Cover art on the road

THE TOKAIDO, Japan’s busiest transportation corridor, links Tokyo and Yokohama, the country’s two largest cities, to Osaka (#3) via Nagoya (#4) and Kyoto (#7)–every one with more than a million people. Those who want to hit the road have their choice of JR’s Tokaido main railway line, the Tokaido Shinkansen, and the Tomei and Meishin expressways.

Hiroshige scene of Shirasuka

The Japanese have been hitting this road for a very long time. Records show that government officials used parts of it in the ninth century. But it wasn’t until Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first of the Tokugawa Shoguns, ordered the construction of 53 post stations along the road in 1601 that it became a key part of the national infrastructure. In those days, the Tokaido (which means East Sea Road) connected Tokyo, then called Edo, where the Shogun held court, with Kyoto, the home of the Imperial Court.

The Shogun also ordered the country’s feudal lords to alternate their residence between their home fiefdoms and Edo once a year, all the better to keep an eye on them. (Those who lived in less accessible places had to show up only once every three years.) In short order, the road became a pageant of Japanese humanity–the pomp and circumstance of daimyo processions with the lords carried in palanquins suspended from poles shouldered by retainers, while everyone else, including monks, samurai, and just plain folks, traveled by horseback and on foot. Small businesses catering to the travelers thrived along the roadside and in the post station towns. And what better scenery for a trip could there be than the views of the sea to the east and Mt. Fuji to the west?

It was inevitable that the Tokaido would grow larger than life in the popular imagination, and it came to be used as the subject of many works of art and literature. Perhaps the most famous of these is Hiroshige’s woodblock prints of The Fifty-Three Stations of Tokaido dating from 1832.

The road also inspired the creation of a new folk art form in the town of Otsu in what is now Shiga, when artists began producing inexpensive prints in quantity to be sold as souvenirs to the people passing through. Called otsu-e, or Otsu pictures, the form is still used by contemporary artists. Meanwhile, the centuries-old originals, originally meant to be quick one-offs for a quick buck, are exhibited in art museums in Japan and overseas.

With all those travelers doing all that traveling, a cottage industry of travel guides was sure to follow. In a brilliant stroke, Jippensha Ikku combined one such guide describing the sites and scenes along the route with picaresque tales of the adventures and misadventures of two Edo men on a pilgrimage to the Ise Shrine. The collected stories were called Tokaidochu Hizakurige, translated as The Shank’s Mare, and it is still available in English today. Hiroshige contributed some artistic synergy by carving woodblock prints illustrating scenes from the book.

The days of palanquin-borne feudal lords, samurai, and a pair of rascals surreptitiously sliding into the futon of women slumbering in roadside inns are long gone, but fascination with the Tokaido still remains.

Count among the fascinated Tsujino Fumiyo, a 70-year-old resident of a Mie town that was one of the 53 post stations on the Tokaido. Four years ago, Ms. Tsujino started taking art classes in her home town, which seems to have developed her powers of observation in addition to her artistic sensibilities. She noticed that new manhole covers on the neighborhood roads featured a decorative design. She then learned that the 53 municipalities which were once post towns also had manhole cover art depicting scenes of local interest.

That inspired her to take rubbings of all 53 manhole cover varieties. She dragooned her husband into driving her to the sites, after first asking municipal officials where to look for the objets trouvé. It took her about 30 minutes to do each rubbing, including the preliminary washing, and four years to collect them all.

In keeping with the spirit of the famous Miyazawa Kenji poem Ame ni mo Makezu (Undeterred by Rain), she stuck with her mission regardless of the weather. It isn’t hard to picture in the mind’s eye her husband patiently holding an umbrella while she focused on bringing the grimy industrial art of the streets to a wider audience.

Mission accomplished! She colored and mounted all 53 rubbings, and recently displayed them at the Tokaido Manhole Cover Design Exhibit in Kusatsu, Shiga. Admission to the exhibit was free.

The lucky visitors were treated to scenes that included a kimono-clad beauty borne across the Oi river in Shimada, Shizuoka, a mythical dolphin-like creature called the shachihoko from Nagoya, and the Otsu Festival in the aforementioned city of Otsu.

Now I ask you—doesn’t it speak well about a place when it turns the street entrances to its sewers into something that can be hung on a museum wall without a hint of irony?

Afterwords:

Do not fail to unfurl this interactive map of the 53 stations of the Tokaido. Clicking on any of the stations brings up the Hiroshige prints of that particular site. The only advantage a real museum has over this virtual one is that you can accidentally on purpose strike up casual conversations with nearby women that strike your fancy.

And don’t overlook this previous post on otsu-e.

The multiple exposures of early Joseon films

THOSE FOLKS interested in the history of Japan, Korea, and international cinema have been delighted by the discovery and restoration during the past five years of the first movies filmed in Korea. Made during the period of Japanese colonization/merger, the films were assumed to have been lost. For that matter, most of Japan’s prewar movies also no longer exist, and the Korean finds are rarer still.

The content of the films themselves is intriguing, to say the least. Here’s a quick translation of an article that appeared in Monday’s edition of the Nishinippon Shimbun about a screening and symposium that will be held in Fukuoka City on Saturday. I’ve appended some more information that I found on Japanese-language websites. The word choice in the article follows that of the author, Prof. Shimokawa Masaharu of the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture.

*****

Since 2004, films made on the Korean Peninsula during the latter part of the colonization period that were thought to have been lost have been discovered in the storage areas of the China Film Archives in Beijing and other locations. The Joseon films of the colonization period are referred to as the Dark Age in South Korea, and it’s not just because the country had become an Imperial vassal state. The films themselves were lost, which agonized those people interested in the field and who wanted to study the history of the medium’s development in South Korea. The work to find these films began after 2000, primarily at the Korean Film Archive in Seoul.

Scene from The Crossroads of Youth

What was the truth of the Joseon colony? Was it plundered, or was it developed? That question is the focus of the historical conflict between the two countries, but one has the sense that emotions based on ethnicity have superseded an investigation of the facts. The realism and impact of the movie medium might well have the power to destroy stereotyped historical interpretations. The Joseon films that have been discovered seem to offer a new perspective for research into the colony during the war.

These movies include the oldest extant Joseon talkie, Mimong (迷夢 or Delusion, 1936, Yang Ju-nam, director); Homeless Angels, a story of urban street children, 1941; Volunteers, a story of wartime mobilization (1941, An Seo-yeong, director); and Korean Strait, 1944. They are sold in South Korea in a series of DVDs called The Excavated Past.

When I watched the DVD given to me in October 2007 by someone involved in the project, I was surprised by the unexpected scenes that unfolded before my eyes. Homeless Angels starts with a night scene of streetcars in the thriving downtown area of Jongno, Seoul. Then a barmaid, her patron, and the street children appear. In Springtime on the Peninsula (1941) modern Western buildings rise from within a traditional Korean residential district. All the movies unquestionably show a city in the midst of modernization.

Some scenes are difficult to understand. The female lead in Volunteers is Mun Ye-bong (N.B.: 文芸峰, an obvious stage name; the hanja mean artistic peak). After liberation she became an actress in North Korea. She was 24 at the time of the filming, and her beauty recalls Joseon white chinaware.

The last scene is puzzling. She is seeing off her fiancé, who has volunteered for military service. She picks up a Japanese flag that has fallen in the street and regards it with a cynical smile. The camera moves in for a close-up of her face that continues until the movie ends. The meaning of this scene is not clear. (The scene drew the most attention when it was broadcast on NHK television in the program, Korean-Style Cinema: The remnants of opposition.)

The dialogue in the films was entirely in Japanese after 1944. Before then, the dialogue was a rough mixture of Japanese and Korean. Was the prohibition of the Korean language a policy that was due more to the war than to colonization? That question rises to the surface. The place name 京城 (Keijo) often appears in the movies’ subtitles, but the actors invariably say Seoul. The popular theory that the name Keijo was forced on the people while Seoul was forbidden seems to be false.

Heitai-san (Soldier/honorific, 1944, Bang Han-jun, director) will be shown at Kyushu University in Fukuoka City on the 18th. Its theme of the “prosecution of the holy war” is a continuation of the themes of Volunteers and Korean Strait. This will be the film’s first screening in Japan. Following the movie will be a symposium in which Prof. Choi Gil-sun of the University of East Asia will participate. He holds that these works, which had been dismissed as propaganda films, should be understood in the context of the period and for their policy intent as part of the research into the colony. Arima Manabu of the Research Center for Korean Studies will also participate. He says the rediscovered Joseon films will excite those who want to know more about the Korean colony and Japan in the modern era.

I hope this symposium with the participation of such distinguished researchers is successful.

*****

Prof. Shimokawa seems particularly interested in the films with a wartime text, which is understandable, but some Japanese are drawn to other aspects of the movies. One such focus of attention is the depiction of the emergence of a modern, urban consumer culture in Korea during this period.

One example is the 1934 silent film Crossroads of Youth. This was a major discovery for two reasons. First, it is the oldest known silent Korean film in existence, and it was made at the peak of the silent era on the peninsula. (The first talkie was made in 1935.) Second, it has been reproduced from an original print that had been in private hands since liberation. All the films found in other countries were copies of the originals.

The Crossroads of Youth looks at life in Seoul from the perspective of a man and his younger sister who move to the capital from their hometown. The opening scene depicts wealthy young businessmen playing golf.

Director An Jong-hua made 12 films from 1930 to 1960, but this is the first one to have turned up. Part of the film was unrecoverable and only 74 minutes remain. The restoration work was performed in Japan.

Another example is the film Mimong, or Delusion, which is the oldest surviving Korean talkie. Only 48 minutes remain of this remarkable movie.

Mimong tells the story of a middleclass housewife who lives in Seoul with her husband and daughter. Her husband grills her about the details of a visit she made to a downtown department store. Fed up with being treated like a “bird in a cage”, as she puts it, she abandons her family. She later meets another man and moves into a hotel room with him. Not long afterwards, however, her romantic interest shifts to a traditional dancer.

She then makes two discoveries. First, her live-in lover at the hotel is not a man of means, as she had thought. He is actually a delivery boy for a clothes cleaner. Second, she finds out that he has been breaking into other rooms at the hotel to steal the guests’ money and valuables, so she coolly reports him to the police.

After hearing that the dancer has left Seoul, she jumps into a taxicab and directs the driver to take her to Seoul Station. She urges the cabbie to step on it, but he gets reckless and runs over a pedestrian, who turns out to be the woman’s daughter. Shamed by her wicked ways, the woman takes poison at her daughter’s bedside.

Forget the plot line and consider this: Life in Seoul during the period of colonization/merger must not have been so harsh as to prevent the 1930s Joseon version of a Desperate Housewife from having enough money and leisure time to gad about in department stores and taxicabs and hop from bed to bed.

Granted, some of the Depression-era movies made at the same time in the United States depicted a lifestyle beyond the means of the theater patrons. Yet those lifestyles, and other more modest but comfortable lifestyles–in which young married women in the cities could afford to shop in department stores–existed nonetheless.

It’s possible that the heroine of Delusion was a patron of the Seoul branch of the upscale Japanese department store Mitsukoshi, which opened there in 1930. Private sector retail operations don’t expand overseas unless they expect to turn a profit. The woman might even have been one of those in the second illustration who chose to stand and hang on to the strap while riding the bus, rather than sit on an open bench–all the better to show off their new watches and rings.

But here’s the most important point: These films are being openly screened in Japan, available to the public free of charge, and discussed at symposiums by Koreans and Japanese together. Scenes are shown on Japan’s quasi-public television network. The work to restore some of them is being done in Japan. Nor are they subject to a ban in South Korea. Anyone with a DVD player can buy a set, take them home, and watch them.

And no one’s making a big fuss over it, though the Japanese are less prone to public self-congratulation than people in some other countries. The newspaper article ran on page nine, just above the fold on the left-hand side.

Kabuki and paper airplanes

FOR MANY AMERICANS and people from other younger countries—and that includes me—the approach to traditional culture requires an attitude of respect and reverence that does not admit of tomfoolery. The idea is put your socks on, wear nice clothes, sit up straight, and keep the chatter to a minimum. Put down that comic book, spit out the gum, and wipe that grin off your face!

It’s with that outlook (or baggage) that many of us come to Japan, where one encounters more tradition in a five-minute walk down the street than the average American will see in an entire month. Ah, but this country is full of surprises, and the way the Japanese handle their traditions continues to surprise me even after a quarter of a century.

That isn’t to say the Japanese aren’t serious or don’t behave with respect. Rather, there seems to be less of a barrier between their traditions and daily life. The general idea seems to be that a person can be serious and still have fun.

An excellent illustration is the annual goings-on at the Kaho Theater of Iizuka, Fukuoka, a small kabuki playhouse built in the style of those popular during the 17th and 18th centuries.

The theater was extensively damaged by flooding after heavy rains in July 2003, and every year since then the facility holds a special summer event to commemorate the restoration. It’s partly a gesture of thanks to the local people for their financial contributions, but it’s also a way to eliminate any potentially intimidating invisible barriers separating them from the residents, particularly children.

The event is held for a maximum of 100 primary school children, and this year runs from 18-20 July, a Saturday afternoon to a Monday afternoon. (That Monday is a national holiday.)

Here are some of the activities the children will see or participate in during the event:

• A juggling performance on the kabuki stage
• A paper airplane contest, with the participants launching their creations from the stage
• A giant origami contest
• An outdoor barbecue party
• A sing-along with jazz music
• Ghost stories at night
• Camping out in the theater’s box seats (the traditional design makes this easy)
• A jump rope contest
• Bowling matches using the hanamichi as the lanes. The hanamichi in a kabuki theater is an elevated runway that runs from the stage to the rear of the hall.
• Somen nagashi (That link shows you everything you need to know.)

It’s common practice in Japan to have the participants write their impressions of an event at its conclusion, particularly school children. They’re called kansobun. The children at the Kaho Theater will be asked to write haiku as their kansobun.

Another common practice—which I think should be exported to the United States immediately—is for the participants to work together to clean up the site after an event is officially declared over, and put everything back where it belongs. They’re going to do that here, too.

It’s not going to be all fun and games, of course. There will be guided tours of the facility, short kabuki demonstrations, and lectures.

The price for the full weekend is JPY 2,500 ($US 26.00) per participant.

Now how’s that for a way to get children comfortable with traditional culture?

Then again, kabuki was originally pop culture, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at all.

So pointless it’s comical

ONE MEANS by which the opposition Democratic Party of Japan promises to finance some of the extravagant spending promises in its platform is to eliminate government waste, fraud, and abuse. That’s plausible on the surface, because waste, fraud, and abuse is the hallmark of governments (and large organizations) everywhere. Even the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has formed a project team to ferret out and eliminate waste in government.

A Satonaka work of media art

Earlier this month, the LDP team called for the elimination of a government plan to build what was described as a national media and arts center that would collect and exhibit comics, cartoons, and video games.

The plan was contained in the FY 2009 supplementary budget passed at the end of May, which allocated JPY 11.7 billion (about $US 122,500,000) for the center. Some ruling party MPs were opposed from the start, but their opposition went for naught.

Explained a bureaucrat:

“As a content industry, (this industry) has a role in supporting the Japanese economy. There is meaning is pursuing this as a national policy.”

The Agency of Cultural Affairs calls this “world-renowned ‘media art’” and hopes it “creates a whirlwind of new art originating from Japan.”

To his credit, DPJ President Hatoyama Yukio has repeatedly criticized the project. During a debate with Aso Taro in the Diet, he said:

“I know the Prime Minister likes comics and cartoons, but is it necessary to spend 11.7 billion yen to create a giant state-run comic book coffee shop and further enrich an independent administrative agency?”

Replied the prime minister:

“I think it is important now to create an international center for the media arts, referred to as the Japanese Cool, for cartoons, comics, and games. It will be a core institution for promoting Japanese culture. The new National Media Arts Center will be established as part of the Independent Administrative Institution, National Museum of Art, but the management and operation of the center will be outsourced and the funds it requires will be self-generated.”

Is that the stench of amakudari—cushy second jobs for retired bureaucrats—wafting through your monitor? And who really believes this center will be financially self-supporting?

Some also criticize the project for lacking originality. A panel of experts produced a lackluster report that proposes the center be housed in a four-or-five story building in Tokyo with exhibition rooms and a hall for screening films. They’ve yet to offer suggestions for the content to be displayed.

The lack of clear standards for the content troubles more than a few people. Perhaps the panel of experts would exclude items that many would find objectionable. (Or perhaps they wouldn’t, if the controversy of the public funding to exhibit Piss Christ in the United States is anything to go by.) The unanswered question is who knows where they would draw the line. One can almost guarantee it: The wrong place.

The panel of experts initially consisted of seven people, to which another seven were added. They are primarily from academia and the related industries. One of them is University of Tokyo Professor Hamano Yasuki, a specialist in Media Environment in the Department of Human and Engineered Environmental Studies. He has written several books, one of which is called Media as an Ideology.

Another is cartoonist Satonaka Machiko. Golly, what do you suppose she thinks of the project? On her blog, she says it is too easily misunderstood, and adds:

“Unless Japan is recognized overseas, there will still be a tendency to look down on Japanese culture. This must not be allowed to continue forever. We need a center to promote the country and say, ‘Here’s how wonderful the Japanese media arts are!’”

What Ms. Satonaka doesn’t seem to realize is that if any people overseas do look down on Japanese culture (and I suspect there aren’t many, rather than it being a tendency), their disregard is more likely caused by those who want to pretend that comic books and cartoons have serious artistic value. Why not just admit that the project is designed to attract the cash of the people attracted to chewing gum culture and be done with it?

Project team member Kono Taro of the LDP told reporters the project should be halted immediately because insufficient consideration was given to the taxpayer’s liability and the selection of the items to be exhibited.

When Mr. Kono was asked why he voted to approve the budget, he replied:

“The ruling party must also accept the responsibility.”

After speaking to the media, Mr. Kono briefed the chair of the project team and the Diet members aligned with the Education Ministry (the so-called tribal MPs), which is also involved with cultural affairs. Are the dots starting to connect yet?

The Cultural Affairs Agency plans to acquire land for the center this year and open the doors sometime in FY 2011. They haven’t stopped work, the project team’s objections notwithstanding. The preparatory committee plans to meet on 2 July and formulate the standards for the content to be displayed later this month.

Ms. Satonaka claims the annual Japan Media Arts Festival is insufficient to promote the industry. The 13th festival begins in mid-July and continues until mid-September; here’s their website. Take a look and see if you think a permanent government-financed home for all that is worth an investment of more than 120 million dollars.

Let’s be clear about this: This project is a perfect illustration of what people mean when they say they want to smash the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy. Japan’s infamous Iron Triangle still exists. The three legs of the triangle are the bureaucracy, the legislature, and industry, and they’ve formed a unit for their mutual enrichment at the expense of the taxpayers. People usually associate the Iron Triangle with public works projects, including highways and bridges to nowhere, but this plan demonstrates there is no limit to the imagination of bureaucrats with nearly unlimited public funds at their disposal.

It’s time to cut out the nonsense, admit that former Prime Minister Koizumi, Takenaka Heizo, and their allies were right, and maintain the fight against this expensive foolishness. It’s not possible to say, “end it once and for all”, because this fight never ends, anywhere. Mr. Hatoyama may be on the side of the angels in this battle, but he’s just as anxious to stop the privatization of Japan Post as he is to stop this project. Just as there’s no reason for the government to fund a comic book museum, there’s also no reason for the government to operate a retail financial institution, life insurance company, resort chain—or even deliver the mail.

Maintaining this fight requires the vigilance of the mass media, but they’re unreliable allies because they often pay attention to the wrong things. They require ratings and consumers, and that means pandering to the popular imagination. For example, they’ve filed few stories about this issue over the past month, yet found plenty of time and space to cover a flu epidemic that will infect very few in Japan and kill even fewer.

I stumbled across this story by accident in Akahata, the house organ of the Japanese Communist Party. That the controversy was semi-buried in the mainstream media speaks volumes about their priorities. Their failure to cover the debate despite their knowledge of it makes them just as culpable for producing this barrel of pork as the bureaucrats and the self-serving “media arts” content producers.

Afterwords:

One of the winners in the Manga Division of the 2008 Media Arts Festival was a comic called Real Clothes. Here is the summary from the MAF website:

Kinue, a woman of 27, works for a major department store in Shinjuku, a very competitive environment. Unexpectedly, she is transferred from the bedding floor, where she loves to work, to the women’s clothes floor. This is the story of her search for meaning in dressing, working, and living, and also of her personal development through her work and dealings with devious new coworkers.

Here is the reason given for the award:

I was not only captivated by the artist’s outstanding drawing skill and sharp, effective lines, but also by the clever storytelling, and healthy elegance and liveliness of the heroine, who almost seemed as though she were coming out of the picture. Although the same can be said of her other works, the exhaustive research into the thematic subject matter is amazing. This story is set on a women’s clothes floor, one of the topliner sections in a department store. She lives positively and energetically. However, her romance begins to hinder her work, and she must choose between them! It is the sort of life-changing turning point that all working women have to face once in their lives. The artist faces this matter squarely, portraying the naked soul of humanity. The heroine eventually chooses her work, and breaks up with her beloved boyfriend. The expression of her intense feeling of loss is strongly conveyed and the reader cannot help but feel deep compassion. This modern heroine’s way of life is very interesting, and I hope that women currently facing similar decisions in the workplace have the opportunity to open the pages of this manga.

Another award was given to the comic Shiori to Shimiko. The creator was asked about his motivation. He said:

“With regard to Shiori to Shimiko, my main intention was to produce a horror manga for girls.”

Taxpayers might consider this: You’ve spent at least 12 years of study to graduate from high school, and many of you have devoted an additional four or more years to university study. You’ve hopped through all the hurdles to finding employment, and now spend the better part of the day five days a week to provide for yourself and your family.

But instead getting to spend the money you earn on your priorities, a band of brigands in Tokyo (it makes no difference that they wear business suits instead of masks and work in offices instead of hiding in caves) has decided to confiscate part of your income to create a comic book/cartoon/gameboy museum. One of their excuses is that some people overseas still don’t take Japanese culture seriously.

Who’s serving whom here? Is the government (including both the legislature and civil servants) serving you? Or are you shackled in servitude to them?

To conclude, Japanese readers should not misunderstand. This isn’t about Japan; it’s simply a Japanese example of what goes on every day, everywhere else. The United States, where I come from, is just as bad, if not worse. It’s just that I pay taxes to the Japanese government now instead of the American one.

Matsuri da! (106): The Korean divinity at a Shinto shrine

SOLDIERS BRING HOME all sorts of souvenirs when they return from foreign battlefields—unusual rocks from uninhabited beaches, Luger pistols, hachimaki headbands, severed ears and other body parts, unpleasant diseases, and war brides speaking unfamiliar languages, to mention a few.

The kachigarasu

Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded the Korean Peninsula twice in the 1590s, and his staging area and jumping off point was located in what is now Chinzei-cho in Saga. He had the Nagoya Castle built there in just five months; after the Osaka Castle, it was the largest in Japan at the time. In those days, the area was part of the Nabeshima domain, ruled by Nabeshima Naoshige. A skilled military leader, Nabeshima’s epigrams and deeds were recorded in the classic samurai how-to manual Hagakure by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, an attendant of the daimyo’s grandson Mitsushige.

Nabeshima accompanied Toyotomi on his Korean excursions and brought back two unusual souvenirs. One was a type of black-and-white magpie known in Japanese as the kachigarasu, which is still found in Japan almost exclusively in Saga and Fukuoka.

Though the bird resembles the karasu, or the all-black crow that lives throughout Japan, it is of a different genus and species. The Koreans call it the kkachi, so the etymology is very clear. They like to nest in utility poles—there are probably some right now peering down on the street in my neighborhood—which gives the Kyushu Electric maintenance men a spring- and summer-long headache.

Nabeshima’s second war souvenir was a Korean ceramist named Lee Sam-pyeung, who arrived in 1598 and would later revolutionize ceramics production in Japan from his base in Arita, Saga. Because he couldn’t find the proper type of clay in the area to make the sophisticated Chinese/Korean type of porcelain already in demand in Southeast Asia and Europe, Lee initially worked with a group of 12 Korean ceramists to make what is known as Karatsu ware.

That changed in 1616, when Lee struck kaolin—the ceramist’s equivalent of gold—at Mt. Izumi in Arita. That’s where he built the first noborigama, or climbing kiln (sometimes called dragon kiln) in Japan required for firing fine porcelain. It was the first of two strokes of exceptional luck for the Japanese ceramics industry.

The second occurred when the Ming Dynasty in China collapsed in 1644. The European nobility and wealthy merchants were buying enormous quantities of Chinese porcelain, but the turmoil at dynasty’s end caused many kilns to shut down. Some were damaged in the battles between the dynasty and the Manchus. The succeeding Qing Dynasty government then stopped trade altogether from 1656 to 1684. The end of supply from China spurred the Dutch East India company to turn to Arita porcelain to fill the prodigious demand. The Dutch were the only foreigners allowed to maintain a presence in Japan at the time, and they had an office on Dejima, a small island off the city of Nagasaki. (Land reclamation operations later made it part of the city itself.) As a result, an enormous amount of porcelain was shipped from Arita to Europe from then until the mid-18th century.

Two factors drove this demand. The first was that in Europe in those days, porcelain was a beautiful and exotic rarity from distant places barely imaginable for most people. The first porcelain manufactured on the continent was in Meissen in 1709. The production techniques existed only in Asia, so porcelain items were considered treasures. Deliveries took several months over the Silk Road or in sailing ships. Some even thought porcelain had magical properties, and believed it would become discolored and crack if it came into contact with poison.

The second was that the only people who could afford to indulge themselves with porcelain purchases were the European and Ottoman Turkish nobility, and the wealthiest of the merchant class. The customer base may have been limited, but those customers had plenty of money to spend on whatever struck their fancy. Their passion for collecting became a mania that was almost degenerate in its profligacy. One German Elector traveled to the Amsterdam docks to buy immense quantities right off the ship. Their frenzy culminated in the creation of porcelain rooms, in which the entire chamber was filled with porcelain displays from floor to ceiling, and sometimes included the ceiling. The rooms often had mirrored walls to enhance the effect. A single room wasn’t enough for Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. He built the Japanisches Palais in Dresden, a palace for holding and displaying the more than 20,000 pieces of Chinese and Japanese porcelain in his collection. (It was never used for that, however, and became a library instead.)

Though the huge shipments to Europe ended in the mid-18th century, Arita is still one of the premier ceramics-producing areas of Japan. Every year during the Golden Week holidays, a period in which five public holidays fall from 28 April to 5 May, the town holds a ceramics fair in which the entire business of the residents is given over to selling ceramics and porcelain from their storefronts or stalls in the street. That includes barber shops and cafes as well as the ceramics merchants and producers who do it for a living.

The 106th Arita ceramics fair ended last week, and this year 1.13 million visitors just as eager as the 17th century nobility to buy porcelain (for much cheaper prices) flocked to the town with a population of slightly more than 21,000 in an area of 27.09 square kilometers, 70% of which is wooded. It was the second-highest number of visitors in the history of the event, with the highest coming in 2003. It was also the seventh straight year that more than one million people came. The organizers thought the economic downturn and fears of influenza would depress attendance, but a special discount on expressway tolls during the holidays in conjunction with the introduction of a new electronic toll collection system seems to have encouraged people to make the trip.

Shinto festivals have long been held to coincide with commercial events, and vice-versa, so it’s not unusual that the Tozan Shinto shrine in Arita-cho would hold one of their festivals on the 4th. The tutelary deity of the shrine, which is said to have been founded in 1658, is the Korean ceramist Lee Sam-pyeung. There is also a monument to Lee at the top of the mountain behind the shrine, where the ceremonies are usually held, but rain forced it indoors this year. About 100 people from Japan and South Korea were in the procession and witnessed a performance of kagura (Shinto dance), as shown in the photo.

One of those watching from South Korea was Kim Gi-hyeong of the South Korean Ceramics Culture Association. He said:

“We pledge to keep alive the pioneering and creative spirit of Lee, and bring forth a more beautiful friendship between South Korea and Japan.”

It’s curious that some people are so anxious to claim that the Japanese are either ignorant of or loath to honor the Korean contribution to their culture, and that other people are so ready to believe it. That means one of the many positive aspects of Japan-Korean relations they overlook or ignore is this Shinto shrine and event honoring a Korean ceramist who lived 400 years ago and whose life’s work and lucky strike still enrich everyone in the area today—which the Japanese readily acknowledge.

Here are two brief YouTube clips showing the shrine, with Japanese voiceovers. (Number one and number two) It’s Sunday night, and I’m not up for doing a transcription/translation, but they’re worth viewing even if you don’t know Japanese. Both show the unique ceramic installations at the shrine, including the underglaze blue (sometsuke in Japanese) on the torii. The first also includes shots of the monument to Lee.

The entire range of Arita ware is offered for sale during the fair at reduced prices. Those prices get progressively lower every day, so some rather attractive pieces can be bought rather inexpensively on the last day. The items sold include both the finest quality porcelain as well as leftover odds and ends. My first year in Japan, in 1984, I visited the fair and purchased for pocket change a surplus tea mug specially produced to commemorate the anniversary of a small Shinto shrine elsewhere in Kyushu. It was sitting in a crate along with some other remainders. Now it’s sitting on my desk, and I still use it to drink tea.

Downright neighborly

WHILE POLITICIANS on both sides of the Sea of Japan continue to troll for votes by creating hobgoblins that arouse the sort of people who like to argue in the on-line comment sections of newspaper websites, everyone else in the neighborhood seems to be getting along just hunky-dory. That’s particularly true in the nether regions of both countries, which–not coincidentally–is the area where Japan and South Korea are geographically the closest.

One example is the region’s female commercial fishermen. Twelve women who fish for a living from Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, and Yamaguchi prefectures went to Busan, South Korea, on the 12th to hold their second annual meeting with six women from the host city’s federation of maritime industry cooperatives. Those four prefectures lie just across the Korean Strait from Busan. Among the mutual problems they discussed were soaring fuel costs and the difficulty in finding successors to their business.

The Korean delegate tasked with giving the welcoming address said, “We hope to achieve mutual development with our neighbors across the sea.” In reply, the Japanese speaker during the opening ceremonies remarked, “We will look for new ideas through our exchange.”

Here’s another example: The Fukuoka Asia Art Museum (link also on right sidebar) and the Busan Museum of Modern Art announced the signing of a cooperative agreement on the same day. Starting next year, the two museums will loan each other works from their collection for exhibits, exchange staff members, and conduct joint surveys. They decided to get started next year because that will mark the 20th anniversary of the sister city arrangement between Fukuoka City and Busan. To commemorate that relationship, next year has been declared the friendship year for the two cities.

The first exhibit resulting from the new agreement will be a showing of the Fukuoka museum’s works at the Busan museum in the autumn of 2009. The Japanese museum is the only one in the world devoted to Asian art, while the Korean museum focuses on modern art and art from the southeastern part of the peninsula.

Finally, a symposium will be held tomorrow at Kyushu University’s International Hall on the topic, “Regional Ties that Transcend International Borders: A new venture for Fukuoka and Busan” . It is being jointly sponsored by a South Korean academic society and the Kyushu University’s South Korean Research Center. Their stated objective is to continue working toward the formulation of mechanisms for creating a transnational economic sphere.

Stepping back and looking at the region from a broader perspective makes it clear that there is a growing contemporary awareness among people in Kyushu and the southeastern Korean Peninsula that they constitute a de facto economic zone with shared cultural traits. Intraregional ties have waxed and waned for centuries, but now people are realizing the time to make it a formal, permanent reality is drawing near.

It might not be too much longer before these disparate groups in both countries will be able to stand together and tell their political representatives that if they aren’t willing to be part of the solution, they’re part of the problem…so either get with the plan or get out of the way.

Shrines, kabuki, and the policemen’s other hydrangea ball

SOME STORIES write themselves, and this is one of them.

The Hydrangea Park Commemorative Planting Society in Ogano-machi, Saitama, planted 2,200 hydrangea bushes at the local Oshika Shinto Shrine a few years ago.

Their objective was to create a “a village shrine in a grove” (chinju-no-mori), which is an ancient Japanese concept. Shinto deities are thought to have been originally worshipped in forests, and that’s the reason so many shrines were built in the woods. Shinto shrines surrounded by trees, even in the cities, are still a common sight in Japan today.

Using hydrangea instead of trees is a novel concept. The large bushes are a pleasant and attractive symbol of the hot part of the summer season now that the torrential rains are over, and 2,200 in full bloom in one location must be quite impressive. (Hydrangea are native to East Asia and North and South America, but the most popular ornamental variety in the U.S. came from Japan.)

The Oshika shrine decided to hold a hydrangea festival three years ago, and it’s now part of their calendar every year. Unlike the other festivals we talk about here, it’s not a religious event. Rather, it’s just a nice way to spend some time outdoors in the summer among the flowers.

This year, the shrine decided to stage a kabuki play. They chose the well-known drama, Shiranami Gonin Otoko, or The Five Male Thieves. First performed in 1862 at the Ichimura-za in Tokyo, the main characters are indeed thieves modeled after real people. The protagonist is Nippon Daemon (three syllables, nothing to do with devils), a slight twist on the name of the bandit Nippon Saemon, who was hanged in 1747.

The plot and its twists are quite complex, but two scenes from the drama are famous. In the first, one of the rough-and-ready thieves goes to a kimono shop masquerading as a young woman of the upper class, with the idea of extorting money. Consider the acting skills required to pull off that role convincingly.

In the final scene, Daemon battles two of the thieves, whom we learn are actually undercover policemen, and gets the better of them. He eventually promises to turn himself in later in the day, and the drama ends.

This drama featuring five thieves was performed at the Saitama shrine by seven local policemen, all from the traffic division. They began rehearsals in June at the police station dojo on their own time, assisted by a kabuki preservation society and some junior high school volunteers.

Being policemen, they said they changed the ending slightly to put their fictional brother officers in a better light. They also threw in some cautionary tales about traffic accidents, reckless driving, and telephone swindles.

The word dasai in Japanese denotes a person who is a dweeby, uncool dork. Some years ago, the hyper-cool sophisticated hipsters in Tokyo started adding the first syllable of that word to the name Saitama, where the shrine is located, to refer to the prefecture as Dasaitama. (Everyone around the world knows that all the cool people live in big cities and the hinterlands—everywhere else—are full of geeks.)

But if the cool people happened to have been in Dasaitama last weekend, they could have spent a pleasant day outdoors at a religious institution surrounded by 2,200 hydrangeas in bloom to watch a famous kabuki drama about thieves performed by policemen. Contributing to the success of the event were a volunteer horticultural society, a volunteer kabuki society, and some curious and enthusiastic junior high school kids.

That doesn’t seem dasai to me. In fact, I think it’s kind of cool.

But perhaps it’s as the Japanese say: Tade kuu mushi sukizuki ni. Or in English, some insects even like to eat the tade plant. (It must not be very appetizing.)

More simply put: There’s no accounting for tastes, is there?

Afterwords:

Here’s a plot summary in English of Shiranami Gonin Otoko.

Monsieur Morimoto

WOULD ANY ACTOR dare dream that his film debut would be screened at the Cannes Film Festival? And that when the house lights came up, he would be hailed by an audience calling out his name, which was also used as the film’s title? But that’s just what happened to Morimoto Ken’ichi this year, who must still be pinching himself in disbelief.

The best part of the story is that none of it was his dream to begin with—Morimoto is not an actor, and his performance in the movie Monsieur Morimoto was his first in any medium. In fact, he’s a retired postal worker from Mashiki-machi, Kumamoto, who left his family behind to go to Paris and pursue an entirely different dream. M. Morimoto wanted to become a painter.

As an article in today’s Nishinippon Shimbun reports, Morimoto ended his job at the post office in 2000 after 40 years of service when he reached the mandatory retirement age. He traveled to New York, Tahiti, and several places in Europe before deciding to relocate in Paris because it was “the most suitable for my creative environment”.

Sporting a beret and nattily trimmed white beard, the 68-year-old Morimoto drew the attention of passersby as he sketched on the city streets. He also drew the attention of director Nicola Sorgana when the latter encountered him in a Paris art gallery. Sorgana then conceived of a movie with Morimoto as the main character, though the story itself is fiction. (It follows the artist as he encounters some unusual people while wandering around the city looking for one of his paintings, which has disappeared.)

When asked about his acting technique, the postman/artist/actor replied that he just followed the instructions of director Sorgana as if he were a robot. He said the experience was exhausting because each scene required about 10 takes, and he didn’t understand the story very well to begin with.

The newspaper reports that when the movie was shown at Cannes, the audience erupted in applause at the end, with some of the viewers calling out “Morimoto!” He telephoned his wife—whom he left back home in Kumamoto—to tell her what had happened, and she replied, “You’re joking, right?”

Here’s a brief review from the American show biz trade paper Variety, which didn’t care for the film. They say it doesn’t have an international distributor and is unlikely to get one (though it will surely be shown in Japan at some point). Here’s another brief review from CineEuropa.

One has to wonder: Does Morimoto Ken’ichi get into bed every night and laugh himself to sleep?

Japan’s Okina-mai: The old man’s dance

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING IN THE WATER in Nara. Dancing isn’t usually an old man’s pastime, unless it’s a sedate fox trot at a senior citizen’s home or on board a cruise ship. But the performance of the Okina-mai—literally, the Old Man’s Dance—is almost as old as the hills in that city and is still performed today. It dates from the Nara period in the early 8th century.

As the name of the era suggests, Nara was where the action was in Japan in those days. Could the period have been so vibrant that even the old guys were inspired to trip the light fantastic?

It might have been, but it would be difficult to tell from watching the Okina-mai itself. The dance is thought to be the origin of Noh, the performance of which is rather stately and formalized. Now an important intangible folk and cultural treasure of the nation, the Okina-mai is performed annually every fall at the Narazuhiko Shinto shrine.

The story goes that the song-and-dance was first presented to cheer up the convalescing Kasuga’o, the son of the Imperial prince Shiki-no-miko, who himself was either the seventh or the third son of the Tenji tenno (emperor), depending on whose story you believe.

As you can see from the photo, the dancers wear masks, but that development didn’t occur until about 500 years later on during the Muromachi period. The Japanese have never been shy about playing around with their traditions–even ones that are 500 years old.

Today the Okina-mai is performed outdoors at night on the shrine grounds, with the site illuminated by small bonfires. That might well be another relatively recent development; if the story of the origin is true, it doesn’t seem likely that a convalescent would have been carried outdoors to watch an 8th century musical in the chilly autumn weather.

Then again, Okayama Zen’ichiro of Tenri University published an article in 2004 titled “On (the) Okina-mai Dance of Narazuhiko Jinja Shrine and Dongdong Koryo”. Unfortunately, the text of the article is not on line, but the latter seems to have been a Korean court dance. Is Prof. Okayama suggesting there are similarities? It might not be out of the question—there was a significant migration from the Korean Peninsula to the Nara area in the 8th century.

Be that as it may, you’ll find a brief explanation of the masks used in the dance with a photo here. (“Gigaku” in the text refers to an ancient mask show that was brought to Japan from China by a Korean musician, and let that be a lesson to you about East Asia!) And here’s a YouTube video showing the Okina-mai performed at a different location. (Note: It’s nine minutes long and the narration is in Japanese.)

Kasuga’o eventually recovered, but his brother was the one who went on to make a name for himself—he became the Konin tenno. And their father Prince Shiki made another contribution to Japanese history by composing six of the poems collected in the Man’yoshu, the oldest existing anthology of Japanese poetry. (The most recent datable poem was written in 759.)

Last year’s performance of the Okina-mai attracted about 600 people. That’s a pretty good turnout to watch a 1,300-year-old-dance for old men!

Cultural commissars

THE JAPANESE SHOULD THANK their lucky stars they’ve kept their festival traditions alive over the centuries—and that no megalomaniac dictators decided to eliminate them in the name of progress. Otherwise, like the Chinese, they might be regretting what they’ve lost, as this article in the Asia Times points out.

Here’s what happened:

China’s late leader Mao Zedong had tried to erase many traditional Chinese celebrations by ordering the destruction of religious sites and outlawing folk customs. Everything “old” – from marriages to funerals, from folk medicine to folk music – was targeted.
But as communist ideology gradually lost its influence in contemporary society, Chinese leaders after Mao have tried to fill the void with nationalistic appeals for people to take pride in the country’s 5,000-year-old history and culture.

It’s not so easy to recreate the connection once the ties to the past have been severed, however. Many Chinese find the efforts to reclaim those festivals contrived and hollow:

“Any resemblance to the elaborate imperial sacrifices to heaven and Earth of the past was lost in these caricature performances of poorly trained traveling troupes from the provinces,” columnist Zhang Min wrote of his experiences at the capital’s Temple of Earth in the Beijing News. The exquisite works of artisans that once adorned Beijing temple fair stalls – Peking Opera masks, figurines made of painted dough and modeled on legendary figures, intricate kites and embroidered clothes – have now been replaced with “ubiquitous and cheap mass-produced trinkets”, Zhang complained.

The Chinese also faced an unexpected development. Other countries are claiming Chinese festivals and customs as their own for UNESCO registration:

The country saw one of its most treasured events, the Dragon Boat Festival celebrated in June, nominated and later successfully listed as an intangible part of the cultural heritage of neighboring South Korea. The listing angered Chinese scholars and officials who accused South Korea of brazenly encroaching on China’s cultural heritage.
Since the 2005 UNESCO listing of the Dragon Boat festival, South Korea has applied to have its ritualized Confucius memorial ceremony listed as another unique cultural heritage and is reported ready with an application for the listing of “Chinese traditional medicine” as “Korean traditional medicine”.

This touched off a different kind of culture war. Countries can get just as huffy about their rituals and ceremonies as they can about their territory:

“It is not enough to talk just about territorial integrity – China needs to safeguard its cultural sovereignty too,” argues literary scholar Bai Gengsheng. “Unlike material culture which is traceable, intangible cultural heritage can be very contentious and we must design strategies to preserve China’s heritage from being lost to other countries.”

This debate is fascinating because it highlights both the historical movement of culture in the region at large and some of the tensions that currently exist within it. Regardless of UNESCO bureaucratic fiats, no one can deny that the Chinese are the progenitors of much of East Asian culture that later became localized in other areas. The Japanese, to cite one of many examples, freely acknowledge the Chinese (and Korean) origins for gagaku, or Imperial Court music.

Chinese Overreaction?

But even some Chinese realize that when cultural traditions are replanted elsewhere, they adapt to the new soil and become transformed in the process. As this China Daily article points out:

Some Koreans working in China believe that the Chinese who are upset may be overreacting. A teacher surnamed Kim pointed out that the festival has been celebrated in Korea for more than 1,000 years, since it was introduced from China. It has been integrated with Korean culture over the centuries, so that celebrations now bear little resemblance to China’s.

The same article suggests that the Chinese who object may misunderstand the UNESCO process:

For all the pride the Chinese take in such traditions, however, they do not necessarily hold any proprietary rights over them.
“Unlike natural heritage sites, which are fixed and unique, the ‘masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity’ can be shared,” said Wu. “If UNESCO approves something as an intangible cultural property of one country, other countries may still apply. For example, mukamu is a typical music of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, but still UNESCO has approved Iraq mukamu and Azerbaijan mukamu as those nations’ intangible cultural properties.”

Choseon Chicanery

Be that as it may, the Koreans are not entirely blameless in this affair, as this brief article points out:

The Chinese domain name for the (festival) website (duanwujie.cn), however, was first registered by a South Korean company in October last year when the two countries had already competed against each other fiercely in a struggle that aimed to include the Dragon Boat Festival as a world cultural heritage of their own country.

It cost the Chinese $30,000 to buy back the domain name.

The Koreans have been known to do this before. They were the first to register the rights for the Japanese name of the alcoholic beverage shochu in the United States, for example, and used it to sell their own version of the drink, which they call soju. The Japanese had to buy those rights back, too.

Everyone recognizes that some cultural practices which originated elsewhere have long been a part of Korean life and have taken on a Korean identity. It’s another matter, however, to register the Chinese and Japanese names with the intent of scamming some cash. And everyone also recognizes that it’s pointless to expect people on the Korean Peninsula to chastise the grifters who scavenge off of the Chinese or Japanese while poking a finger into their eyes. They’re likely to be applauded instead.

The Source of the Problem

But some questions inevitably arise after reading these accounts: Why is anyone bothering to register their cultural properties, tangible or intangible, with UNESCO? Why should anyone think any organization has the standing to render judgments on a country’s cultural heritage?

And who is this all for, anyway? Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans need UNESCO’s “approval” for cultural validation, particularly for a festival that dates back a millennium in Korea and 2,500 years in China. The Koreans haven’t needed it to keep their festival alive, and the Chinese still have their cultural memory despite the social devastation Mao wrought.

A look at the UNESCO website for the project provides some hints.

Other than country-specific lists with brief explanations, the site is short on reports of what it has achieved with actual, on-the-ground projects. Yet it is packed with organizational trivia, rules of procedure, and vapid platitudes. Just the sort of thing to keep people busy without doing any real work. Here are some statements from their convention, which presents the reasons and objectives for their activities:

Considering the importance of the intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development…

When did intangible cultural heritage become a guarantee of sustainable development? It’s a toss-up which is worse: cutting and pasting political banalities to create a pleasant-sounding but meaningless mush of linguistic oatmeal, or inserting that phrase as self-justification into their convention as if it were an absolute scriptural truth.

An intangible cultural heritage guarantees nothing, least of all sustainable development.

And it’s no surprise that UNESCO should be so concerned about protecting—or enforcing—yet another mushy platitude: cultural diversity. It’s as if UNESCO were encouraging people to have sex. Cultural diversity is what happens when people are left to their own devices to interact naturally. Especially when the NGOs aren’t looking.

Recognizing that the processes of globalization and social transformation, alongside the conditions they create for renewed dialogue among communities, also give rise, as does the phenomenon of intolerance, to grave threats of deterioration, disappearance and destruction of the intangible cultural heritage, in particular owing to a lack of resources for safeguarding such heritage…

We have a winner in the contest for non-native English speakers to see who can write the longest sentence with as many clichés as possible.

The proposition that globalization threatens diversity is untenable. Globalization enhances cultural diversity, and examples abound. To cite one: trends in popular music over the last century on every continent except Antarctica.

“Deterioration, disappearance, and destruction” result from isolation and the rejection of outside influences. Nature loves a wide gene pool. So does culture.

Considering the invaluable role of the intangible cultural heritage as a factor in bringing human beings closer together and ensuring exchange and understanding among them…

If this is referring to specific local areas, they’ve got it backwards. A cultural heritage results from the pre-existing exchange and common understanding between people. And while multinational cultural exchange sometimes does result in bringing people together, it doesn’t ensure it. Exhibit A: the Dragon Festival registration story.

UNESCO also attempts to define what they’re talking about. Here’s one definition:

(d) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe;

Perhaps the Chinese should register feng shui before the Koreans beat them to it!

Give UNESCO credit for trying to cover every conceivable base, however:

Close to half of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world are doomed or likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. The disappearance of any language is an irreparable loss for the heritage of all humankind.

The disappearance of any language is no more an irreparable loss for our heritage than was that of the pterodactyl. It just means that the language no longer has a practical use. If there were any benefits to be gained from its use, a language wouldn’t have to be protected.

After looking over this website, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the enterprise seems less about recognizing and preserving culture than it is about providing the transnational NGO jet set with a marvelous opportunity for self-congratulation and a chance to dress up and meet people from around the world on someone else’s tab.

If the plug were pulled on UNESCO tomorrow, Koreans would still celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival, Nigerians would still play juju music, the Balinese would still dance, and the Japanese living cultural treasures would still make ceramics and perform kabuki—not to mention holding more traditional festivals than the public sector can count.

Bam Goes Bamian

Yet when a cultural heritage really was threatened, UNESCO turned out to have been all bumper sticker and no horsepower. When the Taliban used the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamian for bazooka practice, as the third photo shows, the largest Buddhist statues in the world–a UNESCO World Heritage site–were turned into rubble.

Here’s what former Afghanistan leader Mullah Mohammad Omar allegedly said to a Pakistani reporter:

“I did not want to destroy the Bamian Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamian Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings — the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddhas’ destruction.”

The Mullah is obviously a lunatic, but there’s a point lurking in that nonsense. If multinational organizations think it’s important to save threatened cultural heritages, a good place to start would be to help the culture save itself. Their money would be a lot better spent ensuring that people had safe drinking water than by creating an artificial cocoon for a language or dance form that long ago lost its meaning for living people.

But laying water pipe has very little cachet. At a catered multinational cocktail party, it’s a lot more impressive to be able to boast that one helped save indigenous weaving and dying techniques, and doesn’t that blanket look lovely on the wall of the apartment?

The problem here is not the end, but the means. The ostensible aims of this scheme may be admirable, and I’d elbow my way to the front of the line to see some of the registered activities, but UNESCO is just as likely to get in the way of people devising their own cultural preferences instead of helping them. Like the pterodactyl, cultural practices become extinct for a reason.

The best solution lies where it always has—at the local level. Even the Marxist government of Cuba has kept its local musical culture alive while allowing it to evolve by incorporating outside influences. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has a robust program for preserving and utilizing cultural properties, as you can see here. Even Japanese villagers need little encouragement to continue holding festivals that are hundreds of years old and that only a handful of people see.

And they don’t touch off arguments about who has dibs on what is supposed to be the shared heritage of humanity.

Postscript: Here is the UNESCO page for registered Japanese cultural properties. The Japanese seem to be paying a lot of the bills for other countries, while noh, kabuki, and joruri don’t need UNESCO registration to survive. The Japanese government is also playing a leading role in restoring the Buddhas of Bamian.