App Store

Google Play

Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Masuki dunia cerita tanpa batas

Dengarkan dan baca

Stephen Mansfield

From its obscure origins as a fishing village along a marshy estuary, Tokyo grew into one of the world's largest and most culturally vibrant metropolises. For all its modernity and craving for the new, it is a city impregnated with the past. In the backstreets of districts that have inspired the setting for science fiction novels are wooden temples, fox shrines, mouldering steles and statues of Bodhisattvas that evoke a different age. The point where time past, present and future coexist, Tokyo's thirst for the contemporary is moderated by nostalgia for the past. As an urban laboratory where the cultures of the East and West are remixed into perceptibly Japanese forms, Tokyo embraces sudden transitions, constant flux and transformation. The courtesans of its pleasure quarters inspired Edo-period woodblock artists, novelists and poets. In a later age, its experimental artists, feminist writers and Modern Girls of 1920s Ginza both shocked and electrified the capital. Stephen Mansfield explores a city rich in diversity, tracing its evolution from the founding of its massive stone citadel through rise of a merchant class whose wealth transformed Edo into a home for artists, writers and performers. In contemporary Tokyo he explores the unique crossbred cultures of taste that make the giant conurbation one of the most exciting and creative cities in the world. * City of Literature, Theatre and Art: The print masters Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro; the Kabuki theatre; authors Nagai Kafu, Tanizaki Junichiro, Mishima Yukio, Murukami Haruki; foreign writers Angela Carter, William Gibson and Donald Richie. * City of Architecture: From the fortifications of Edo Castle, great temples and shrines, via the western hybrids of the Meiji era to the post-modernist skyscrapers, giant neon screens and digitalized surfaces of today s city. * City of Calamities: The great fires of the Edo period; floods, famines and typhoons; the 1923 Earthquake, coups and rising militarism in the 1930s; the fire bombings of the Second World War; the 1995 subway gas attack by members of a death cult and the fatalism of residents living on one of the earth's largest fault lines.

Andrews UK

Cities of the Imagination

Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History

Tony Griffiths

Situated on Lake Malaren on one of the world's most beautiful harbours, Stockholm has set the benchmark for civilized city-living since the time of the Vikings. Its medieval regal period saw the Vasa dynasty turn a small town in the shadow of Uppsala into the capital city of a dominant power in Europe and a major trading port. In the Napoleonic era Stockholm readjusted its priorities to establish itself as a centre of innovation, technical and social. While the city has suffered more than its fair share of disasters, Stockholm's cultural and commercial elite transformed it into a community which welcomed innovation and spread the fruits of its achievements far beyond its borders. From its celebrated Old Town, dating from the Middle Ages, to its Art Nouveau and modern quarters, Stockholm is a city rich in museums, theatres and landmarks. Tony Griffiths explores the Swedish capital, old and new, revealing a city of unexpected contradictions. CITY OF POWER, INTRIGUE AND MURDER: Gustav Vasa, Queen Christina and Voltaire; murder at a Masked Ball, Olaf Palme s assassination; Lindh, social democracy and armed neutrality; the rights of women and the impact of immigration CITY OF SCIENTISTS AND INVENTORS: Linnaeus and Nobel; Ericsson and new technology; Laval, Wenner-Gren and Kamprad. SENSUAL CITY: Strindberg, Greta Garbo, Ingrid and Ingmar Bergman; sculptors and painters; home of the smorgasbord; the church, lust and the alcohol monopoly.

Stockholm: A Cultural and Literary History