Work and Worship: Inari Shrines in Japan’s Commercial and Industrial Landscape, 1673-1864

With the figure of fox as the emblematic emissary, Inari—arguably the most popular Shinto deity in Japan—is often deemed polytheistic due to its diverse blessings, whether agricultural, commercial, or industrial, or all of these at once. In the common historical account, Inari worship began as an agricultural ritual and, affected by the soaring monetary economy from the seventeenth century onward, it attained other predicates. Through two main studies on Inari shrines, this dissertation refutes that limited narrative and demonstrates that the agricultural attribute was in turn accentuated with the monetary economy. One study revolves around the Mimeguri Shrine, enshrined in Tokyo at the turn of the eighteenth century by the magnate Mitsui family for their commerce. The other study deciphers the concatenation of the Coal Mountain Tutelary Shrine and Tōka Shrine, originally established in the late eighteenth century by the local feudal administration, Miike-han, for their coal production in the current Fukuoka prefecture. With these shrines, the respective commercial and coal enterprises were rendered agricultural as though contained within the dominant Tokugawa order, which idealized the rice-based economy. Nurturing in effect the profit of the Mitsui family and the extra revenue of Mike-han—constituting a surplus, as this dissertation argues—the Inari worships of the merchant and the regional administration produced labor times. The presence of those shrines in this study serves as the metonymy of a contradictory process whereby even a deity was “alienated” under the command of money as if were fooled by its own emissary, the fox

Murano Togo

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2010.Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-111).Murano Togo (1891-1984) was a Japanese architect who based his practice in the city of Osaka. Throughout his long career, Murano won numerous awards, most notably the Order of Culture in 1967 presented by the Royal family. Despite his cultural contribution, his work was never considered within the Japanese architectural mainstream, in which technology and structure were embraced as design languages. Mainstream architects, including the modernist Tange Kenzo (1913-2005), worked mostly on public funded projects. Murano's buildings, often being ornate and commercially used, did not accord with this predominant current. Thus, he has been characterized as a "peripheral" figure or "late-expressionist" by various historians. While existing scholarship largely focuses on the stylistic and formal aspect of Murano's architecture, this thesis offers a different perspective to Murano's work. Reinterpretation of Murano's architecture is needed and this research posits "bio-anthropocentricism" as a new approach to examine his work. This thesis argues that this particular intellectual tendency, which derived from Vitalism, informed his architectural praxis that began in the late 1910s. Bio-anthropocentrism is the discourse that conceives a society as a constantly transforming site, and positions the human subject as a central entity, represented through biological descriptions, including "Life (seime)," corporeal matters and human bodies in particular. Deeming Vitalism as an epistemological current evident in various forms of art at the dawn of the twentieth century in Japan, this thesis situates Murano's work - both his writings and buildings - within this current. This research further demonstrates how Murano's bio-anthropocentricism gained a particular anthropomorphic aesthetic. By this, Murano aimed to create architectural surfaces that appear as if they were human skin (body), described by Murano as, "tactility." Consisting of curves and shades (colors), this anthropomorphic aesthetic was conceived by Murano to prolong "Life" of his architecture under the force of capitalism because in his mind the human subject cannot be consumed. It turned architecture into an "unquantifiable" object that thus cannot be commodified. This thesis argues that, amidst the commercially oriented culture of Osaka, Murano's growing concern gave him this particular architectural language. Through this exploration, I draw a different cultural and intellectual implication from Murano's works that ultimately recasts the history of the Japanese Modern Architecture.by Norihiko Tsuneishi.S.M