- Convenor:
-
Ellen Van Goethem
(Kyushu University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Urban and Regional Studies
Short Abstract
This panel examines Japan's pioneering role in heritage production since the Meiji era, linking designation, preservation, labelling, and reconstruction practices to tourism development, national and international image-making, as well as the reshaping of urban identities and public spaces.
Long Abstract
Japan's engagement with cultural heritage has evolved dramatically since the late nineteenth century, when it became the first Asian nation to enact relevant legislation and invest systematically in preservation, restoration, and, later, reconstruction. Early efforts were driven by multiple pressures: the state-sponsored promotion of Shinto caused widespread neglect and decay of Buddhist temples, while Western collectors exploited the japonisme craze to acquire and export artifacts. Concerned that the deterioration of historic sites would signal a lack of civilization to Western eyes, the Meiji government reversed course, enacting protective legislation and launching major temple restoration projects that shaped future conservation practices. Until 1945, heritage preservation served nation and empire building, bolstered by tennō-centered ultranationalism, colonial expansion, and tourism. After World War II, heritage reinforced national and local identities, often through selective nostalgia for a premodern Japan that downplayed or obscured the country's modern history of war and imperialism.
The four papers in this panel focus on under-examined dimensions of Japan's heritage landscape, particularly sites of "disappearing" and "reappearing" heritage. "Disappearing" heritage refers to once-celebrated sites that have been deliberately marginalized or forgotten, such as Kyoto’s Mimizuka which will be explored as a space for critical reflection that reveals a history shaped less by physical change than by shifting discursive strategies of silencing and exposure. In contrast, "reappearing" heritage involves large-scale reconstructions of long-lost historic buildings and gardens in Kyoto, Nara, Naha, Nagasaki, and Hiraizumi. These projects often erase intervening historical layers to present idealized, frozen visions of the past. Through these dual lenses, the panel examines processes of authentication and de-authentication, public commemoration and de-commemoration, as well as identity formation .
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper examines how Emperor Meiji's move from Kyoto sparked a movement to "reimagine" Japan's ancient capitals. Starting in Kyoto and spreading to Nara and Naha, the resulting historical reconstructions and festivals shaped local and national identity and modern heritage preservation policies.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores how the Meiji Emperor’s departure from Kyoto in the late 1860s triggered a surge of interest in Japan’s ancient capitals, prompting academics and the general public to create new physical and conceptual reinterpretations of history. As the urban center most profoundly affected by the Emperor's move, Kyoto served as the primary laboratory for these initiatives, which involved the placement of stone markers to identify sites of significant historical landmarks, the partial rebuilding of the Heian palace, and the inauguration of a festival designed to visually narrate Kyoto’s history. Moreover, the festival in particular would quickly become a means to unify old and new Kyoto citizens as the city rapidly expanded in the following decades. These re-imaginings also influenced other former capitals, resulting in a dedicated push to research those cities’ origins, local movements to recreate long-lost structures and establish new festivals. During the first half of the twentieth century the heritage of the former Ryukyu Kingdom was also integrated into this trend and presented as part of Japanese national identity. This paper argues that the survival of its palace architecture is largely due to reconstruction strategies pioneered in Kyoto thirty years prior. Furthermore, beyond the obvious parallels in palace (re)construction, these undertakings shared deeper ties, including an oscillation of the reconstructed buildings between sacred ritual sites and public monuments, a growing reliance on archaeological findings to support the reconstruction efforts, and their instrumental role in shaping broader Japanese policies regarding the protection and exhibition of its heritage.
Paper short abstract
This paper discusses authentication of reconstructed historical buildings in Dejima (Nagasaki) and the Heijō Palace site (Nara). I argue that stakeholders generate authenticity for the reconstructed buildings by enacting two different types of authentication: a performative and a material one.
Paper long abstract
Historical reconstructions challenge clearcut ideas of authenticity. This paper analyzes reconstructed historical buildings in two iconic heritage sites in Japan: Dejima in Nagasaki and the Heijō Palace site in Nara. These buildings are neither materially old nor historically preserved but contemporary objects that were created deliberately to resemble other buildings that disappeared a long time ago. Given that they are not original, can such buildings be considered authentic? Or are they fake because they are recent recreations, and because they contain many details and design features based not on irrefutable historical facts but on expert conjectures and assessments?
Although the word “authenticity” is used often and casually in everyday conversation, it is neither an absolute nor indivisible quality; in practical reality it seems to come in different quantities or at different volumes. Furthermore, authenticity is neither inherent nor some kind of essence that emerges from a building in any objective, transcendental, or universal way. Instead, this paper considers authenticity a value claim, an ascription of a certain value or desirable quality onto a building, object, practice or other phenomenon. And so, instead of asking if historical reconstructions are objectively authentic or not, I approach the question of authenticity in reconstructed buildings by focusing on dynamic attributions of authenticity onto such buildings through stakeholder claims. Consequently, this paper analyzes the ways in which these buildings become objects of institutional and exhibitionary acts of authentication.
I argue that the two reconstruction sites in Nara and Nagasaki generate authenticity from two types of site-specific processes of authentication: a performative and a material one. While the former strategically frames the reconstructed environments as exhibitionary spaces of emotive engagement and trans-temporal convergence, the latter invokes the authenticity supposedly inherent in meticulously repeating the materiality and construction processes of the lost historical buildings. Finally, I round off my discussion of authentication by introducing what I call “the proto-contemporary:” a prevalent notion among reconstruction agents on the two sites that the reconstructions could in fact be considered more authentic than their historical counterparts.
Paper short abstract
Gardens became a national symbol of Japan in the late nineteenth century, with garden history grounding these sites in deep time. After 1945, excavation and reconstruction reshaped historic gardens, raising new questions about their ephemeral character within heritage policy.
Paper long abstract
Gardens became a national symbol of Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, garden history established itself as the field that defined this symbolism by situating gardens within depth of time. The discipline subsequently branched in various directions. After World War II, the excavation and reconstruction of historic gardens gained momentum, with Mori Osamu of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties among its leading figures. Mori was instrumental in the (re)creation of gardens in Nara and Kyoto, as well as in more peripheral locations such as Hiraizumi, which later became a World Heritage Site. These reappearing gardens lent credibility to claims of a renewed garden history, while their scientific framing made the reconstructed sites convincing to a broad public. At the same time, the ephemeral nature of gardens raises questions about the premises of excavation and reconstruction, questions that have gained new urgency in light of recent transnational trends in World Heritage policy. As World Heritage decisions increasingly require demonstrating a site’s global relevance, a purely national understanding of garden history becomes problematic. The reconstruction of a temple garden in Hiraizumi by Mori is therefore now reinterpreted as being embedded in cultural flows between China and Japan during the Heian period.
Paper short abstract
This paper looks at the modern history (1920s-1990s) of Kyoto’s Mimizuka, a mound containing remains of victims killed in Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s late 16th-century invasions of Korea. Specifically, it traces how Mimizuka alternately “reappeared” and “disappeared” in public discourse across the period.
Paper long abstract
Kyoto’s Mimizuka (“ear mound”) was built in 1597 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi during the Imjin Wars, when the noses and ears of those killed in the invasions of Korea were collected and buried there. While the Tokugawa leadership initially used the site to intimidate Korean delegations en route to Edo (Tokyo), Korean opposition led to its concealment on later visits. This paper examines how Mimizuka remained contested in the modern period, repeatedly “reappearing” as a symbol of Japanese military prowess and supposed mercy, before “disappearing” again when officials sought to hide it from foreign visitors after criticism that it conflicted with ideals of civilized imperial rule. Tracing the site into the late twentieth century, it shows how transnational activists in Japan and South Korea once more “reappeared” Mimizuka as a space for critical reflection, revealing a history shaped less by physical change than by shifting discursive strategies of silencing and exposure.