The Garden and the City in Eighteenth-century Japan and England
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概要
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This essay comprises a comparative study of notions of the garden and the city in eighteenth-century Japan and England. The eighteenth century has been chosen for a variety of reasons. In England it was a period popularly characterized as an 'Augustan age' of peace and prosperity following the religious and political strife which had erupted so destructively in the seventeenth century, and it was one dominated by the concept of England's 'miraculous metropolis' : London-the capital city of what was then the richest country in Europe. In Japan, also, the eighteenth century was a period of peace and prosperity following centuries of internal strife. In the seventeenth century, Tokugawa Ieyasu ad Toyotomi Hideyoshi, together with Oda Nobunaga, had succeeded in breaking the power of the aristocracy and to establish a centralized feudal structure of government. Tokyo, or 'Edo,' as it was then known, was the new government seat and the political center of the country, as well as the largest city in the world at that time. In both countries, the issue of the country versus the city proved a matter of particular interest because of the dramatic shift in society from an agrarian to an urban base-admittedly, a phenomenon far more pronounced in eighteenth-century England than in eighteenth-century Japan. The growth of London and of Edo coincided, unsurprisingly, with their countries' economies gradual shifting from one which was land-based to one dominated by commerce. In England, the age witnessed the concurrent development of the 'natural' landscape garden, which has been called "England's greatest contribution... To the visual arts of the world." In Japan, with the rise of the middle class, eighteenth-century Japan presaged modern tourism with the growth in popularity of excursions by townspeople to participate in such seasonal delights as making special trips to see cherry trees in bloom or to look at colorful autumn leaves. Too, from the middle of the seventeenth century, leisured Japanese increasingly took to the roads in search of picturesque landscapes. The eighteenth century marked a time in Japan when 'ordinary' people could enjoy pleasures and taste diversions formerly reserved for the aristocracy. In the case of both Japan and England, the eighteenth century was a period when traditional accepted views of the garden and the city were being rapidly displaced by modern perceptions, eventualities and necessities.
- 2004-03-10
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関連論文
- The Garden and the City in Eighteenth-century Japan and England
- Diaries and Letters in Japan and Britain : A Comparative Study