Transmissions
Historicity Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 1: Seamy Dives and Corporate Towers
historicity (UK 2023)
historicity / Jelena Sofronijevic (UK 2023)
59 min
A series of audio walking tours, exploring how cities got to be the way they are - starting with London and Tokyo.
Sometimes taking an audio tour from your armchair works just as well as being there!
This walk explore how Tokyo has allowed authorities, developers, and people around the world to reimagine what a city might be, in the last fifty years. Discover how Shinjuku has distilled the swirling currents of postwar political economy from transport and towers to nightlife and riots.We start at the entrance to Shinjuku Gyōen, a rural estate converted into a national garden, and near the post station, where sex workers gathered in the early modern period. On the other side of the street is Nichō, where the LGBT community has flourished once the sex workers left. It’s a fitting introduction to the nightlife that flourishes in East Shinjuku, which continues across the road, behind the shops and restaurants on the main drag, which started coming here after the earthquake in 1923. By the late 1960s, Shinjuku was a mecca for young Japanese, drawn here by cutting-edge art and political protest. They soon migrated south, but it wasn’t until the next century that the government started to clean things up, even Kabukichō, where the yakuza controlled the sin. At the heart of Shinjuku, though, is the station – the world’s busiest, currently undergoing a redevelopment, which will take 25 years. On its other side, in West Shinjuku, things are very different. A vast water purification plant has been replaced by corporate towers, capped and culminating in the new Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which dominates a deserted people’s plaza. The walk ends in the garden on its far side, from where, once upon a time, you could see Fuji.
Narrated by Angus Lockyer
Produced by Jelena Sofronijevic
The Unfiltered History Tour - Hoa Hakananai'a
Vice World News (UK 2021)
Produced by Jesse Lawson For Vice World News (UK 2021)
15 min Episode 2 of 10
In school you learn about museums but you’re never taught to question how their collections ended up in their hands. According to many people, the British Museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods. VICE World News brings you the stories of ten of these objects, told to you by people from the countries they were taken from.
The people of Rapa Nui – also known as Easter Island – carved Hoa Hakananai’a centuries ago. This living ancestor was taken by British sailors and given to Queen Victoria.