Please join the Affect and the Emotions Workshop
on Monday, February 24 when
Alex Jania
PhD Candidate
Department of History
University of Chicago
presents the paper:
“Structuring Memory: Competing Visions for Memorials to The Great Kanto Earthquake”
Monday, February 24 | Social Science Research 302 | 4:30-6pm
Respondent: Tahel Goldsmith, History
Description: What is the process by which an appropriate and effective memorial design is chosen and built to commemorate a collective trauma? This paper explores this question by examining the history of the design and construction of the Earthquake Disaster Memorial Hall to honor the victims of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo, Japan. In particular, this paper examines the design proposals submitted by various architects to a design competition for the proposed memorial space. A controversy occurred as a result of the initial choice by the competition judges, in which secular and religious organizations, who were fundraising for the construction of the memorial, argued that the design was too western and did not sufficiently reflect Japanese spiritual culture. In response, Itō Chūta, one of the judges, was selected to design a memorial in his Pan-Asian style, which was deemed more culturally appropriate. The study interrogates the cultural politics of the various architects’ visions and how they sought to evoke official memory and affect through memorial architecture. Ultimately, this paper shows that although the competing architects presented different visions for the memorial their designs were each imagined as sites that would enable the emotional forgetting of the disaster, even while inscribing its collective memory.
The paper, to be read in advance, will be distributed to the Affect and the Emotions Workshop mailing list and is available in the post below with a password. Light refreshments will be served.
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Image: Maeda Kenjirō
