Parkscapes : Green Spaces in Modern Japan / Thomas R. H. Havens.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Havens, Thomas R. H., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National characteristics, Japanese.

Parks--Government policy--Japan.

Parks.

Parks--Japan--History.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (290 p.)

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2010]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Japan today protects one-seventh of its land surface in parks, which are visited by well over a billion people each year. Parkscapes analyzes the origins, development, and distinctive features of these public spaces. Green zones were created by the government beginning in the late nineteenth century for state purposes but eventually evolved into sites of negotiation between bureaucrats and ordinary citizens who use them for demonstrations, riots, and shelters, as well as recreation.Thomas Havens shows how revolutionary officials in the 1870s seized private properties and converted them into public parks for educating and managing citizens in the new emperor-sanctioned state. Rebuilding Tokyo and Yokohama after the earthquake and fires of 1923 spurred the spread of urban parklands both in the capital and other cities. According to Havens, the growth of suburbs, the national mobilization of World War II, and the post-1945 American occupation helped speed the creation of more urban parks, setting the stage for vast increases in public green spaces during Japan's golden age of affluence from the 1960s through the 1980s. Since the 1990s the Japanese public has embraced a heightened ecological consciousness and become deeply involved in the design and management of both city and natural parks-realms once monopolized by government bureaucrats. As in other prosperous countries, public-private partnerships have increasingly become the norm in operating parks for public benefit, yet the heavy hand of officialdom is still felt throughout Japan's open lands.Based on extensive research in government documents, travel records, and accounts by frequent park visitors, Parkscapes is the first book in any language to examine the history of both urban and national parks of Japan. As an account of how Japan's experience of spatial modernity challenges current thinking about protection and use of the nonhuman environment globally, the book will appeal widely to readers of spatial and environmental history as well as those interested in modern Japan and its many inviting green spaces.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Parklands and Japan

1. From Private Lands to Public Spaces: Early City Parks

2. National Parks for Wealth, Health, and Empire

3. Visions of a Green Tokyo

4. Parks and Prosperity, 1950s-1980s

5. Parks and New Eco-Regimes

Afterword: Parks, the Public, and the Environment in Japan

Notes

Sources Cited

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 241-264) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Aug 2019)

ISBN:

9780824871680

0824871685

9780824860592

0824860594

OCLC:

874814022