Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies: An Introduction

This is the Introduction to the special issue entitled "The Olympic Games in Japan and East Asia: Images and Legacies.”     

Star Architects,Urban Spectacles,and Global Brands: Exploring the Case of the Tokyo Olympics 2020

Olympic stadia are often regarded as political showcases stemming from a range of influences: the host nation's international politics, the interests of transnational capitalism, site‐specific meanings, and the power of iconic architecture. By examining the 2020 Tokyo Olympic main stadium as a case study, this article analyzes the controversial Zaha Hadid Tokyo stadium design in relation to the Japanese national branding initiative. The article argues that branding should be seen as part of an economic and cultural system that seems to enhance the global value of iconic architects and their buildings. Yet the power of brands can be understood as contingent. Their ambivalent nature entails a tension between exclusiveness and banality; additionally, branded architects may find it difficult to work across the different regimes of global and local politics, and they are of course also constrained by the logic of neoliberal transnational capitalism. By investigating a major global branded architect, Zaha Hadid, the article considers why a new image of Japan could not be adequately created by Hadid's aesthetics and narratives of the Olympic stadium, which could have been regarded as a national cultural legacy. The article then discusses the contested processes of image‐making and narrative creation in relation to the representation of Japan in contemporary Olympic culture. The article concludes with an examination of Kengo Kuma's architecture language in his 2020 Tokyo Olympics stadium design.     

日记(英文)

我们中的许多人都曾有过这样的经历——背起行囊.远赴重洋.去学习、去工作.去闯出自己的一片天。在与亲人朋友们相隔千里之外的陌生土地上.尝试去享受一种自由与寂寞同在的生活……"日记".作为本刊开设的新栏目,将与您分享一些读者朋友们的海外经历。     

中日实学的交流:新井白石与朱之瑜

新井白石曾求学于儒学学者木下顺庵,而木下顺庵与浙江余姚的朱之瑜有交流,新井白石因顺庵举荐,曾出仕德川纲丰的甲府藩,白石一生著述甚丰,其语言学著作有<东雅>、<同文通考>、<东音谱>等书,<东雅>是一部关于古语名词语源的辞典.白石不仅关注一种语言内部的诸种变化,更注意到了多种语言间的相互影响.白石的研究语言的方法,一方面是木下顺庵那种广泛涉猎文献的实证学风的继承,另一方面也是吸收中国明代学术成果的结晶.朱之瑜在日本住了23年,白石著作中多处引用了朱之瑜的话,新井白石与朱之瑜的学问交流,对东亚各国的实学文化的比较研究具有一定的意义.     

研究能力与环境的评价模型

知识科学已经产生了研究成果,如知识转化理论、知识系统化方法和知识创造力开发方法.预计近期研究者将在重大自然科学领域,在现有知识科学的协助下,获得创造性的理论研究成果.为此,必须建立一个"Ba"或者一种情境,它可以支持科学知识创新的发展和实践.文章在i系统和三重螺旋模型的基础上,提出一个研究能力和研究环境的一览表,旨在设计和评价学术团体技术创新的"Ba".文章采用调查问卷形式,对象是知识和信息科学研究领域的研究生的研究能力及其环境.文章运用模糊对应分析方法进行数据分析,并向管理人员提供有益的数据解释和说明.     

Between the state and global civil society: non‐official experts and their network in the Asia‐Pacific, 1925–45

This article stresses the need for a more rigorous scrutiny of the power structure in which an expert network produces its ‘expert knowledge’. It defines a pioneering multinational expert network in the Asia‐Pacific region in the interwar years as a prototype of an epistemic community, and examines how far it challenged the state‐centred and North Atlantic‐centred dominant structure of international politics, and became ‘global’. In this article I argue that this particular network largely reinforced the dominant structure. This meant that it remained inter‐national and colonial, and served the interests of the state/empire, neither becoming global nor advancing a universalist cause for the global civil society. The failure owes a lot to historical circumstances. Yet this case study also demonstrates that the structure in which the expert network produced specific knowledge is still dominant and that a constant scrutiny of the role of an expert network remains critical.     

Alternative care options and policy choices to support orphans: The case of Mozambique in the context of the SADC

Contextualizing the situation of orphans within the Southern African region and drawing on quantitative and qualitative field research, this article analyses care options and social protection policy for orphans in Mozambique, with its focus placed on children in orphan support centres. Seeking to offer new insights and greater understanding of the experiences of children in care and of the social protection available to them, the research highlights that orphaned children living in informal foster care arrangements are more likely to experience abuse, neglect and maltreatment than those living in non‐governmental care organizations. The research emphasizes the need for a more careful selection of foster families in which children are placed. Recommendations include the need to focus on capacity building and institutional reforms that provide social protection policies for orphaned children as part of an overall social protection floor. The monitoring and evaluation of organizations providing care to orphaned children is deemed a priority.     

Rise of the Department Store and the Aestheticization of Everyday Life in Early 20th Century Japan

Abstract:  This paper focuses on the ways in which the department store has become a key site for the constitution of Japanese modernity through the introduction of images and goods taken from the West, along with the emphasis on "Western design" and "Western taste". These new consumer spaces have become aestheticized in various ways so that we can speak of an "aestheticization" of everyday life. Yet this was also a modernizing learning process for Japanese consumers, hence a key problem was how these new experiences were to be classified and ordered into a relatively stable habitus. The rise of the department store has had an important mediating function here. Department stores not only provided new goods along with interpretations of how to use them, but also acted as theatres, as rehearsal spaces, with front and back stage areas where one can watch the performance, try out for oneself new roles. This is especially the case for women in the city, who were able to explore a new identity space with a new set of competence experiences and pleasures. In this process, the department store also provided a form of women's public sphere where they could enjoy shopping, entertainment and learning opportunities. Department stores encouraged not only a sense of luxury and theatrical settings, but also help to teach women how to assemble new tastes and styles into their lifestyle. In addition, it should be emphasized that in the Japanese case, department stores also played an important role not just as a new cultural initiative on the part of the businessmen and cultural intermediaries who invented consumer culture, but also as a political initiative on the part of the government who sought to link them to the reform of everyday life and the production of good Japanese citizens.