Search for book title or author's last name

Making Japanese Heritage

Edited by Christoph Brumann, Rupert Cox

Price: $150.00

Add to Cart

About the Book

This book examines the making of heritage in Japan, investigating the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions come to be seen as forms of heritage that are ascribed public recognition and political significance.

It shows how claims to heritage status in Japan stress different material qualities of objects, places and people, based upon their ages, originality and usage, questioning the interpretation of material heritage as an enduring expression of social relations, aesthetic values and authenticity that, once conferred, undergoes no subsequent change. The contributors explore how the heritage value of items such as textiles, automata, paintings, tea utensils and Noh masks, is made and re-made through the relationship of these objects to the instruments of their display. Appraising the construction of heritage in cases where the heritage value resides in the very substance of the object’s material composition, including architecture, landscapes and designs, they show how the heritage industry adds values to existing assets. This volume furthermore considers the role of people as agents of heritage production, analyzing the relationship between persons and objects in matters of death, succession and the commemoration of heritage.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Materialising Heritage 1. Automated Alterities: Movement and Identity in the History of the Japanese ‘Kobi Doll’ 2. Noh Mask Collections: Approaches to the Preservation, Selection and Display of Cultural Heritage Artefacts 3. Forging the Firm: Corporate Identity, Organizational Memory and Cultural Heritage in Sumitomo 4. Nihonga as Process and Symbolic Action 5. Tradition, Transmission and Transformation in Yaeyama: A Sash as Symbol of Island Identity Part 2: Locating Heritage 6. Wayo Setchu: Hybrid Forms in Contemporary Japanese Interior Design 7. The Inventiveness of Tradition: ‘Heritage Anomalies’ in Kyoto’s Machiya Movement 8. Establishing Municipal Heritage: Bunkajin, Local Governments and Open-Air Museums in Post War Japan 9. What’s at Stake in Designating Japan’s Sacred Peaks as UNESCO World Heritage Sites? 10. Changing Careers: The Social Life of the Gassho-Zukuri Minka 11. Tea in Japan and LA: Changing Meanings of ‘Japanese’ Heritage Part 3: Remembering Heritage 12. Maintaining a Zen Tradition in Japan: The Concrete Problem of Succession 13. Geisha as Cultural Performers 14. Preservation, Revival and Innovation: Establishing Successors to the Great Puppet Head Carvers in Japan, with a Focus on Awaji Ningyo 15. Debating Heritage: Plotting the Future of the Past within Shinkyo, a Japanese Commune