Walking the City: Experience and Memory
Geographers have long taken an interest in utilising
experience and mobility through the city as a form of research. Whether it be
walking around the M25 (Sinclair, 2003), stopping off along the RER in
Paris (Maspero, 1994), or discovering the history of the Thames (Wright, 1999),
walking and route finding is an integral methodology of research.
With this in mind, I set out on a journey using
walking as a methodology. I walked from Waseda to the Mori Art Museum as an
embodied way of researching the city (Butler, 2006). Walking is a
particularly interesting method as it allows for creativity, improvisation and the
ability to make connections (de Certeau, 1984).
 |
| Route Map from Waseda to Mori Art Museum |
 | ||
Ichigaya Fishing Centre
|
 |
| Benkei Bashi Boat Field |
 |
| Hinokicho Park |
 | |
| Hinokicho Park
I set out on a Sunday morning in the general direction
of south-east Tokyo. When one thinks of Tokyo, certain dominant visual
understandings of the city come to mind; the commercial districts with tall
buildings and bright signs, the residential area with temples and smaller
shopping streets. But walking the city, rather than taking the subway, allows
an honest reality to form, with stretches of residential housing, big
expressways and surprises along the way.
I walked through the busy streets of Kagurazaka
through Akasaka. Akasaka is extremely vast with wide avenues and very few cars.
The Ichigaya Fish Centre sits across from these vast expressways along the
Kanda River. It is visible from both the road and the Chuo Main Line, yet I
feel I would never have come across it, if not for this walk. Here, adults sit
on overturned milk crates to angle, children fish in smaller ponds and one can
occasionally spot a date. The Benkei Fishing Club too sits next to major transportation,
surrounded by hotels and office buildings. Originally a moat surrounding Castle
Edo, its purpose extended to host recreational rowing, and now is a
paid-fishery.
These spaces can become a 'locus of collective memory
in a double sense': from above and below (Hebbert, 2005). Memories of
fishing in the city can create place-memory connections from below through
associations of the everyday. Memory can also be expressed from above, through
civic spaces, architecture, order and symbols. Akasaka Palace as an
example, intertwines the history of the Tokugawa Period in its existence. Its
imperial Lineage persists, whilst its contemporary memory is created through
visiting dignitaries using it as a state guesthouse. Spaces both inhabit our
memory historically and contemporarily which reflects the changing dynamics and
uses of space.
Similarly Hinokicho Park was a garden attached to the
residence of the Mori family, a clan during the Edo period. Now it is a
municipal park popular with families and couples. It has a playground, pond and
wisteria tunnel. Located just behind Roppongi Midtown, it offers a break from
the cultural, commercial and business quarters.
As I walked this 2-hour path, I was greeted with a
kind of publicness I hadn’t seen in the winter months in Tokyo; fishing in
central Tokyo and enjoying park life with friends and family. It reminded me
how spatial memories are peopled: that we construct and remember experience
through space and sharing of place, and how that is integral to our understanding
of the city (Cresswell, 2004).
|
Comments
Post a Comment