Reports

1.	Yu Yang, Book Review: Alice Y. Tseng. Modern Kyoto: Building for Ceremony and Commemoration, 1868–1940. University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018, Journal of Asian Humanities at Kyushu University, 2020.03.

Papers

1.	YANG Yu, Shadows of Urban Utopia: Japanese Housing in Colonial Manchuria, Proceedings of the 35th World Congress of Art History – Motion: Transformation, 317-322, 2021.09.
2.	YANG YU, Constructing a Manchurian Identity: Architect Endō Arata and Central Bank Club, Modern Art Asia, 73-93, 2012.05.
3.	YANG YU, Kamisaka Sekka’s Later Works and Kyoto Kōgei, Journal of Social Aesthetics, 2, 1-10, 2014.11.
4.	YANG YU, Touring Buildings of Colonial Modernity: Architecture and Tourism in Manchuria (1905-1945), EAAC 2015 Gwangju Practical History: History in Practice and Practice in History during the 21st Century, 895-898, 2015.10, This paper examines the Japanese cultural construction of the image of Manchuria through the interaction of tourism and modern architecture in the early twentieth century. The examination of postcards, photos, and travel-logs related to Japanese tours to Manchuria reveals that the Japanese tourists' perception of Manchuria has changed from an adventurous, remote land to a safe, idealist and entertaining theme park. Architecture played a significant role in the construction of Japanese tourists' experiences of Manchuria. Buildings in various modern styles construted by the Japanese architects in the new capital, shinkyo, not only served as symbols of Japanese authority, but also contained a picturesque quality to be looked at from tourist buses. The visual abundance of photos and postcards of these buildings therefore reinforced the image of Manchuria for mass consumption as modern and exotic, and the actual spatial experiences were intentionally minimalized, if not ignored. By situating the bus tours in Shinkyo within the historical context of colonial tourism and discourse of modern Japanese architecture, this paper characterizes the unique urban spatial experience of the colonial modernity..

Presentations

1.	YANG YU, The Land of Aida: Urban Space of Manchuria (1905-1945), Hybrid Workshop between Kyudai and Glasgow University: Space Between/Aidagara: Landscape, Mindscape, Architecture, 2023.03.
2.	YANG YU, Embracing Climate and Culture: Depicting Others at Japanese Art Exhibitions 1908-1944, 2022 35th Committee International d’Historie de L’Art- Migration, São Paulo, 2022.01.
3.	Yu YANG, Shadows of Bright Houses: Photographs of Architecture in Colonial Manchuria　（1900-1945）, The 35th Committee International d’Historie de l’Art, 2019.09, During the first half of the twentieth century, Japan’s colonial expansion in East Asia brought many Japanese architects to Manchuria, present-day northeast China. They have built all over Manchuria—government offices, commercial buildings, and residential houses—and left a tremendous collection of visual records. The paper examines these photographs from a different perspective, not merely considering them as visual propagandas, but to focus on their visual power and function within the exchange of people, objects, and ideas between Japan and Manchuria, and the relationship between visual representation and space. This presentation explores the role of visual representation in defining and shaping the residential area in urban Manchuria during the first half of the twentieth century. Taking photographs, drawings, and plans of residential houses displayed at the 1921 architectural exhibition in Dalian as a case study, I examine Japanese architects’ designs for private home and houses, published in architectural journals and displayed in architectural exhibitions throughout the 1920s. Photos of houses in Manchuria published in the 1920s were used to construct the daily space for a rising upper-middle class different from early Japanese settlers, and to promote the housing reform in Japan. After the establishment of Manchukuo in 1932, photographs of buildings in Manchuria were included in the tourist postcards, one of the most popular souvenirs for Japanese group tours in Manchuria that reached the peak around 1941. In particular, there were significant numbers of photographs of panoramic views, public buildings, and construction sites: which functioned as visual allegories of Manchukuo’s utopia future. Residential houses or interior of them were no longer the center. Tourist postcards include exteriors of residential houses as symbolic icons of Japan’s colonial rule. They have turned the buildings into products for the consumption of mass tourism. In conclusion, photographs, plans, and drawings or residential houses in Manchuria during the first half of the twentieth century underwent a changing function. In the beginning, they contributed to the construction and consolidation of the daily space for the newly arriving upper-middle Japanese in the region. Later, they were included as part of the tourist experience by compressing three-dimensional space into flat surface and reducing the role of architecture into icons and symbols. The case of colonial Manchuria, therefore, illustrates the tension between architecture and its visual representation and their fluid boundaries and interchangeability..
4.	YANG YU, Urban Configuration and Transformation in Colonial Manchuria: Collaborations and Competitions Among Multi-Ethnic Communities, The 12th International Symposium on Architectural Interchanges in Asia: “Confluence of Architecture in the Age of Super Connectivity”, 2018.10, 本発表は、現在中国東北地方である旧満洲の都市空間の発展と変遷を取り上げ、 先行研究と異なるグローバルヒストリーの視点から20世紀前半の満洲地域の特徴と多様性を明らかにする。新たな文献と視覚資料を分析し、商業空間と住宅地における雑居する実態を指摘し、日本、中国、そしてロシアの間の複雑な利益関係、また社会階級がどのような空間に影響を与えたかを動態的に再考する。このように、地域における植民地支配 の実態を把握することが可能になった。.

2018 Spring: Academic English Writing Seminar: Abstract Workshop
2019 Fall: Graduate Seminar Japanese Architecture; Introduction to Modern Japanese Society (JICA/co-teaching)
2020 Spring: Special Issues in Modern Japanese Society (JICA/co-teaching)
2020 Fall: Thesis Guidance Seminar (IMAP/co-teaching); Topics in Japanese Art and Architecture: Reading Workshop on Modern Japanese Spaces (IMAP); Introduction to Modern Japanese Society (JICA/co-teaching)
2021 Spring: Special Issues in Modern Japanese Society (JICA/co-teaching); Research Resources and Methods (RRM) (IMAP/co-teaching)
2021 Fall： Topics in Art and Architecture; Research Resources and Methods (RRM) (IMAP/co-teaching)
2022 Spring: Meiji Culture & Space; Academic Writing and Reading; Research Resources and Methods (RRM) (IMAP/co-teaching); Special Issues in Modern Japanese Society (JICA/co-teaching)