History of Tokyo

Catalog description

This first-year seminar explores Tokyo’s history from its early-modern origins as Edo, the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate, to its 21st century circumstances as the planet’s largest metropolis and a nodal point for convergences of capital, culture, and precarity. We will study the transformation of the built environment alongside accounts of daily life, debates over the value of the city’s past and speculation about Tokyo’s possible futures, among other topics. Participants in the seminar will work with primary sources (in translation) in a range of mediums - text, films, maps, photographs - as well as scholarly analyses from multiple disciplinary perspectives.