Published Papers - SHIMAZU Toshiyuki

Takeshi Kawada's geographical thought and practice

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Japanese Journal of Human Geography ( n )  56 ( 4 ) 331 - 350   2004.08  [Refereed]

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This paper investigates the geographical thoughts and practices of Takeshi Kawada, a figure almost unknown among present Japanese geographers, by situating them in the various spaces of knowledge in which he lived and worked. The author, while approving "critical history", which examines the relationships between nationalism and geography, would rather present a chain of "small stories" associated with the particularities of the spaces of knowledge than conform to the "grand narrative" of modern nationalism.Takeshi Kawada was born in 1842 as the fourth son of Tekisai Kawada, a Confucian scholar. Takeshi developed his own Confucian scholarship in such spaces of knowledge as Rinkejuku, the private Confucian academy of the Hayashi family, and Shoheizaka Gakumonjo, the official academy of the Tokugawa Shogunate. His career as a functionary of Gaikokugata, the foreign department of the later Tokugawa Shogunate, urged him to reconsider the Japanese governance system, which potentially led him to recognize the urgent necessity to collect detailed data about the whole of the Japanese territory. It was, however, Kawada's contingent encounter with Akikata Tsukamoto at Shizuoka Academy, which had been established by the Tokugawa family and at which Kawada taught Chinese learning, that determined his involvement in the Meiji Government's project to compile regional geographies. At that time, Tsukamoto held the position of the head of the Numazu Military Academy that the Tokugawa family had also established.Kawada engaged himself in compiling regional geographies and mapmaking at the Department of Topography of the Council of State and later at the Geographical Bureau of the Home Ministry. At the same time, he elaborated his own views on regional geography through re-search presentations and publications at the Tokyo Geographical Society, founded in 1879, and through contact at the Ministry of Education with Bunjiro Koto, a geology professor at the College of Science of the Imperial University. Kawada applied the word tairei, a concept meaning the chorographic framework itself, and originating from the Ching school of topography, to his own framework presumably resulting from the German concept "länderkundliches Schema". On the other hand, he had been influenced by kosho shigaku, or an empirical historiography, advocated by Yasutsugu Shigeno, one of the pioneers of modern Japanese historiography. Kawada's short-term affiliation with the Historiographical and Topographical Institute of the College of Humanities of the Imperial University, of which Shigeno was the head, allowed him to join Shigakukai, the first Japanese academic society for historical studies. A certain kind of geographical imagination pervaded Shigakukai under the supervision of Ludwig Riess, a German historian employed by the Meiji Government. The sudden discontinuation of the governmental project for compiling regional geographies prompted Kawada's inclination towards empirical research on historical geography. The geographical imagination of Shigakukai brought about the establishment of a new academic society devoted to historical geography in 1899 (Nihon Rekishi Chiri Kenkyukai, later Nihon Rekishi Chiri Gakkai), to which Kawada gradually shifted his academic allegiance. Although Kawada insisted on the importance of geography as the setting for historical events, he also had a form of probabilistic thinking in which environmental factors were not to be exaggerated. However, his former commitment to state interests and his concern with contemporary issues led him to practice historico-geographical research sympathetic to the Tennoist ideology of the day.

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Government-compiled regional geographies and nation-state formation in early Meiji Japan

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Geographical Review of Japan ( The Association of Japanese Geographers )  75 ( 2 ) 88 - 113   2002.02  [Refereed]

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和歌山市域における在日朝鮮人住民の空間的セグリゲーションと居住地移動ー1920〜1995年ー

島津俊之

和歌山地理 ( 和歌山地理学会 )  ( 18 ) 1 - 20   1998.12  [Refereed]

師範学校による絵はがきの収集と郷土教育ー和歌山県の師範学校を例にー

島津俊之

紀州経済史文化史研究所紀要 ( 和歌山大学紀州経済史文化史研究所 )  ( 18 ) 1 - 24   1998.03

大正末年の「和歌山市街地図」についてー景観年代・作成経緯・社会的背景ー

島津俊之

紀州経済史文化史研究所紀要   ( 17 ) 1 - 18   1997.03

Durkheim's theory of social space

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Annals of the Association of Economic Geographers ( The Japan Association of Economic Geography )  41 ( 1 ) 20 - 36   1995.03  [Refereed]

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Emile Durkheim's social theory shows important insights into the role of space in social processes, which has been neglected thus far among both sociologists and geographers. His 'socio-spatial theory' has several aspects to be distinguished. The author focuses on Durkheim's theory of social space and sheds light on the significance of social space in his theoretical system. This leads to a re-evaluation of his 'geographical imagination. ' The starting point for the theory of social space is found in Durkheim's doctoral dissertation, The Division of Labor in Society, originally published in 1893. His conception of social space referred consistently to the geographical areas inhabited by social groups. It is supposed that the term was coined by Durkheim under his reading of Friedrich Ratzel's challenging thesis on the relationship between the State and its territory. Durkheim conceived society as a collective entity possessing its own body (social substratum) and its own mind (social life). In this social ontology, it is corsidered that social substratum is composed of social space and social group and that on the substratum social life is unfolding. Thus society is represented as a three-layered model comprising social space, social group and social life. In the model social life is connected through social group with social space, which becomes the spatial base for social life. Durkheim never diminished this theoretical significance of social space until his last years. Furthermore, cultivating his own geographical imagination, Durkheim tried to elaborate the more ambitious theory of social space. He thought that, based on the ethnographic materials of Zuni, social space served as a model for the form of classification system in primitive societies. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, published in 1912, social space was regarded as a model for the category of space. It thus appears that social space was qualified as an intervening variable in the formation of social life, the form of the latter being modeled on the former. There are some limits and contradictions in Durkheim's theory of social space. He wrongly concluded that the theory was only applicable to "segmental societies" as he defined it. The nature of social space as an intervening variable is also questioned in terms of its empirical validity. It is nevertheless true that Durkheim's theory has some values to be discovered and re-evaluated. Durkheim had an insightful geographical imagination and penetrated the fundamental fact that no societies ever exist without the spatial context. He analytically differentiated social space from the empirical world. He saw social space not as a mere reflection of social life, but as an important element of it, and tried to evaluate the role of social space in various social processes. Durkheim's geographical imagination serves as a model of the indispensable intellectual equipment for constructing the socio-spatial theory.

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Society and space in Durkheim's social morphology

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Japanese Journal of Human Geography ( The Human Geographical Society of Japan )  45 ( 4 ) 333 - 350   1993.08  [Refereed]

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Identification of landslide localities occurred in 1889 (Meiji-22) based on koaza names in Yoshinogun-Suisaishi

Hirano Masashige, ShimazuToshiyuki, Nojiri Wataru, Okuda Setsuo

Japanese Journal of Human Geography ( The Human Geographical Society of Japan )  43 ( 5 ) 493 - 503   1991.10  [Refereed]

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Pilgrimage place system and rural communities: A case study in Japan

Shimazu Toshiyuki

The Historical Geography   151 ( 151 ) 1 - 15   1990.12  [Refereed]

Social space and nonprofane places in a Japanese village

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Japanese Journal of Human Geography ( The Human Geographical Society of Japan )  41 ( 3 ) 195 - 215   1989.06  [Refereed]

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村落空間に関する社会地理学的研究ー大和高原北部・下狭川の事例ー

島津俊之

大阪市立大学大学院文学研究科修士論文     1988.03

Die räumliche Sozialstruktur und ihre Verwandlung im Zenjoji-Dorf in der Kyoto-Präfektur

Shimazu Toshiyuki

Japanese Journal of Human Geography ( The Human Geographical Society of Japan )  38 ( 6 ) 544 - 560   1986.12  [Refereed]

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