| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Understandings of urban space in Tokyo underwent two significant revisions in the 1990s, focused on the spaces of the subway and the street. These revisions occurred around the 1995 subway sarin gas incident and in the revival of street protest in new social movements. The article brings together the two spaces by discussing how one group of sarin incident victims staged a commemorative event in 2005 - the Memorial Walking Care - to re-engage with underground sites of traumatic memory by walking a Underground route above them along the streets. It draws on the recognition in Murakami Haruki's Underground of a violence in Japanese society figuratively and literally lurking beneath the feet; and on sociologist Mori Yoshitaka's theorisation of the street as a potential site for new oppositional politics. Situating the event within the frames of trauma theory and performance studies, I read the Memorial Walking Care as both traumatic repetition of loss and potential working through of trauma. The underground and the street act as spatial and conceptual markers for the difference between these processes.
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