Uneven space of everyday modernity: the colonial logic of the suburb in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love (1924–1925) has been widely studied as a representative text of the modern popular culture of the Taisho period. This article treats the work as a key text that reveals the colonial relations embedded in everyday modernity of Japan's interwar years, and examines the articulations of colonial relations in three registers of the text. It first investigates the protagonists' unrestrained embrace of cosmopolitan culture as a manifestation of Japan's ambiguous imperialist consciousness, shaped in the interstices between Western and Asian others. The second and third registers concern a particular kind of space dominant in the story: the modern suburb, which became a major symbol of Japan's modernity in the 1920s. In its subordinate relationship with the city, the suburb exemplifies colonial relations. The second register explored in the article is the overlap between the text's exoticism and suburban topography. A key scene on a resort beach is examined for its reference to Hawai'i and the setting's suburban nature in relation to Tokyo. The last register is the suppression of the story's suburban setting. The article analyzes the disappearance as a manifestation of the anxiety about the unevenness of capitalist development that the suburb represents.     

人类命运共同体:构建全球空间正义的中国方案

全球化的快速发展正在推动形成全球性空间。这是生产力高度发达,世界各国相互依赖、密切联系的结果。但是,在这样一个全球性空间中,空间正义的缺失造成了空间内的紧张关系,危及全球空间的进一步发展。人类命运共同体是构建全球空间正义的中国方案。在理论上,人类命运共同体从政治、安全、经济、文明、生态等领域阐释了空间正义的内涵。在实践中,人类命运共同体夯实全球化的动力基础,筑牢空间正义的根基;促进全球空间的平等参与,推进空间生产正义;调整全球空间的分配模式,推进空间分配正义。     

网络环境下图书馆书库空间布局研究

信息数字化、网络化的快速发展,对现代图书馆的空间布局提出了新的课题。对传统图书馆进行重新规划和布局有着十分的必要性。从图书馆书库建设的亲身经验出发,依据功能性、艺术性、科学性等原则,借助CAD绘图手段,详细阐述了合理规划书库空间布局的具体方法。     

Human height estimation from highly distorted surveillance image

Video surveillance camera (VSC) is an important source of information during investigations especially if used as a tool for the extraction of verified and reliable forensic measurements. In this study, some aspects of human height extraction from VSC video frames are analyzed with the aim of identifying and mitigating error sources that can strongly affect the measurement. More specifically, those introduced by lens distortion are present in wide-field-of-view lens such as VSCs. A weak model, which is not able to properly describe and correct the lens distortion, could introduce systematic errors. This study focuses on the aspect of camera calibration to verify human height extraction by Amped FIVE software, which is adopted by the Forensic science laboratories of Carabinieri Force (RaCIS), Italy. A stable and reliable approach of camera calibration is needed since investigators have to deal with different cameras while inspecting the crime scene. The performance of the software in correcting distorted images is compared with a technique of single view self-calibration. Both approaches were applied to several frames acquired by a fish-eye camera and then measuring the height of five different people. Moreover, two actual cases, both characterized by common low-resolution and distorted images, were also analyzed. The height of four known persons was measured and used as reference value for validation. Results show no significant difference between the two calibration approaches working with fish-eye camera in test field, while evidence of differences was found in the measurement on the actual cases.     

Spectacles of Dystopia: Lauren Beukes and the Geopolitics of Digital Space

Lauren Beukes’ latest novels—The Shining Girls (2013) and Broken Monsters (2014)—present forays into new generic and geopolitical spaces, shifting from the Joburg and Cape Town-based “allegorical apartheids” of the science-fictional texts Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010) to supernatural crime novels set in dystopian American cities. This paper explores the productive tension between the global and the local in her body of work, framed within the concepts of “developing world” science fiction and the figure of the hybrid. I argue that the esthetics and generic conventions of “cyberpunk” often associated with Beukes animate a seemingly ubiquitous dystopian space. Her writing explores the dissemination of commercial icons, visual fads, and digital pop-objects around and within global bodies: networked, linked electronically, and sometimes physically in what I suggest comes to form the illusion of a digital, dystopian everywhere, relentlessly performing transcendence of locality.     

The online defamation maze: are we finding a way out?

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the efficacy of the first decision that explored online defamation (as opposed to offline defamation) delivered by the Supreme Court of Japan. A discussion of the future implications of the case is then undertaken. The paper supports the First Instance (the Tokyo District Court) decision and its approach, and argues that such an approach might have provided greater implications for the future. The author also argues that the Tokyo District Court seems to have taken a more reflective view on the fluidity of online defamation and the nature of the online environment, and shows a degree of willingness to accept and incorporate such a nature. The author concludes that the Tokyo District Court's approach, although it could be seen as rather radical and extreme, seems to be more persuasive than that of the Supreme Court. It also submits that the court might have brought a more balanced and healthy outcome for the beneficiaries, including not only the claimants, the defendants, but also society as a whole. It is the case that innocent internet users can potentially be both the passive and active recipients of the information (i.e. comments posted on webpage). Before a detailed analysis and examination of the case is undertaken, a brief outline of how Japanese law and its jurisprudence have dealt with the traditional form of defamation (i.e. offline defamation) is provided as background.     

Cartographies of Transformation in Mostar and Cape Town: Mapping as a Methodology in Divided Cities

ABSTRACT

All cities, as heterogenous spaces, are divided. However, conflict, in various forms can create cities which are monikered as ‘divided cities’. The divisions in these cities involve the segregation of communities and entrenchment of social and political divides. Through case studies situated in the spatially divided cities of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Cape Town, South Africa, this article demonstrates local resistance to top-down divisions. Theoretically and methodologically, this article contributes an understanding of mapping as a methodology which can materialise the spatial agency of local actors and can contribute to more inclusive memory work and reconstruction.     

Redrawing a map of motherhood

Motherhood in any culture comes with a set of ideologies that restrains women's own desires and needs. In Japan, women with young children have recently coined the term, Mama-tomo, or ‘Mum-friends’, and formed loosely connected communities through their daily parenting routines. Kirino Natsuo's novel Happiness, originally published in instalments between July 2010 and October 2012 in women's magazine Very, depicts the social machinations of a particular mama-tomo group in Tokyo's aspirational waterfront suburb. While the novel addresses contemporary women's issues and motherhood in particular, it also explores the map of Tokyo that engenders imaginary class distinctions. In this article, I follow the trail that the novel leaves on this map and identify the implications of that trail. In doing so, I draw on the concept of ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ spaces, as theorised by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in their critique of capitalism and modern living. Writing sympathetically to the women protagonists – and hence to the readers of the magazine – Kirino is nonetheless critical of the women's belief in the imaginary values of an elite class and their willingness to submit to the imposed ideology of motherhood. In this sense, the novel repudiates the consumerist lifestyle models constructed for sale through Very and the popular media at large. It is my contention that the beliefs critiqued in Kirino's novel have their source partly in the spatial imagination of the Edo period (1603–1868), during which the ruling samurai class facilitated a systematic social segregation. It is ironic, however, that the segregation in turn underscored the demarcation of the Other space, a liberated dynamic space outside the strictly regulated habitat of the ruling group. Endorsing this Other space, Kirino redraws a map of Tokyo through this novel to show the young generation of mothers a way of exiting the captivity of imposed ideologies of motherhood, class, and consumerism.     

居住空间的意象蕴含——《傲慢与偏见》和《简·爱》的相关语境

本文对《傲慢与偏见》和《简.爱》中的居住空间描写进行分析,通过两部作品在这方面的同异,来考察二者在以居住空间为代表的环境描写方面如何作用于对人物性格的塑造以及对作品情节发展所起到的暗示性作用,从而理解两位作家在创作上的高超手法。     

隔音空间外的律师庭外言论——论律师庭外言论规制的第三种模式

域外法治发达国家在实践中逐渐形成了两种针对律师庭外言论的规制模式,即严格禁止模式和底线标准模式,但其法理基础本身存在固有缺陷,在某些语境中律师庭外言论概念会混淆。隔音空间理论下的规制律师庭外言论将弥补了前两种模式在律师庭外言论概念混淆、法理基础薄弱等缺陷,引入隔音空间理论有其合理性。应根据律师庭外言论所可能产生的法律后果将律师庭外言论进行类型化构建,并根据其法律后果的不同进行不同层面的规制。