This volume of original essays critically examines the intriguing interplays among major actors and venues of creative practices in contemporary East Asian cities. Within many exiting literatures on the idea of creative cities and creative clusters, much attention has been focused on its relation to society on a macro level: creative cities are understood through the lens of creative economy, government policy, creative labor market analysis and management, adaptive urban re-development in the postindustrial cities, and strategic urban planning. Moreover, most of them are interested in Western cases and the ideological, cultural, economic, and social backdrops that can hardly be taken for granted for other societies in the non-Western countries. This book offers a corrective to these trends. Its chapters closely investigate specifically East Asian manifestations of the political and aesthetic decisions made, or not made, in the construction and representation of creative cities, with Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Shanghai coming in for special consideration.