Abstract
The 80's were a period of change for Japan, and the change was rampant even in the field of literature. Economic growth and a development of consumer society can also be seen in changing landscapes of Japanese cities, some of which are changing into giant concrete organisms.
These changes of course made its way into literary discourse. City has become a space of anonymity, space of a sign, space of never-ending growth and destruction, where old is replaced by new and even newer is built upon the new.
All these characteristics are embodied by Japanese capital Tōkyō, with its history of being wiped from the face of the Earth and emerging again completely changed, ending in a behemoth city that keeps growing to this day. There is a long history of writing about Tōkyō and about big cities, going back to the works of Nagai Kafū (1879-1959), and reaching the postwar fantasies of Abe Kōbō (1924-1993).
In this paper I want to focus on the vision of Tōkyō during the 80's, as the title suggests, mainly on the works of Hino Keizō (1929-2002), who was famous for his urban stories. Among them I will mainly focus on his famous novel Yume no shima (1985).
The main goal of this paper is analyzing, how the city is depicted, what are the effects of this depiction, and what are a possibilities of urban space in a work of literature. I will also work within a broader context of works of authors such as Tanaka Yasuo (1956- ), Shimada Masahiko (1961- ), Murakami Ryū (1952- ) or Murakami Haruki (1949- )