Martin Roth

Die hier vorliegende Sammlung von Ideen und Denkanstößen entstand anlässlich der Pensionierung des Denkers, Mitstreiters, Lehrers und Freundes Kobayashi Toshiaki, oder Kobayashi Binmei, wie er in Japan genannt wird. In ihrer Vielfalt bietet sie einen Einblick in das Wirken eines zwischen Japan und Deutschland lebenden Intellektuellen, dessen Neugierde, Beharrlichkeit und Produktivität bei seinen Schülern, Freunden und Kollegen einen tiefen Eindruck hinterlassen hat. Die vielfältigen Facetten und mitunter auch Gegensätze, mit denen sich der Band beschäftigt, sind repräsentativ für einen Denker, der sich für Freud und Marx ebenso begeistert wie für japanische Bohnenpaste, Sudoku und andere lebensweltliche Dinge.

Digital technologies, namely the " internet, " have catalyzed a dramatic shift in the production of space and how we conceive it. They are ambiguous at their borders, at once expanding yet shrinking notions of home and homeland, of the local and the global, and of the intangible and the material. Such fuzziness and shifting boundaries generate new spatial relations on multiple layers which we call " digital spatialities. " In choosing the term " spatiality " versus " area, " we wish to mark a deviation from and complication of traditional area studies that are bound to particular geographies, nations, languages, and/ or cultures. In our reading, " digital spatialities " are anchored in but equally transcend these categories. In this special issue, we aim to consider different examples of how these digital spatialities are structured, how they function, are put into practice, and how they are framed by and connected to, rather than bound by areas in the abovementioned sense. We invite contributions that explore specific digital spatialities related to Asia with these questions in mind from various disciplinary perspectives, and to consider the following questions:-what defines specific digital spatialities when we think of Asia?-how are these related to priorly existing areas and their constituents, such as language, law, communities, and cultural practices-which kinds of subjects inhabit them, and what do they do?-what kind of methodologies may we deploy in critically studying them?-how can we come to terms with the vast differences between them? By asking these questions, we aim to ignite a critical dialogue about how digitality and digital humanities can be thought of productively, and complexly, even in the wake of vast and variable differences that are not simply confined to region. Firstly, we hope to fuel a more nuanced discourse about " the internet " or " digital humanities, " in particular regarding their generalized definition and their applicability in the largely differing local and global contexts of Asia on the world stage. Secondly, we would like to begin mapping the digital areas which we identify, carefully meditating upon their relationships among and between each other, as well as the electronic shape of the " world " they produce. Timeline: