ノダ マナブ   Noda Manabu
  野田 学
   所属   明治大学  文学部
   職種   専任教授
発表年月日 2016/08/06
発表テーマ The Ice-Age Generation and the Post-boom Downtown: Shibuya in Toshiki Okada's Five Days in March (2004)
会議名 Art and Society in Contemporary Japan: The Theatre of Okada Toshiki
主催者 Trier University (Germany)
学会区分 国際学会
発表形式 口頭(招待・特別)
単独共同区分 単独
招待講演 招待講演
開催地名 Trier University
概要 Along with Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, Shibuya is one of the three oldest subcentres of Tokyo. Its downtown is formed around Shibuya Station, a huge railway terminal situated on the south-western part of JR Yamanote Line, which runs on a north-south long orbit with the Imperial Palace approximately at its centre. Having as its hinterland predominantly white-collar suburbs spreading in the south-west direction from central Tokyo, Shibuya Station has been a busy terminal since before WWII and now the fourth busiest in Japan.
Shibuya made a vibrant restart as a black-market under American occupation soon after the devastation of the war, and especially in the 1980s, due to the fierce property development by the rivalling Tokyu and Seibu business groups both formed around railway operations, the downtown became the top-notch commercial centre providing the edgiest model for Japan's consumerist culture in the midst of the economic boom. However, during the so-called "lost ten years" (some have extended it to twenty) which started in the early 1990s in the aftermath of the economic boom, Shibuya has gradually been losing its hold on its status as the trendiest fashion and culture centre, parts of its downtown now rife with kitsch teenagers and heavily acid nightclub frequenters.
After a short historical and geographical glance at the postwar Shibuya as well as recent urban sociologists' views of it, my presentation will examine Toshiki Okada's Sangatsu-no Itsukakan (Five Days in March) premiered in 2004. The plays stages Shibuya in the early 2000s, revealing its underbelly and evoking its postwar history at the same time. I hope to elucidate, if only in an interventionist way, how Shibuya is looked back upon after its most glorious years.