Suburban taste^*

* This article is based on the doctoral research project of Shuntaro Nozawa, partly funded by the Obayashi Foundation (2013–2014). Hankyu’s publications and visual materials are available at the National Diet Library, Tokyo, Ikeda Bunko Library, Ikeda and Amagasaki Municipal Archives, Amagasaki. All quotations from Japanese sources are translated by Nozawa.

Abstract

The cultural production of Japanese suburban housing between 1910 and 1939 was informed by changing perceptions of family and self in relation to domestic space and the everyday. This article focuses on the Hankyu Corporation, an Osaka-based railway company that presented itself as a cultural authority for middle-class families in a wide range of enterprises, including the construction of suburban estates. By revisiting its publicity material, including a monthly magazine and housing catalogs, we demonstrate the complex process through which Hankyu narratively visualized and materialized an image of suburban life in its housing designs. We address the subjective nature of taste in influencing and shaping consumer choices around the spatial production of neighborhoods and the conduct of daily life in the suburbs.

Keywords:

• housing
• suburbs
• modern Japan
• taste
• domesticity
• material cultures

Notes

* This article is based on the doctoral research project of Shuntaro Nozawa, partly funded by the Obayashi Foundation (2013–2014). Hankyu’s publications and visual materials are available at the National Diet Library, Tokyo, Ikeda Bunko Library, Ikeda and Amagasaki Municipal Archives, Amagasaki. All quotations from Japanese sources are translated by Nozawa.

1. “Hankyu” stands for Hanshin Kyūkō Electric Railway (HKER). It has used this name since 1918, but was originally established as Minō Arima Electric Railway (MAER). Between 1943 and 1973, it was temporarily renamed Keihanshin Kyūkō Electric Railway (KKER). This article throughout uses the name ‘Hankyu’ even when referring to its pre-1918 enterprise.

2. Kobayashi is known for his active involvement in advertising through a range of literary works himself (Sand 2003: 152), but Sanyō-suitai does not allow us to identify his commentaries and short novels due to a lack of biographical information. Thus we regard articles and stories written in a didactic tone as manifestations of his vision.

3. From the 1890s onward, the new attitudes to childhood become visiable in the advice manuals and textbooks placing emphasis on individuality and on how it could be natured through upbringing (e.g. Shimoda 1893: 223).

4. In contrast to the townsmen’s quarter that consisted of a number of densely spaced terraced houses, samurais’ premises were detached houses involving extensive open spaces. They were erected in a large block exclusively for the ruling caste; high walls encircling each plot are evident in a sketch by the American zoologist Edward Morse of late-nineteenth-century Tokyo (see Figure 7).

5. The sequence of gate and vestibule was a representation the formalism that ordered rites and rituals of samurai society. Whatever the rank, it served visibly as a privileged item, and was uniformly part of the fixtures of their residences (Nishikawa [1972] 1974: 235; Suzuki 1981: 153, 154).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shuntaro Nozawa

Shuntaro Nozawa is a project researcher at the Department of Architecture, University of Tokyo. As a cultural and architectural historian of Japan, he is interested in taking a more phenomenological approach to modernity and the materiality of space, ranging from interior architecture to cultural landscapes.

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Jo Lintonbon

Jo Lintonbon is a lecturer at Sheffield School of Architecture, University of Sheffield. Her research interests include the value of built heritage, urban histories and histories of everyday spaces.

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