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The vampire laughs ... and more than Suehiro Maruo





insert here a post that sent me Emilio García Montiel last night and prepared especially to complement the presentation of Suehiro Maruo that appeared this week in this blog.
grateful for this collaboration to Emilio, who also specializes in the history of Japanese architecture and urbanism, especially in the city of Tokyo.

( NOTE : Although the most commonly found on the web, and in many publications, the name of Maruo Suehiro is 丸 尾 末 広, ie using the simplified variant of the ideogram "hiro" 広 is very common also written with the non-simplified, 广, or 丸 尾 末 广). ----------------------------------



vampire's smile: a note on the presentation of history.

By Emilio Garcia Montiel

NOTE: Read the dialogues of the pictures from right to left.

In your previous post on Suehiro Maruo 丸 尾 末 広, you mean the era that reveled in his works, especially the Taisho 大 正. The context that opens vampire's smile 笑う 吸血鬼 (1) , the Great Disaster of Kanto 关 东 大 震灾, is perhaps the climax of that era: the earthquake that devastated cities of Tokyo 东京 and Yokohama 横 浜, on the morning of September 1, 1923, and would lead to a new image of modern Japan through the subsequent reconstruction of Tokyo. A process embedded in the short-lived liberal social policy and known as "Taisho democracy" 大正 デモクラシイ (2) and Edward Seidensticker dubbed "the happy days reconstruction " (3) . Maruo, however, not only contextualizes the story in the destruction caused by the earthquake, moment for the theft of bodies from the demon character, but also within the environment of xenophobia and nationalism. Hidden behind the confusion of the disaster, the government began almost immediately, a ruthless crackdown on the one hand, against the Korean population in Tokyo, which arbitrarily accused of having poisoned the water in the city, on the other, against main opposition Socialists.

The scenario is 浅 草 Asakusa district, which Harunosuke Ishizumi 石 角 春 之 助 defined as the "gut Tokyo 东京 肠, a concept mentioned by Yoshimi Shun'ya 吉 见 俊 哉 Dramaturgy in the city. Tokyo: The Social History of the sakariba , to refer, among other topics, the density of all kinds of cultural interactions that were "processed" there since the early modern period in 1868 (4) . In fact, Asakusa had not only reinforced his status as the main sakariba 盛り場 (5) of the city, provided that during the Edo period had shared with the nearby neighborhood of 両 国 Ryogoku, Sumida River east 墨 田 川. By the time of the earthquake, Asakusa was a district of workers, immigrants and "discrimination" (6) , and behind them stood the famous Yoshiwara area 吉 原 prostitution. During the second half of the nineteenth century, especially in Asakusa Park, which is exactly the space that appears in the comic-and sixth district in the neighborhood famous (7) had been concentrated, successfully, theaters popular modern, fair, circus, storytellers, prostitution, geisha , and all kinds of exhibition spaces and artifacts, play and leisure, traditional and modern Japanese and Westerners, with their "mysteries", "phenomena" and "Wonderland" . That is, much of all that the modern Japanese government, hypocritically trying to give uncompromising image of Japan as "civilized," defined as "immoral" and "barbaric customs of the past." A world "other" or a kind of underworld, especially for the purposes of modernizing the country, where it is not difficult to locate, even in its potential social connotations-the demonic character of the story.

For the conditions of overcrowding, Asakusa was one of the areas hardest hit by the earthquake, which was used by the government during the reconstruction to turn it off permanently as the first sakariba Tokyo by favoring the recovery of other areas closer to the middle class and salary man and its production as a purely modern sakariba . This does not mean that Asakusa change his mind, but all those functions were channeled into areas of greater control and minimized with respect to the attractiveness of an era of globalization on culture, consumption and entertainment spaces was played as 银座 Ginza district of Tokyo-first reconstructed according to Western standards in 1877 - , which eventually would become the first sakariba Tokyo.

A discerning reader will wonder how it follows the story-as it does not say so, "the reference to the Great Disaster and the Kanto district of Asakusa. The key, among other details, is in the building which is broken: the Jūnikai 十二 阶 or "Asakusa Twelve floors." Built by William K. English Barton and opened in 1890, not only was the tallest structure in Tokyo, but his first "skyscraper" and the building as well, where ordinary citizens could see for the first time, the city as the crow flies. It was an exhibition space and sale of goods from across Asia, where it worked the first elevator in Japan and became the architectural symbol of the city until the day of the earthquake. Without counting the notes of the dress, the clock-time the earthquake occurred near the noon-o's own illustrations of the dimensions of the disaster, Jūnikai match up to the eighth floor is in the history of visuality Tokyo, one of the recurring images to evoke the 1923 earthquake.

NOTES 1. Suehiro Maruo vampire's smile , Glenat, Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2002. Original edition: 丸 尾 末 広. 『 笑う 吸血鬼 』. 东京, 秋田 书店, 2000.
2. The Taisho period covers from 1912 to 1926. Personally, I will extend this period of relative liberality to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, in 1931 in the first decade of the Showa period 昭和 (1926-1989).
3. Seidensticker, Edward. Tokyo Rising. The City Since the Great Earthquake . Charles E. Tuttle Company, Tokyo, 1991, Chapter 2 ("Happy Days Reconstruction), pp. 21-87. [The issue that appears in the link is not exactly the same reference].
4. Yoshimi, Shun'ya 吉 见 俊 哉. Toshi doramaturugī not. Tokyo: sakariba no shakai-shi 都市 の ドラマトゥる ぎ ー. 东京 盛 り 場 の 社会 史 (Drama of the city. Tokyo: social history of the sakariba). Tokyo Kōbundō, 1987, p.209.
5. The term sakariba can be defined as areas of greatest concentration of cultural interaction within the city, which goes to enjoy restaurants, cinemas, bars, department stores, sexual services, and any number of bids. This tempered by an environment, excellence, ludicrous.
6. Fundamentally, eta 秽 多 and hinin 非人. Although generally located under the concept of burakumin 部落 民, or discriminated minorities, the first was a segregated social sector jobs carry "dirty" as the slaughter of animals or handling dead bodies, the second covering the guards or janitors, but also those related to the business of entertainment, in the case of Asakusa, had been instrumental in the production and development of the field.
7. The so-called Asakusa Park was an area without building that, like other areas in Tokyo was named as such (in this case in 1882) to appear in Tokyo, like other Western capitals had parks, but at that time was not a park, let alone a park on the western style. To urban reform was carried out in 1888, Asakusa was internally zoned for the purpose of controlling both economically the area, as "clean up" after giving it an image in keeping with what was intended for what should be the capital of a modern state. The sixth of that zoning district was reserved for the business of entertainment.