Street Art Activities and Democracy during the Late Taishō Period:

Mavo's Aesthetics and Shoyo Tsubouchi's Pageant

Abstract

　“Street” is a key term in recent cultural studies. However, generally, cultural studies regard “street” affirmatively as a space for social movements and attempt to set a binary opposition between repression by the government or capital power and civil resistance on the street. This study challenges contemporary views on the matter and attempts to show the street's complicated power dynamics. The research subjects are art activities on the street in the late Taishō period because that was a period of confusion when many democratic movements arose, but it also led to militarism in subsequent years.
　Particularly, this study analyzes the activities of Mavo, a group that played a central role in the new art movement in the Taishō period, and the pageant of the playwright Shoyo Tsubouchi. What linked them is that they both attempted to get out of the conventional space meant for art or theater and took them into the street where the people lived, thereby giving them completely different meanings. Mavo attempted to influence the people and become the people by combining their lives with art. Tsubouchi intended to produce an orderly street by unifying the people into a “nation,” erasing their diverse cultures, and unifying them into a new, highly artistic popular art culture, even though he had praised “democracy” and “active participation” of the people. The study shows that street activities cannot be affirmed only by using the street, and the concept of democracy must be reexamined.