The Onsen Imagination: Representations of Hot Springs in Modern Japan

This dissertation traces the cultural history of hot springs (onsen) in modern Japan through their representation in literature, cinema and other media. It argues that the importance of hot springs in tourism infrastructure and popular culture is the result of a historical process in which representation and society have continuously influenced each other. Over time, cultural production not only reflected social, economic and political changes but also, in turn, affected them by constructing a shared framework for imagining and experiencing hot springs. To account for this process, this dissertation proposes the concept of the “onsen imagination” and interprets hot springs as a topos that formed at the beginning of modernity and developed through postmodernity. Throughout this history, representations of hot springs intersected with material changes in tourism, leisure and consumer culture, but cultural memory continued to preserve and activate long-standing associations with melodrama, eroticism, reflection, mystery and nostalgia. By tracing the emergence and transformation of these associations in different media and historical periods, this dissertation shows how cultural production created meanings that shaped the way people understood hot springs in modern Japan.