Global Japanese Studies Model Unit is pleased to announce the lecture “The Sound of Sight: Vision and Dissonance in Japanese Futurist Poetry” to be held by Dr. Kevin Michael Smith from the University of California, Berkeley. Event details are listed below.
The Sound of Sight: Vision and Dissonance in Japanese Futurist Poetry
- Date: July 22, 2022
- Time: 15:00 – 17:00 (JST)
- Venue: Waseda University, Toyama Campus, Building 32, Classroom 128
- Lecturer: Dr. Kevin Michael Smith
- Language: English
- Free of charge
- Open to the public through Zoom
- Schedule
15:00 – 15:10 Introduction: Dr. Koji Toba (Professor, Waseda University)
15:10 – 15:40 Dr. Kevin Michael Smith (Korean Program Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley)
15:40 – 17:00 Discussion
Advance registration required.
Please access the following link or scan the QR code.
URL: https://bit.ly/3n7ZUaw 
* Registration Deadline: 12:00 (JST), July 21, 2022
Abstract:
This talk will explore the intersection between sonic and visual dissonance in the 1920s Futurist poetry of Hirato Renkichi (平戸 廉吉), Hagiwara Kyōjirō (萩原恭次郎), Kanbara Tai (神原 泰) and Kitasono Katsue (北園 克衛）. I suggest that the recurring presence of noise (音響) in these visual poems is integral to the poems’ complex formalizations of the dizzying intensity of urban modernity and sensorial overstimulation evident in the Futurist techniques of “words in liberty,” that is, typographic dispersion and onomatopoeia. Attending to the close interlinkages between visual and verbal arts within the Japanese Futurist movement, I propose a mode of reading in which poetry’s acoustic and rhythmic qualities – putatively linked to a ‘traditional’ poetics and consequently overshadowed by the faculty of sight in modernity – become central to the critical mediation between text and context in the late Taishō era. I will thereby situate close readings of these avant-garde poems within what Saitō Ken terms their geopolitical “soundscape” (音風景) to better appreciate the mutually resonant dynamics of urbanization, sense perception, and Futurist innovation in modern Japan.
