Making Japanese Heritage (Japan Anthropology Workshop Series)

239 Pages·2010·6.27 MB·English

by  Christoph Brumann

Making Japanese Heritage
This book examines the making of Japanese heritage, investigating the ways
in which particular objects, practices and institutions are ascribed public recog-
nitionand political significance. Through detailedethnographicandhistorical
case studies, it analyses the social, economic, and even global dimensions of
cultural heritage. It shows how claims to heritage status in Japan stress dif-
ferentmaterialqualitiesofobjects,placesandpeople–basedupontheirages,
originality and usage.
Following on an introduction that thoroughly assesses the field, the ethno-
graphicandhistoriographiccasesaddresssuchthingsasgeisha;nômasks;the
tea ceremony; urban architecture; automata; a utopian commune and the
sites of Mitsubishi company history. They examine how their heritage value
is made and re-made and show how the heritage industry adds values to
existing assets such as sacredness, urban charm or architectural and ethnic
distinctiveness.
Making Japanese Heritage questions the interpretation of heritage as an
enduring expression of social relations, aesthetic values and authenticity
which, once conferred, undergoes no subsequent change, and standard dis-
missals of heritage as merely a tool for enshrining the nation; supporting the

powerful; fostering nostalgic escapism; or advancing capitalist exploitation.
This book is a rigorous assessment of how conceptions of Japanese heritage
have been forged, and provides a wealth of evidence that calls for reconsidering
established assumptions onthenature and social roles of heritage.
Christoph Brumann is a DFG Heisenberg Fellow at the University of Cologne,
Germany. He has published widely on utopian communes in Japan and world-
wide, gift-giving in Japan, the anthropological concept of culture, globalisation
andurbananthropology.
Rupert Cox is Lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester,
UK.Hisresearchisontheintersectionofartandanthropologywithaparticular
emphasis on sound recording. His books include The Zen Arts: An Anthro-
pological Study of the Culture of Aesthetic Form in Japan and The Culture of
Copying in Japan (both published by Routledge).
Japan Anthropology Workshop Series
Series editor: Joy Hendry, Oxford Brookes University
Editorial Board:
Pamela Asquith, University of Alberta
Eyal Ben-Ari, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hirochika Nakamaki, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka
Kirsten Refsing, University of Copenhagen
Wendy Smith, Monash University
Founder Member of the Editorial Board:
Jan van Bremen, University of Leiden
1 A Japanese View of Nature 7 Dismantling the East–West
The world of living things Dichotomy
Kinji Imanishi EssaysinhonourofJanvanBremen
Translated by Pamela J. Asquith, Edited by Joy Hendry and
Heita Kawakatsu, Shusuke Yagi Heung Wah Wong
and Hiroyuki Takasaki
Edited and introduced by Pamela 8 PilgrimagesandSpiritualQuestsin
J. Asquith Japan
Edited by Maria Rodriguez del
2 Japan’s Changing Generations Alisal, Peter Ackermann and
Are young people creating a new Dolores Martinez
society?
Edited by Gordon Mathews and 9 The Culture of Copying in Japan
Bruce White Critical and historical perspectives
Edited by Rupert Cox
3 The Care of the Elderly in Japan
Yongmei Wu 10 Primary School in Japan
Self, individuality and learning in
4 Community Volunteers in Japan elementary education
Peter Cave
Everyday stories of social change
Lynne Y. Nakano
11 Globalisation and Japanese
Organisational Culture
5 Nature, Ritual and Society in
Japan’s Ryukyu Islands An ethnography of a Japanese
corporation in France
Arne Røkkum
Mitchell W. Sedgwick
6 Psychotherapy and Religion in
12 Japanese Tourism and Travel
Japan
Culture
The Japanese introspection
Edited by Sylvie Guichard-Anguis
practice of Naikan
and Okpyo Moon
Chikako Ozawa-de Silva
13 Making Japanese Heritage
Edited by Christoph Brumann and
Rupert Cox
Making Japanese Heritage
Edited by
Christoph Brumann and Rupert Cox
Firstpublished2010
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
SimultaneouslypublishedintheUSAandCanada
byRoutledge
270MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2010 Christoph Brumann and Rupert Cox for selection and editorial
matter;individualcontributorstheircontribution
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orin
anyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwriting
fromthepublishers.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging inPublicationData
MakingJapaneseheritage/editedbyChristophBrumannandRupertCox.
p.cm.–(JapanAnthropologyWorkshopSeries)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Materialculture–Japan.2.Japan–Sociallifeandcustoms.I.Brumann,
Christoph.II.Cox,RupertIII.Series.
GN635.J2M242009
306.0952–dc22 2009003456
ISBN 0-203-87411-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 978-0-415-41314-5 (hbk)
ISBN978-0-203-87411-0(ebk)
Contents
List of illustrations vii
List of contributors ix
Series editor’s preface xii
Acknowledgments and technical note xiv
Introduction 1
RUPERTCOXANDCHRISTOPHBRUMANN
PARTI
Performing Japaneseness through heritage 19
1 Making “Japanese” tea 21
KRISTINSURAK
2 Before making heritage: internationalisation of geisha in the
Meiji period 31
MARIKOOKADA

3 Making art in the Japanese way: nihonga as process and
symbolic action 44
ARUNASGELUNAS
PARTII
Institutionalising Japanese heritage 57
4 Architecture, folklore studies, and cultural democracy:
Nagakura Saburô and Hida Minzoku-mura 59
PETERSIEGENTHALER
5 Nô masks on stage and in museums: approaches to the
contextualisation and conservation of the Pitt Rivers Museum
nô mask collection 78
RACHELPAYNE
vi Contents
6 Company culture or patinated past? The display of corporate
heritage in Sumitomo 92
BARTGAENS
PARTIII
Japanese local heritage and the wider world 109
7 A heady heritage: the shifting biography of kashira (puppet
heads) as cultural heritage objects in the Awaji tradition 111
JANEMARIELAW
8 Cloth and identity in Yaeyama: a search for context 124
AMANDAMAYERSTINCHECUM
9 Houses in motion: the revitalisation of Kyoto’s architectural
heritage 149
CHRISTOPHBRUMANN
10 Automated alterities: movement and identity in the history of
the Japanese Kobe ningyô 171
RUPERTCOX
PARTIV
Perpetuating Japanese heritage 187
11 Maintaining a Zen tradition in Japan: the concrete problem
of priest succession 189
MASAKIMATSUBARA

12 Debating the past to determine the future in Shinkyô,
a Japanese commune 202
MICHAELSHACKLETON
Index 215
Illustrations
Figures
4.1 Looking across the pond at Hida no Sato in the summer of 2002 60
4.2 The settlement of Ogimachi, a World Heritage site, is made up
of several dozen gasshô structures 66
4.3 The first structure to host the Hida folklore museum, the
Wakayama house, is now an integral part of the open-air museum 68
5.1 The nô mask display 79
5.2 Back of chûjô mask 82
5.3 Front of chûjô mask 82
5.4 Back of magojirô mask 84
5.5 Front of magojirô mask 84
5.6 Interior of Pitt Rivers Museum 88
6.1 Ôbaku (block of copper ore) wrapped with Shinto ropes
(shimenawa), Besshi Copper Mine Commemorial Museum,
Niihama 101
6.2 Statue of Kusunoki Masashige (Nankô) (1294–1336), outside
the Imperial Palace, Tokyo 103
8.1 Minsaa sash made by Kuroshima Sumi, Taketomi Island,
Okinawa, c. 1980 124
8.2 Three young girls, Okinawa, by Torii Ryûzô, 1904 133
8.3 Women of Nakasuji village, Taketomi Island, wear minsaa sashes
for the local festival, Yunkai, in 2000 137
8.4 The five/four minsaa pattern adorns the Yaeyama Post Office in
Ishigaki, 2000 139
8.5 The sidewalk in front of Ishigaki’s Chisun Hotel is paved with
blue and white tiles arranged in the five/four minsaa pattern, 2001 140
9.1 Street front of classical kyô-machiya 150
9.2 Paper model and ground floor plan of classical kyô-machiya 151
9.3 Kyô-machiya interior and garden 151
9.4 Renovated kyô-machiya pastry shop with glass front 155
9.5 Renovated kyô-machiya integrating features of European-style
street café 156
viii Illustrations
9.6 Kyô-machiya-style second floor over parking-tower drive-through 158
10.1 Kôbe ningyô 174
Table
9.1 Personal reasons for machiya preservation given by members
of citizens’ group 163
Contributors
Christoph Brumann is a DFG Heisenberg Fellow and social anthropologist
based at the University of Cologne. He has published extensively about
utopian communes in Japan and elsewhere, gift-giving in Japan, the
anthropological concept of culture, globalisation, heritage, and the city of
Kyoto. Currently,heiscompletingabookmanuscriptentitled‘ARightto
thePast:Tradition,DemocracyandtheTownscapeinContemporaryKyoto’
and has started a multi-sited ethnographic field study of UNESCO World
Heritage as a transnational institution.
Rupert Cox is Lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Manche-
ster. His research is on the intersection of art and anthropology with a
particular emphasis on sound recording. His books include The Zen Arts:
an anthropological study of the culture of aesthetic form in Japan, and The
Culture of Copying in Japan (both published by Routledge).
Bart Gaens is Senior Researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research
has focussed on the business organization of early modern merchant
families, contemporary Japanese corporate culture, and representations
of the salaryman in popular culture. In addition he has published on the

Asia-EuropeMeeting(ASEM)andcurrentlycoordinatesaresearchproject
on the EU’s interregional relations with Asia.
Arunas Gelunas, Ph.D., teaches art theory and philosophy at the Vilnius
Academy of Arts. He is also a visiting lecturer at the Centre for Oriental
Studies, Vilnius University. He has published widely on art, philosophy
andthenewmediainJapanandelsewhere,bothintheLithuanianandthe
international academic and cultural press. His artistic works have been
shown in 15 individual and more than 40 group exhibitions worldwide,
and he has received awards for graphics and book design from Japan,
France and Lithuania.
Jane Marie Law is Associate Professor of Japanese Religions at the Depart-
ment of Asian Studies, Cornell University, and Director of the Asian
Religions Ph.D. Program. She served as director of the Cornell Religious
Studies Program for eight years. Her books include Puppets of Nostalgia: