2005 Volume 55 Issue 4 Pages 483-498
The aim of this article is to investigate how and under what social-historical conditions the techno-political program of the regulation of lighting in urban space was formed and put into practice. The focus is the problematization of street lighting in the late 1920s Japan. Through the examination of various discourses including scientific, urban political, and industrial discourses, as well as discourses of ordinary people, the following three theses are shown. First, the social regulation of lighting was not a process which developed linearly from the introduction of gas lighting in Ginza in 1874, but was a program which was not problematized until the late 1920s. Second, the standardization of lighting was planned in order to control and restrain the diverse types of lighting technologies which were owned by individuals and private groups according to their individual preferences. Third, many kinds of agencies, different in their interests, were involved in the process of the formation and the development of the program. And the situation frequently produced unintended effects.