Speaking at Japanese National Museum of Ethnology

This Saturday, 13th of March, I had the opportunity to present via Zoom at the Japanese National Museum of Ethnology’s webinar series Cultural Transmission against Collective Amnesia: Bodies and Things in Heritage Practices that asks how modern heritage practice relates to memory. In its fifth and final session Transmission of Practices and Memories, I presented a paper based on my Japanese heritage and depopulation project, with a long and windy title Does World Heritage Nomination Curb the Local Regeneration and Cultural Transmission of Practices? From World Heritage Nominations of Fuji-san and Sites of Meiji Industrial Revolution.

Like at several other occasions, I advanced an argument that World Heritage Nomination can be a very beneficial instrument for sites that are losing their vitality and have already a reduced repertoire of use. For other, more vital sites that have hitherto functioned as centres for communal life and identity, the inscription may be less beneficial, because many of the practices and uses that are not directly related to the Outstanding Universal Value may become restricted. Community’s right to develop the sites in a way that reflects their shifting identity may also become restricted.

The webinar series is to become an edited collection in English and I hope that for once I will be able to find the time to write.

Sekiyoshi sluice gate. No more swimming here.