A seminar on “Street life: comparing the workings of urban space across the globe” was held at Hosei University on the evening of Sunday, the 12th of July.

First, Dr. Danielle van den Heuvel from the University of Kent explained how she developed an interest in street life while researching commercial guild regulations and the position of women in early modern Dutch society. She then used many pictures to discuss how early modern Dutch cities and London were related to street spaces and various social groups (such as women, people from disparate classes, and immigrants), and to the season, climate, and day-to-day weather. Following this, she described her future research, an interdisciplinary history of street life across the world, and explained the current trends on the question of how to define street life.

Next, Dr. Genki Takahashi from the faculty of engineering and architectural history at Tokyo University spoke about the construction and maintenance of street spaces in early modern Edo. He eloquently explained that the responsibility for the maintenance of street spaces was not plainly specified, and with the abolishment of the position of the road magistrate in the mid-eighteenth century and the subsequent expansion of the jurisdiction of the town magistrate, street spaces started becoming spaces for the townspeople.

Dr. Miki Sugiura from Hosei University spoke about street life at places where street sales were conducted. She followed the stage-wise flow of urban distribution in Edo, Amsterdam, and Cape Town and explained how they differed from each other.

Dr. Mariko Mizui from the Kyushu Institute of Technology focused on the increase in the number of immigrants from a group of mining towns in the Cornwall region of Britain to places all over the world such as South America, North America, Australia, South Africa, and India. She gave an account of the settlement of Moonta in Australia, where the streets are named after those in the Cornwall town centre as a majority of its inhabitants are Cornish immigrants.

To conclude the seminar, Dr. Toru Miura of Ochanomizu University summarized the themes dealt with in the course of the day and made a brief comparison from the perspective of Aleppo and Damascus. In addition, there was a lively question and answer session with the participants which itself was highly effective in endorsing inter-regional connections.　　（SUGIURA Miki)