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In this essay I will discuss how the city is explored in Kōbō Abe’s novel, The Ruined Map (1967) (hereafter Map) and in Yutaka Takanashi’s photo-book Toshi-e [‘Towards the City’] (1974). Takanashi’s photo-book is a collection of photographs which are tied together by similar overarching themes and it consists of two volumes, Toshi-e and Tokyo-jin [‘Tokyoites’]. Both artists focus on the urbanisation of post-war Japan during the mid-twentieth century, depicting it as alienating, deceptive and disorientating. These themes are explored through both the landscape and the people presented in Map and Toshi-e. Through their comparison, my aim is to show how these works convey each of these themes through reverse processes: Map by gradually absorbing the reader into the madness of the detective’s mind as a means to experience the city, while Toshi-e by slowly pushing the viewer away in fear after gradually revealing the city’s dangers.
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