Coal and Concrete, Fire and Water: The Aesthetics of Energy Revolution in Postwar Japan
Abstract: From the 1950s through the 1970s, postwar Japan underwent a transformation known as the energy revolution (enerugî kakumei), during which the country transitioned away from coal and towards hydroelectric, petroleum, and nuclear power sources. Coal, which had fueled the Japanese empire’s heavy industry and colonial expansion, was coded with the past, while hydroelectric dams were understood as modern monuments to the triumphs of engineering science, technological achievement, and American-style democracy.
In this talk, I focus on a range of media that aim to alternately memorialize, lionize, and critique these changes, from mimeographed magazines of miner’s poetry and popular depictions of coal town children to dam site documentaries and hydraulic melodramas. By examining both sides of this dynamic, I consider the substantial ways in which energy technologies were manifest in literature and mass culture, as the remaking of the archipelago’s energy networks as well as ideological and physical infrastructure transformed social lives, labor, and landscapes.
Date: Nov 12, 2024 (Tue)
Time: 16:30
Venue: CPD 4.16, The Jockey Club Tower, HKU
Speaker: Prof. Nate Shockey
Prof. Nate Shockey is Associate Professor of Japanese, and an affiliate of the Center for Experimental Humanities at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
He is the author of The Typographic Imagination: Reading and Writing in Japan's Age of Modern Print Media (Columbia University Press, 2020).
For enquiries, please contact Prof. Michielsen, Edwin at emich@hku.hk.
