Intangible Cultural Heritage and Disaster Prevention
—Risk Management and Restoration Support
Introduction
The expression “disaster prevention of intangible cultural heritage” probably sounds unfamiliar to many people. However, beginning with the Great East Japan Earthquake, a large number of disasters has been occurring yearly in recent years, including heavy rains, typhoons, volcano eruptions and earthquakes. According to experts, Japan’s land area corresponds to a mere 0.25% of the total area of the entire world, but more than 20% of worldwide earthquakes of intensity 6 or higher have occurred in Japan. Japan is so extremely prone to disasters that it could be called a “disaster archipelago.” However, as the earth is said to have entered an active period in recent years, we live in a time and place where everyone is susceptible to disasters no matter where in the world they are.
1. Disaster response in cultural property administration
Cultural property administration has hitherto responded to various disasters under the abovementioned situation. One of the main projects initiated by the central government was the Cultural Property Rescue Operation. The concept of the operation took shape when activities were launched for the first time in the wake of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake. Thereafter, the operation played an extremely important role at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake. The headquarters of the Cultural Property Rescue Operation was installed in Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, and diverse organizations cooperated in the rescue of cultural properties, beginning with the Agency for Cultural Affairs and including prefectural boards of education and organizations related to cultural properties and fine arts in disaster-affected regions. The operation was continued until the end of fiscal 2012 as part of emergency response.
When we look at how intangible cultural heritage was treated within the operation, we see that intangible cultural properties were declared as falling outside the scope of the operation from the very beginning. This is not to criticize the omission, but to realize that the concept of intangible cultural heritage and disaster prevention or rescue was still an extremely new concept then, which no one had ever thought about before. Thus, in a situation where it was difficult to even grasp the state of damage to intangible cultural heritage and there were no hints as to what should be done about them, the Cultural Property Rescue Operation focused on rescuing tangible properties that were readily visible, were in urgent need of protection, and were able to be addressed by many experts.
As one who works in a National Institute for Cultural Heritage which handles cultural properties, I feel folk cultural properties are always considered a sort of oddball that resembles no other type of cultural properties. Aside from cultural landscapes, cultural properties are generally recognized for their excellence and selectivity, with a focus on their absolute value or universal value. In contrast, folk cultural properties are recognized as “properties indispensable to understanding changes in people’s lives” based on a standard that does not judge the worth of their value. This is why tangible folk cultural properties were included in the scope of the Cultural Property Rescue Operation. Nevertheless, in the case of folk tools, for example, it is said that distinguishing those that are cultural properties from those that are not and determining what should be or should not be rescued posed an extremely difficult problem. Folk cultural properties embody people’s lifestyles and are firmly rooted in such people’s lives. They are the most common form of cultural properties, for lack of a better word, and this very characteristic may have made them difficult to handle within the scope of the Cultural Property Rescue Operation.
In any case, an investigation of the state of damage to intangible cultural heritage was conducted by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, but that was all. No support activities were launched with the involvement of many organizations, as was the case with tangible cultural properties.
After the Cultural Property Rescue Operation was terminated at the end of fiscal 2012, the National Task Force for the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Mitigation Network (CH-DRM Net) was launched in July 2014 with the cooperation of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage as the secretariat. CH-DRM Net is operated based on three main objectives. One is “building a framework.” It aims to build a permanent framework for conducting disaster prevention and rescue operations. The second is “conducting research,” and the third is “capacity building.” The second objective of conducting research expressly includes the aim of conducting studies on disaster prevention and post-disaster inheritance of intangible cultural heritage. I think it is an extremely important step that the phrase “intangible cultural heritage and disaster prevention” was included in the objectives in this way.
As for the reason why the phrase “intangible cultural heritage and disaster prevention” came to be included in the objectives, I think it is because there was a renewed awareness of the extremely powerful role that intangible cultural heritage potentially plays in the face of disaster or in the process of post-disaster reconstruction. Ironically, this understanding was gained through exposure to actual disasters.
2. Role of intangible cultural heritage in post-disaster reconstruction
After the Great East Japan Earthquake, folk performing arts and festivals were restored extremely rapidly contrary to what we researchers and the administration imagined. They were resumed at a time when people were still denied the basic necessities of life and lived in evacuation centers. There was a report that a performing art was performed at a hundredth-day memorial service amid the rubbles of the disaster as early as in June 2011. Additionally, the residents of Onagawa town, Miyagi prefecture who evacuated to Akita but wished to put on a Shishifuri (Shishimai) performance by any means, made their own Shishi costume using zabuton cushions, empty cans and slippers they had on hand, because they had lost all of their original tools. I have heard that the dance they thus performed provided them with a great source of encouragement. The “zabuton Shishi” is said to be kept in safekeeping still today.
In this way, intangible cultural heritage functioned as a source of identity, for one. As I mentioned earlier, I think this was possible precisely because intangible cultural heritage was rooted in people’s daily lives.
Also as mentioned numerous times, there was renewed awareness of the functions of intangible cultural heritage to maintain or restore communities. Particularly with respect to performing arts and festivals, such group activities have the function of laterally connecting members of a community or vertically connecting people’s lineage, from grandfather to grandchild.
Furthermore, as performing arts and festivals are held outside the scope of daily life, the sense of excitement they arouse becomes a source of motivation for reconstruction. They also have the practical function of gathering people together not only for the real performances or festivals but through their rehearsal and preparation stages as well. The term “resilience” has come to be used frequently after the earthquake disaster. It is translated as a spiritual capacity to recover, power of resistance, or restoring force, but there have been moves after the disaster to re-evaluate intangible cultural heritage as something that strengthens and supports resilience in these terms.
3. Thinking about “disaster prevention of intangible cultural heritage”: Characteristics of intangible cultural heritage
What is meant by disaster prevention of intangible cultural heritage? As I mentioned earlier, it is an extremely new concept. It should be firstly understood as a premise that disaster prevention of intangible cultural heritage largely differs from the disaster prevention of tangible cultural properties. Therefore, when thinking about disaster prevention, I believe there will be times when it is necessary to specifically focus on disaster prevention of intangible cultural heritage.
The difference with disaster prevention of tangible cultural properties can be summarized into four points, which translate directly into the characteristics of intangible cultural heritage. The first point is that intangible cultural heritage elements are living cultural properties composed of diverse elements. In other words, it is something that is handed down from people to people, but the presence of “people” alone is not necessarily enough to hand down intangible cultural heritage. Let us take for example the Mibu no Hana Taue ritual in Hiroshima prefecture, which is inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The bearers of the ritual include its successors and the cattle that are elaborately decorated. These two elements are indispensable to the ritual, but successors are human, so there must also be inheritors and mentors, and rehearsal venues and time must be secured. The cattle requires trainers and rearing environments, and breeding technologies and economic burdens also come into play.
In addition to the main players, tools are necessary. They include drums, flutes, costumes, and decorative saddles. These tools and costumes require technologies to produce them, as well as craftsmen and raw materials. Even if the necessary tools exist, there must be places for storage if the ritual is to be carried on. Funds are also necessary to purchase new tools or repair existing tools.
Having a place to perform is also important. A ritual called Hamaori in Fukushima prefecture became a topic of interest after the Great East Japan Earthquake. It was an extremely popular ritual in which mikoshi palanquins were carried to the seashore and purified, but a situation arose that prevented the ritual from being continued. The necessary people existed and the tools escaped damage, but as the coastline was polluted by the nuclear accident or was affected by the tsunami, there was nowhere to perform the ritual, and hence it could no longer be continued. There are many cases like this.
An audience is also necessary and extremely important. In regions affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, many performing arts made a round of homes in the community and received money gifts which became their activity fund, but these homes that used to be visited were swept away in the earthquake disaster. Performing arts groups lost their source of funding and became unable to continue their tradition in many cases.
Lastly, livelihoods are important. The Mibu no Hana Taue ritual is founded on the livelihood of rice farming, but when Kumamoto was struck by an earthquake in April, I heard that people were no longer able to engage in rice farming, because water had stopped flowing into the rice paddies. This also made it meaningless to continue to the ritual. There are also cases like this.
Besides the above, many more elements are involved in handing down intangible cultural heritage. Whatever elements are involved, each intangible cultural heritage is composed of an organic combination of diverse elements. This means that when talking about intangible cultural heritage, not only tangible things but intangible things also come to have great significance.
Moreover, these things are not readily visible to the eye. An outsider who makes a visit and takes a glance would find it extremely difficult to grasp the entirety of an intangible cultural heritage. In the case of disasters, an outsider could hardly assess the state of damage and restoration. Even if people and tools escape damage, this does not mean that the intangible cultural heritage has also escaped damage. Therefore, from the perspective of disaster prevention, it is essential to foster people who are ordinarily familiar with intangible cultural heritage and to create a network of such people before making any attempt to grasp the state of damage and restoration of intangible cultural heritage and providing support. This is the first important point.
The second point is that an extremely large number of intangible cultural heritage elements are not designated as cultural properties. For example, in the coastal regions of the three Tohoku prefectures that were ravaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake, there are said to be more than 1,000 folk performing arts alone. Of this number, only 100 or so, or a mere 10 percent, are either nationally, prefecturally or municipally designated properties. This does not mean that the remaining 900 or so performing arts have low value. To begin with, no judgment of worth is made regarding the value of folk cultural properties, and even if it is, the actual circumstances are that properties along the coastal regions of Tohoku have not been designated precisely because they are living cultural properties. In other words, many performing arts refused to be designated, because they could support themselves even without being designated, they could get along sufficiently with monetary gifts, or they plan to adopt new ideas to make their performance more exciting, knowing that they do not conform to the concept of cultural properties. There are thus many cultural properties that are extremely important to people regardless of their designation status. The problem with undesignated cultural properties, however, is that it is extremely difficult to grasp their state of damage or restoration. From the perspective of disaster prevention, it becomes important to gain a grasp of their location and transmission status in advance and to share that information with everyone.
The third and fourth points are that preventing disaster damage is important, but ensuring post-disaster support is also important in the case of intangible cultural heritage. Support for intangible cultural heritage does not simply end with restoration, as with tangible cultural properties. In fact, there is no end, in a sense. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, there have been cases where performing arts have been performed a number of times by purchasing costumes, tools and floats with support funds, but they were unable to be continued because many residents chose not to return to their original communities thereafter.
To begin with, there is also the problem of what restoration means with regard to intangible cultural heritage. In other words, there is the question of how far should intangible cultural heritage be reproduced to be considered restored? This is also related to the next point, but amid the large numbers of intangible cultural heritage elements that have diminished due to an aging and dwindling population, it is difficult to determine whether the loss is due to the impacts of a disaster or whether it is a natural extension of daily life. Given this situation, I believe an attitude or framework of remaining committed and vigilant of intangible cultural heritage from a long-term perspective, is sought.
The last point is that intangible cultural heritage is constantly at risk of declining and disappearing. It goes without saying that there are countless intangible cultural heritage elements throughout Japan that are on the brink of falling into decline and disappearing as a consequence of an aging and dwindling population and the diversification of leisure activities. In the process of engaging in disaster prevention activities, we have received disapproval that our Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage is “simply performing daily operations.” From the opposite perspective, however, this made us realize anew that intangible cultural heritage is constantly in danger of disappearing, and this is where intangible cultural heritage largely differs from tangible cultural properties. There is conversely an advantage to this. That is, it shed light on the importance of the fact that thinking about disaster prevention is directly linked to thinking about the transmission of culture in ordinary times, and that disaster prevention initiatives can be taken within the scope or along the extension of daily operations.
Based on the above, it is necessary to deepen discussions on what to prepare in advance to protect intangible cultural heritage from disasters and what types of post-disaster restoration support could be provided.
IMAISHI, MIgiwa (Department of ICH, Tobunken)