Mapping the City in the Digital Humanities: First Stop Kyoto

FALL 2015 RESEARCH INCUBATION AWARDEES 

Sarah Frederick (Japanese Literature) and Alice Tseng (History of Art and Architecture)

This project was a navigable and interactive online guide and database that was useful for undergraduate teaching and for the broader research community on the city of Kyoto that maps references in literature, film, art, fashion, and cinema to specific urban spaces, architecture, and events. The project was kicked off with mapping Nobel prize laureate Kawabata Yasunari’s 1962 novel Old Capital, a fictional work that takes the reader on a tour of the major cultural sites and festivals of Kyoto through the four seasons of one single calendar year; we designed an interactive, multi-media “map” of Kawabata’s postwar Kyoto based on the geographical and temporal structure laid out in his book.