Japan to enhance governmental support for historical preservation
Posted by ampontan on Thursday, January 31, 2008
THIS MIGHT BE HARD TO BELIEVE—it was for me—but the Japanese government’s financial assistance for historical preservation is rather limited. Only 10 local governments are covered under a 1966 law that restricts urban development near historical areas. Two of them, not surprisingly, are Kyoto and Nara.
There is also very little financial assistance from the national government for ensuring the survival of historical buildings through restoration and repair. As an illustration, there were 10,900 such buildings in the central part of Kanazawa, Ishikawa, in 1999, but that number had fallen to 8,700 by 2007.
This state of affairs now seems likely to change, as the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport has formulated a plan for providing financial subsidies to local governments to promote urban development that takes historical scenery into account. The ministry, the Agency for Cultural Affairs, and other government bodies will submit a bill incorporating this plan to the Diet during the current session.
According to news reports, the bill would permit local governments to apply for financial assistance for urban development plans that incorporate the preservation of scenic areas, subject to the approval of the national authorities. The government would provide from one-third to one-half of the expenses for restoring, repairing, or moving historical buildings, and for supporting traditional activities, such as festivals.
Under the terms of the legislation, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs would offer guidance for repair techniques. The bill also would simplify the procedures for converting historical buildings to other uses, such as eating or drinking places. (There’s an example of how well the Japanese handle such conversions about a 10-minute walk from my house. A 19th-century bank has been turned into a museum with a coffee shop and restaurant, and is often used for small-scale concerts.)
Two cities that stand to benefit from the legislation include the aforementioned Kanazawa and Hagi, Yamaguchi. Kanazawa is noted for Kenroku-en, a famous garden that has its own website, and a castle district with old homes. Meanwhile, see this page for an explanation of the attractions of Hagi, which include the homes of samurai and tradesmen dating from the Edo period.
In fact, some of Hagi’s attractions can be seen in the accompanying photo. Yes, they’re models, and yes, they made sure to scrub the location well before taking the picture, but I’d rather lean against a wall in that neighborhood than go to a shopping mall any day!
RYO said
This is not a real criticism of these posts, as they are consistently informative and fun to read, but I have been wondering for a while why the accompanying photos that are used consist of lo-resolution pics that appear heavily pixelated, at least on my screen. I may be out of line in making such a request (in which case I apologise) but it might be nice if I could see sharper looking photos (especially when there are models featured therein!).
ampontan said
Ryo: Thanks for letting me know. I’m doing this based on how it looks on my screen, and they look OK from my end. I could reduce the size to make them sharper, perhaps. Anyone else have the same problem? BTW, how do the photos look for the New Year’s post below that? They look extremely sharp on my monitor.
I just remembered: I’ve seen the site on two or three other computers, one a laptop, one with a big desktop monitor, and the pictures looked OK there, too. Wonder what the deal is?
Willie said
The photos have poor quality when I see them.
bender said
They look fine. What kind of computers do you guys use?
RYO said
That is strange. Every once in a while, a photo will look quite sharp. In looking back over the past month or so, there was a post dated December 30 (“Shogatsu: Pounding Mochi for New Year’s Day in Japan”) that was accompanied by 4 photos. The first 3 were lo-res (11 KB, 12 KB, and 33 KB file sizes) but the last was nice and sharp (107 KB file size).
It’s not a big deal since the text is so well written but I have to admit that there are times when I wish I could see more.
I should point out that the photos appear lo-res regardless of whether I open the page using Firefox or IE. Curiously enough, I’ve never encountered this problem on other blogs.
ampontan said
Ryo: Thanks for the input. Here’s another question. Do you have a TV-style monitor, or, what do you call them, a LCD monitor (flat). Mine’s flat. I’ve been thinking about where I saw the site on other computers, and they were laptops at two different locations, and two different flat screens at a university.
Not sure how to resolve this…
RYO said
I use a 20-inch LCD (flat-screen) monitor that I purchased about a year ago. (I’ll try accessing this site from my other (older) computer in the morning and report on the results if they differ. The monitor is a bit different – flat, but I don’t think it’s an LCD.)
I don’t run a blog so I don’t know what’s involved, but perhaps file sizes are automatically reduced when they’re uploaded. (Although that wouldn’t explain why some photos every once in a while do not appear to be overly pixelated.) In any case, like I said, it’s not a big deal.
As for the post itself, you referred to “an example of how well the Japanese handle such conversions about a 10-minute walk from my house. A 19th-century bank has been turned into a museum with a coffee shop and restaurant, and is often used for small-scale concerts.”
This reminds me of an old downtown-area bank in my hometown of Toronto that was converted years ago into the Hockey Hall of Fame. The Stanley Cup is nicely and conveniently ensconced in what was once a vault.
Overthinker said
“Anyone else have the same problem?”
Absolutely arse quality here. I assumed you were doing it low-res for bandwidth or copyright reasons. I use a 19″ LCD screen running 1280×1040.
Anyway, very interesting post, as it deals with a matter I am quite interested in. I know both Kanazawa and Hagi, and I doubt the models’ location was scrubbed up for that shot: central Hagi, the old merchants’ area where this was taken, is really nice. Hagi is perhaps the single best-preserved old Japanese city there is. Kanazawa is also very nice, and rather more convenient for most people (just over two hours from Kyoto).
Anyway, I’d love to know your sources for this post. What, for example, is a “historic” building for Kanazawa? Anything pre-war?
ampontan said
Overthinker: The source is an article in the Japanese version of Asahi that’s still on line. (They might have run it in the English edition, but I didn’t check.) I usually don’t link to Japanese newspaper articles because they’re gone in a month or less. They didn’t provide the standards for defining a historic building.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Ministry of Cultural Affairs has a definition that might be on their website, but I didn’t look.
Overthinker said
Thanks. I found the article you refer to (with a smaller but clearer pic of the three girls) at http://www.asahi.com/politics/update/0128/TKY200801280419.html for anyone who is interested.
While the 古都保存法 may only cover certain cities, there are other laws, especially regional, that set up such ideas. I think the key here is the increased use of central government funding.
Ye gods. One of the few select cities that the 古都保存法 protects is Zushi, of all places. Why? It’s a hole. The only thing I can think that would influence it is the Imperial Beach-house in the area. The letter of the law is here:
http://law.e-gov.go.jp/cgi-bin/strsearch.cgi
A search of the Diet Archives
http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/cgi-bin/KENSAKU/swk_list.cgi?SESSION=4429&SAVED_RID=3&MODE=1&DTOTAL=3&DMY=7795
reveals little more than a comment from a Prime Minister’s Committee from 1979 that mentions that many of the archaeological sites etc (Nagoe in particular) from the old capital of Kamakura are actually in the municipality of Zushi, which is the only possible reason I can see for its inclusion. At any rate, there was a good deal of controversy about the law in the first place, with its restrictions on development seen as a Bad Thing.
Martin F said
Great posts on festivals, and I like your choice of photos. They look fine on my LCD screen, but somethimes I wish you would provide a high resolution photo and just say “click to enlarge”. It can be great to have a 500-1000 KB photo once in a while. It also depends on your photo policy, if you you are ok with people saving and using your images, etc.
RYO, Cheers for the info about that Stanley Cup museum! We have a lot of Swedish hockey players over in your parts of Canada, as you know. Börje Salming…?
Overthinker said
Ampontan – I made a post here last night that seems to have been eaten by your spam killer, probably as it contained two URLs (one for the Asahi, one for the National Diet Archives). Can it be resurrected?
In this case, Martin, it seems that Ampontan’s photo here is borrowed from the Asahi article, so there are presumably issues of copyright.