Paper short abstract:

This presentation reveals how a place is experienced and decoded and the specific set of persons responsible for this viewpoint. This is based on the case of Gunkanjima ― located in the Nagasaki prefecture, with its formal name Hashima ― that was declared a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2015.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation reveals how a place is experienced and decoded and the specific set of persons responsible for this viewpoint. This is based on the case of Gunkanjima ― located in the Nagasaki prefecture in Kyushu, with its formal name Hashima ― that was declared a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2015. Despite a diversity of experiencing and decodings from different viewpoints, it is a fact that a certain experience and deciphering of a place is what becomes widely accepted by society. This presentation looks at what type of experiences and decodings of a place and by whom becomes established in society, and the problems underlying this process.

Gunkanjima was once a well-known coal-mining region and a heavily populated island, but it became an uninhabited island when the mines closed down in 1974. After that, from 1980s to 2000s, with young Japanese showing a growing interest in ruins, Gunkanjima drew attention as a place of ruins. Young people started to explore the island as a site of ruins and began uploading the photographs taken from there, along with their comments, on websites. Furthermore, from the early 2000s, a former resident began a preservation activity in Gunkanjima after visiting his homeland for the first time in several decades. His actions involved the local government and architects, which then bore fruit in the form of the place being declared a World Cultural Heritage Site. In my presentation, I will demonstrate specific narratives about Gunkanjima since 1974 and their receptiveness within the society, analyzing related articles in newspapers or magazines, texts and visual images in guidebooks, photo collections or websites on ruins, and books by former residents.

Paper short abstract:

Luis Frois wrote about 16thctry Japan. Removed from religious considerations we focus on landscapes, gardens and architecture in Kyushu and the GoKinai portrayed by Frois, comparing with 16th/17th ctry byobu paintings and present Japan. Luso-Nagasaki foundation is presented as fusion urban product.

Paper long abstract:

Byobu paintings and missionary written work are good sources of 16thctry urban and landscape representation in Japan. Luis Frois writing between 1563-1597 in Portuguese (Japanese translation around 1980's) describes places in Kyushu Yokoseura, Hirado, Arye and travels north to Koyasan, Osaka, Takatsuki, Gifu, Kyoto, Nara, Sakai, Azushiyama, and Nagasaki. He compiled five volumes of the "History of Japan", one hundred letters and the Treaty of Contradictions.

When religious considerations are eliminated, Frois descriptions are rigorous and issued from surprise of contrasts between renaissance Lisbon, Goa, Malaca, Macau and Japan.

Comparing Frois texts with the 16thctry byobus confirms them as reliable sources for Japanese urban and garden landscapes studies. Frois' texts allows a retrospective analysis compared with the actual state of heritage Japanese gardens, architecture and urban design. Continuity and durability can be emphasized as the sites present long lasting ecological solutions, interesting to use in future sustainable design. Frois texts are so turned to the past as "translating " spatial descriptions to the western world, but is also points to the future as continuity lessons of spatial sustainable design.

As a case study in urban history Nagasaki seems to have sprung from a Luso-Japanese symbiotic relationship reflected in Frois's accommodation attitude. It had a double influence with the obvious precedents, Lisbon, Nara and Kyoto. Four main outstanding features recognized in Japanese city design are the grid plan on flat areas, the respect and up-keeping of any natural element within the grid, such as streams and hills, the surrounding mountains left as non-built forests area, and the fact that public open large places are non-existing in Japanese cities.

On the contrary Portuguese city design is based on hill defensive settlement as organic growth, streams are covered as sewage, and large public plazzas follow the roman tradition of the Forum. For the urban plan point of view, the making of Nagasaki as a new water-front city and its resulting fusion design, is outstanding by the fact that it encompasses both cultures, it embraces features that respect the Portuguese/European city lay-out and the Japanese way of planning cities in a unified space.

Paper short abstract:

Heritage, ecology, urban regeneration, Shikoku

Paper long abstract:

The notion of cultural heritage has certainly evolved since the enactment of the first preservation laws by the Meiji government. In the past decades, the responsibility of local institutions in the management of cultural properties has increased and the perseverance of Japanese diplomatic efforts has enhanced the global acknowledging of intangible cultural assets. Moreover, the uncertainties of an advanced ageing society together with the uneasiness generated by the vanishing of materiality in the ongoing digital revolution have triggered a re-examination of the idea of heritage. On top of that, the devastation of the March 2011 has shattered fundamental axioms of the Japanese society: a quick overview of the architectural press of the recent years or the scrutiny of the proposals for the Venice Biennale of Architecture at the Japanese pavilion, provide material evidences of the introspection being currently experienced by young architects. Renovation, regeneration and community binding are now widespread terms.

This paper aims to bring some light into this context by reflecting on recent efforts perpetrated by local communities along the course of the Hiji river in Ehime prefecture, a prosperous region during the outbreak of modernity in Japan, gradually languishing ever since. Acknowledging the supremacy of nature, Uchiko and Ozu are both in the process of shaping up urban and territorial strategies capable of offering answers to the challenges of the post-modernity. Intertwined by the river, the former, a pioneer in conservation campaigning, is carefully enlarging the scope of the transformations in order to integrate the surrounding environment to urban revitalization policies (moto: eco-town エコロジータウン), while the later, seat of the former feudal domain, is conscientiously elaborating a panoply of studies and regulations to bind together new with old areas, insisting on the importance of the re-appropriation of the past.

The analysis of such processes might provide keys as to how the Japanese society, at a vicinity level, is trying to defy and surmount the complexity of the current urban decaying on eccentric areas, away from the bustle of big urban entities.