New project!

Once again great news around here: Lize-Marié van de Watt, Lizabé Lambrechts and others, including myself have been awarded a new grant, Decay without mourning: Future-thinking heritage practices. The grant was received in the joint call Global Issues - Integrating Different Perspectives on Heritage and Change by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, together with Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Volkswagen Foundation. Altogether only eight projects with the total of 11 million of Euros was granted in this extremely competitive international call, and our share is € 1 437 200. For me it means some exciting work both with Japan and Antarctica, trying to work with heritage practices that embrace change and decay instead of unachievable permanence. The project will run between 2022 and 2025. Initially planned preparatory workshop in South Africa had to be cancelled for the obvious reasons, but hopefully the four years are long enough for the travel bans to be lifted, so that I can both do my field work and meet the other participants.

More can be read from here

Japanese traditional heritage practices offer many examples of decay and mending as a process that adds value to the item, instead of reducing the value.

On the picture: Traditional and modern (Macroflex!) mending techniques of hitsugi trees at Fuji Yoshida Shrine, Japan. The site is part of the Fuji-san world heritage site. Photo taken in 2016.

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.

Visiting Helsinki Environmental Humanities Hub ....1 year ago

Those were the times…. When one could still travel and give a talk! Exactly one year ago I presented my research on Mt Fuji World Heritage in Helsinki.

The presentation “Nature or Culture? Negotiating Outstanding Universal Value of Mt Fuji in the Japanese World Heritage Nomination” can be watched on their Twitter account.

My post on COVID-19, Tokyo Olympics and Fukushima in Estonian media

I do think that one of the most important academic skills is to know your limits. To not speak about things you are not competent in. As you know, I am not always good at it: I have a very broad spectrum of topics I work with and am therefore guaranteed to step on a slippery ground sooner or later. However, in a crises, I think it is particularly important to avoid giving personal opinions on things where confusing or wrong information can lead to reduced compliance with life-saving regulations.

So I will not be posting opinions on quarantines, testing or other aspects on COVID-19 that demand medical knowledge. But I do think I have some knowledge about Japan and Fukushima (due to my involvement in the Nuclearwaters project), which is why I took on the challenge by Estonian daily Eesti Päevaleht to write something about Fukushima, Olympics and the Corona crises. This is a piece on crises communication. The main message is that delayed and contradicting messages reduce the credibility of the authorities and it is particularly dangerous in a situation where a crises unfolds rapidly and today’s information maybe entirely wrong by tomorrow. Even if the Olympics are safe in Japan, both in respect to Fukushima’s radioactivity (mind the Olympic torch route that passes at only 2,3 kms from the Fukushima Daiichi where the melted fuel is still lying around) or COVID-19, many of us would still have difficulties in believing it, because of government’s attempts to suppress information at multiple instances.

Stack of nuclear debris in giant black bags, at stone cast from the Pacific shore ion march 11, 2016, on the 5th anniversary of the accident. The tree has dried because of the salt of the tsunami, not radioactivity.

The text is of course in Estonian but for those of you who can read it, it is available HERE. (Siin on muidugi üks faktiviga ka: 2011. aastal ei astunud reha otsa mitte Abe, vaid Naoto Kan, kuid kui Abe 2012. aastal võimu üle võttis trampis ta sellel rehal veel suurem rõõmuga kui Naoto Kan kunagi trampinud oligi. Naoto Kanist sai aga tuumaenergia vastu võitleja)