Sanctuaries of the City: Lessons from Tokyo

摘要

There are some book reviews of Sanctuaries of the City: Lessons from Tokyo on the internet. Most of them are written by non-Japanese scholars. Anni Greve, the author of the above book, is also a non-Japanese scholar. She uses a Japanese term 'Ma' (间) in the Preface, which means an in-between realm. This term is suitable for describing the status of all non-Japanese scholars who review this book. As a Chinese geographer, I would arguably have a smaller 'Ma' than other non-Japanese scholars. One of many reasons for this is Japan's long cultural exchange history with China. Some cities were built up according to the spatial patterns of China's capital city in the Tang Dynasty (8th to 9th century), such as Heijokyo (in the western part of today's Nara). It copied the spatial pattern of Chang'an and Luoyang in ancient China. It should have some resonance as to how spaces are represented in Tokyo.