Tokyo, ville flottante: Scène urbaine, mises en scène - Paperback

by François Laplantine (Author)

Rights sold to: China ( Jilin Publishing Group)

For the anthropologist François Laplantine, discovering Tokyo meant first shaking off all preconceived images and ideas, being open to the element of surprise and emotion, and watching the city unfold in its own way. He pays close attention to how the cityscape evolves, to the body-language of passers-by, how teenagers dress, the ebb and flow of traffic systems, to every kind of signage and aesthetic shapes; and, with an acute sense of every telling detail, he describes a constantly changing place. A place where social life seems equally changeable, where nothing is permanent, or independent of other influences. Nature, which is dangerous and threatening in its wild state, is tamed and celebrated. Hyper-consumerism is founded on a culture of meditation and also tempered by a mood of restraint drawn from Buddhism. And while capitalism promotes the logic of performance, there is still something vague, dreamy and indecisive about individual behavior. Hence the relaxed impression of fluidity, of wavering. But isn't there another side to the coin? Literature and, even more so, cinema paint a different impression of this city and of Japanese society: harsher, darker, more fraught, strung between the dazzling energy of revolt and a haunting fear of annihilation. Confronting both of these in this astonishing account - which manages to be visual, emotional and thought-provoking - means putting observations and ideas to the test.

François Laplantine is Emeritus Professor at Lyon 2 University, where he founded the anthropology department. He has written some thirty books and has been translated into many languages. His works include Transatlantique. Entre Europe et Amériques latines (Payot, 1994), La Description ethnographique (Armand Colin, 2005), De tout petits liens (Les Mille-et-Une, 2003), Le Social et le sensible (Téraèdre, 2005), Leçons de cinéma pour notre époque (Téraèdre, 2007), Sons, images, langage (Beauchesne, 2009), Le Sujet. Essai d'anthropologie politique (Téraèdre, 2007) and Ethnopsychiatrie Psychanalytique (Beauchesne, 2007).