Japón desde una cápsula (Japan from a Capsule)
by Julián Varsavsky
Description
This travelogue through contemporary Japan shines a spotlight on robotics, virtuality and sexuality. Varsavsky stays in a hotel waited on by robots and spends forty days travelling around the country for the second time, sleeping in capsule hotels. He attends the robot soccer world cup, visits a robotics university and a smart-house, and immerses himself in the underworld of singles leisure and in the techno-eroticization of life through dolls and holograms. He then takes a look at the pop culture of cosplay, manga and anime, and feels as if he has landed on the moon. At one point, our wayfarer pauses to think about all the nights shut up in capsule hotels and decides he needs to connect with what lies beneath the surface. He galvanises his gaze by reading the work of philosopher Byung-Chul Han and suffers culture shock on realising that behind the visible surface of Japanese hypermodernity lies an age-old sacrality. Shaped over a thousand five hundred years, it has a very powerful outlook quite distinct from Western techno-capitalism’s. To explore Japanese cities is to traverse an archaic and futuristic dystopia, a high-tech surface beneath which the animist roots of Shintoism, the impermanence of Zen and the ethics of the Samurai survive. Japan is not as modern as it looks. Behind a human hologram or a J-pop Lolita lurks a deity. Beneath the capsule hotel is a medieval house. The companion robot is inhabited an ancestral spirit. The salaryman has a samurai’s soul and the CEO a shogun’s. Victorian servants in maid cafés have echoes of geishas. The ghost of Confucius hovers over the obedient work ethic. In the minimalism of avant-garde architecture hangs the emptiness of Zen. Varsavsky’s gaze senses a rather sad society trapped in a work-weary digital panopticon of illusory freedoms.
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Author Biography
Julián Varsavsky was born in 1971, in Buenos Aires, and has a Bachelor's degree in Comunicational Science (UBA). He has published half a thousand chronicles in several medias: Página 12, National Geographic, Amphibian, Altair, Brando, Reforma, Soho and LonelyPlanet.
He is co-author of the book Corea. Two extreme faces of the same nation, and directs the chronicle workshop "Traveling to tell it" (Tomás Eloy Martínez Foundation, Universidad Nacional de San Martín and UBA). He has made several trips to Asia, his main inspiration. He tries to dive into multiculturalism and the digital universe, in order to interconnect what he observes by drawing on Anthropology, Philosophy and Architecture. He is also a photographer and documentary maker. His office is a notebook in which he types from Antarctica, Iran, Mongolia, or Buryat Republic.
Adriana Hidalgo editora
Adriana Hidalgo editora is one of the most prestigious publishing houses in Argentina, with great recognition in Latin America and Spain. Founded in 1999, it specializes in literature, essays, philosophy, art and illustrated books. It publishes both argentine and translated authors. Its catalogue currently holds more than 400 titles and it stands out for its literary profile and for the constant discovery of new authors. In 2009, and with our publishing house’s 10th year’s anniversary, Pípala was created: an illustrated book’s imprint of Adriana Hidalgo editora Pípala is now an independent imprint for illustrated books for both children and adults, based on a powerful catalogue that is in permanent development. It publishes translated works from all over the world (Corea, France, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, etc.) as well as original works in Spanish from Latin American and Spanish writers and illustrators.
View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Adriana Hidalgo editora
- Publication Date July 2019
- Orginal LanguageSpanish
- ISBN/Identifier 9789874159748
- Publication Country or regionArgentina
- FormatPaperback
- Pages352
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleJapón desde una cápsula
- Original Language AuthorsJulián Varsavsky
- Edition1
- Copyright Year2019
- Dimensions200 x 130 mm
- IllustrationThe book contains different pictures taken by the author in his trips to Japan. All of them are printed in colour.
- Reference Code9789874159748
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