REPRE vol.016 2012

July 8, 2012, 10:00-12:00
Collaboration Room 3, Bldg. 18, Komaba Campus, The University of Tokyo

The Imagination of Disaster 1: Historical Imagination

Ruins and the Imagination of Joseph Michael Gandy
Hallie Rebecca Marshall (University of Oxford)

Earthquake Melodrama and Heavenly Punishment: Cinematic representations of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake
Alex Bates (Dickinson College)

Perspectives in Disaster Landscape
Yoshiko Suzuki (Tokyo University of the Arts)

【Chair】Chika Kinoshita（Shizuoka University of Art and Culture）

As the first session of the “Imagination of Disaster” mini-symposium, this panel was subtitled “Historical Imagination.” (Well, the Program Committee, of which I am part, named it.) We organized three panels in view of what kind of temporality the presenter addressed in approaching disaster. Thus, all the three talks in this panel were historically grounded in terms of methodology, shedding light on specific disasters in the past. And yet, self-reflexivity in discussing the past disasters characterized this session, taking shape as the shared narrative structure of frame story that juxtaposed a historical period with present. *Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb was unable to participate.

Hallie Rebecca Marshall (University of Oxford) focused on visual representations of ruins in the late 18th century and the early 19th century Europe. Centering on the works of Joseph Michael Gandy (1771-1843) and Hubert Robert (1733-1808), her close analysis demonstrated that the ways in which the passage of time or the lack thereof was represented determined what kind of responses ancient and contemporary ruins in artwork, such as Gandy's painting of the Bank of England, evoked. Marshall's discussion was firmly couched in the historical and geographical context of the Grand Tour in which upper-class European travelers encountered ancient ruins. Yet, her references to the images of contemporary ruins (e.g. industrial ruins in Detroit) and disasters (e.g. 3.11) in different media vividly illustrated her argument that when time dilated to superimpose future with present in the representation of a ruin, it produced unsettling or even terrifying effects.

Alex Bates (Dickinson College) examined the “Heavenly Punishment” discourse that emerged in the aftermath of the 1923 quake, relating it to film melodramas about the disaster, often shot on location in the ruins of Tokyo (no extant print). The “Heavenly Punishment” discourse regarded the disaster as moral judgment on frivolous and extravagant life in the modern big city. And yet, voiced by the cultural and economic elite, the discourse was implicitly or explicitly class-biased, as the hardest-hit areas included the working-class neighborhoods as well as the entertainment center Asakusa. Bates offered a nuanced reading of the film industry's response to this discourse. Valorizing simple life over extravagance, the earthquake-themed melodramas, such as Suzuki Kensaku's Earth Trembles (Nikkatsu, 1923), a remake of Cecile B. Demille's Male and Female (1919), took part in the Heavenly Punishment discourse and yet, as popular entertainment, conveyed sympathy with the unprivileged.

Yoshiko Suzuki (Tokyo University of the Arts) discussed the ways in which two major disasters in modern Japanese history -- the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear crisis -- were commemorated, analyzing the Reconstruction Memorial Hall (1931) and architect Miyamoto Katsuhiro's exhibition The Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant Shrine (2012). Suzuki pointed out that the paintings, miniature dioramas and maps in the Reconstruction Memorial Hall emphasized the Prince Regent (then Emperor) Hirohito's gaze and thereby incorporated the victims' memories into a success story of national reconstruction. In contrast, the work of Miyamoto, known for critical engagement with the experience of the Great Hanshin Earthquake (1995) through “Hankai House” (2007), appropriated the Shinto-style roof as a device for “watchful preservation” of the ruined nuclear reactors. By so doing, Suzuki argued, Miyamoto opened up new possibilities for commemorating the disaster without forging a narrative of national identity.

The three presenters found a number of common interests in each other's work. For example, Marshall and Suzuki shared keen attention to the gaze of the spectator as well as interest in the use of classical/neo-classical/traditional idioms in monuments. Bates also pointed out the importance of the audience's positionalities in examining the discourse on disaster. Questions and comments from the floor included a request for clarifications about the state of preservation (or the lack thereof) of the Japanese films around 1923, a theoretical investigation of the contentious relationship between capitalism and disaster, and a comparison to the ruins/monuments in contemporary China.

本パネルは「災害の想像力」という謂わばミニ・シンポジウムの最初のセッションであり、「歴史的想像力」という副題が付いている。（付いているといっても、私もメンバーである企画委員会が命名したわけだが。）発表者が災害にアプローチするにあたってどのような「時間性」を指向しているかを考慮し、三つのパネルを組織したつもりだ。ということで、本パネルの三発表は、歴史的な方法論に則り、過去に生起した災害を照射している。とはいえ、本パネルを特徴づけるのは過去の災害を語る際の自己意識の高さであり、歴史上の時代と現在を並置する「枠構造」に依拠する語りは共通している。*フレデリック・ジメロ＝メスプロム氏は突然の事由により参加できなかった。

ハリー・レベッカ・マーシャル（オックスフォード大学）は18世紀終わりから19世紀にかけてのヨーロッパにおける廃墟の視覚表象を取り上げた。ジョゼフ・マイケル・ガンディ（1771-1843）とユベール・ロベール（1733-1808）の作品に焦点を絞って詳細な分析を行い、時間の経過（あるいは未経過）をどう表象するかによって、芸術作品の中の古代や当時の廃墟——例えば、ガンディが廃墟として描いたイングランド銀行——に対する見る者の反応が違ってくることを明らかにした。マーシャルの議論は、ヨーロッパの上流階級の旅行者が古代の廃墟に邂逅する「グランドツアー」という歴史的・地理的な文脈にしっかりと根ざしている。しかし、様々なメディアにおける現代の廃墟（例えばデトロイトの製造業地帯の廃墟）や災害（例えば3.11）のイメージの例示も豊富で、廃墟の表象において時間が拡張し未来と現在が重なりあうとき、居心地の悪いホラー的な効果が生まれる、というマーシャルの主張をさらに鮮明で充実したものにしていた。

アレックス・ベイツ（ディッキンソン大学）は1923年の関東大震災後に浮上した「天譴」言説を研究し、東京の廃墟の中で撮影されたものもあるという当時の震災ネタのメロドラマ映画に関係づける（プリントは現存しない）。「天譴」言説は災害をチャラチャラして贅沢な大都市生活に対する道徳的審判とみなした。しかし、文化的／経済的なエリートが「天譴」を言いつのる裏には、階級的偏見があったことも見逃せない。震災によって最も被害を受けたのは娯楽の中心だった浅草や労働者階級の住む地域だったからだ。こうした言説に対する映画産業の反応をベイツは繊細に読み解く。セシル・Ｂ・デミルの『男性と女性』（1919）のリメイクである鈴木謙作の『大地は揺ぐ』（日活、1923）など震災もの劇映画は、贅沢に対して質素な生活を賞揚して「天譴」言説の片棒を担ぐと同時に、民衆娯楽として持たざる者の側に立ってもいた。

鈴木賢子（東京芸術大学）は、日本の近代史における二つの大災害——関東大震災と福島の原発事故——をめぐる記憶の政治学を論じるため、復興記念館（1931）と建築家・宮本佳明の作品「福島第一原発神社――荒ぶる神を鎮める――」（1912）を分析した。復興記念館に展示された絵画、模型、地図は摂政宮（設立時は天皇）の眼差しを強調することで、災害犠牲者の記憶を国民的復興のサクセス・ストーリーへと再編していた。一方、阪神・淡路大震災の経験に批判的に取り組んだ「Hankai House」（2007）で知られる宮本の「神社」は、崩壊した原子力発電所を「一種の見守り保存」するための装置として、神道的な屋根を横領し、そうすることで、国民国家のアイデンティティの物語を捏造することなく、災害の記憶を共有するための新しい可能性を開いた。

三人の発表者は幾つもの問題関心を共有しており、発表を通してその認識は深まったようだ。例えば、マーシャルと鈴木はともに「視線」という問題に注目しているばかりでなく、古典古代／新古典主義／伝統的なイディオムのモニュメントへの使用に対する関心でも通じる部分がある。ベイツも、災害についての言説分析をする際の「観客」の位置づけや距離感の重要を三発表に共通する点として指摘した。質疑応答では、1923年頃の日本映画の保存（散逸）状況についての事実確認、資本主義と災害の間の複雑な関係についての理論的な問い、中国における廃墟や記念碑の状況との比較などについて、客席から活発な応答があった。

【Abstracts】

Ruins and the Imagination of Joseph Michael Gandy
Hallie Rebecca Marshall (University of Oxford)

Aside from the Grand Tourists, for most English people in the late 18th and early 19th centuries contact with the remains of classical antiquity was mediated through art in a variety of forms. While it was in a ruined state that travelers encountered the ancient past, and it is upon these ruins that the romantic poets would meditate, for the most part when classical antiquity was reimagined for more general audiences at home it was presented restored to its full glory; ruins reassembled and the world of the ancients brought back to life. Joseph Michael Gandy created scenery for stage productions of classical plays, designs for neo-classical architecture, as well as paintings. But Gandy was not only reimagining the past as it might have been, but also using the ruins of the past as a model for reimagining the present. Gandy completed two paintings for the architect John Soane it which he depicted the recently built Bank of England as a ruin. This paper will discuss Gandy’s Architectural Ruins—a Vision, which was painted as part of a pair—one painting of the newly completed rotunda intact and one of it as a ruin — contrasting the images to Hubert Robert’s similar pair of paintings of the Louvre, and situating the works in the context of the historical realities of the period, especially the threat posed to the physical fabric of European cities by the Napoleonic Wars, but also the imaginative landscape fostered by the ruins of Greco-Roman antiquity.

Earthquake Melodrama and Heavenly Punishment: Cinematic representations of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake
Alex Bates (Dickinson College)

The 1923 Kanto earthquake was a disaster of immense proportion that left 100,000 people dead and destroyed the political, economic and cultural capital of the Japanese empire. Despite the impact on the infrastructure, the earthquake quickly spawned a plethora of works that attempted in some way to bring the disaster into the realm of representation. Within these texts we can see hegemonic struggles to control how the earthquake was inscribed with meaning. This paper addresses the representation of the Kanto Earthquake in the various fictional melodramas that were made in its aftermath. It explores first, the way these melodramas performed what Roland Barthes has called a “spectacle of suffering,” and second, how that spectacle interacted with the contemporary “heavenly punishment” or tenken discourse. The idea of tenken, first proposed by industrialist Shibusawa Ei’ichi, suggested that the quake was punishment for Japan’s decadence and laxity toward Confucian morality. These films drew upon the many accounts of real suffering found in contemporary newspapers and magazines to emphasize a particular class based moral code made legible through the melodramatic mode. In some cases, especially the Nikkatsu films produced in the later months of 1923, the morality resonated with tenken discourses, yet in unexpected ways. They took Shibusawa’s conception of decadence and linked it not to the cultures of Asakusa movie houses and dance revues, but to the excesses of the wealthy. In so doing they adapted the discourse to comment on the inequalities of Taisho Japan.

Perspectives in Disaster Landscape
Yoshiko Suzuki (Tokyo University of the Arts)

I would like to talk about how the perspective shapes our understanding of disaster landscape. In this presentation, I begin with my analysis by introducing a problem of the perspective. The exhibition room in Reconstruction Memorial Hall(in Sumida-ku, Tokyo) and the picture, Kojimachi Gobancho. Visitation by Prince Regent, displayed at the center of this space, form as one an one-point perspective. Our body sensory perception of this perspective is reflexed to the imaginary gaze of the emperor, who at the center in the landscape of debris looks at sufferers from his exalted position. Terrible realities of the Great Kanto Earthquake such as the suffering of victims and its traumatic memories are eliminated under his gaze, and rewritten into a success story of reconstruction, finally into the history of the nation.

Then I will take up a photograph, River (Former temporary housing sites on both sides of the river. Overlooking post-disaster public housing deep in the center), taken by Tomoko Yoneda in 2004 in Kobe. In this picture Yoneda tries to represent the memories of each site, including numerous solitary deaths in the post-disaster public housing. Also in this picture, one-point perspective is emphasized extremely. But its focal point splits, because three similar buildings of the post-disaster public housing, as were copied, appear at the very heart of the image. By shaking its own one-point perspective in this way, River summons the apparition of still remaining aftermath of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquke. A success story of reconstruction is thus dismantled in this picture.