imagined in Japanese popular culture from the 1920s to the 1950s, a city that betrayed the workings of imperialism and asserted an urban identity alternative to-even subversive of-national identity. Osaka Modern brings an appreciation of this imagined city's emphatic locality to: popular novels by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, favorite son Oda Sakunosuke, and best-seller Yamasaki Toyoko; films by Toyoda Shiro and Kawashima Yuzo; and contemporary radio, television, music, and comedy. Its interdisciplinary approach creates intersections between Osaka and various theoretical concerns-everyday life, coloniality, masculinity, translation-to produce not only a fresh appreciation of key works of literature and cinema, but also a new focus for these widely-used critical approaches."e;