Cooperation with the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) in Its Seminar
The Cultural Heritage Protection Cooperation Office of the Asia-Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) (Nara City) conducted the “Training Course on Cultural Heritage Protection in the Asia-Pacific Region 2017: Recording, Conservation and Utilization of Cultural Properties at Museums” from October 10 through November 3, 2017. The Department of Intangible Cultural Heritage of this Institute cooperated on this program by delivering a lecture titled “On-Site Seminar: How to Record Intangible Cultural Heritage” at the Institute on the afternoon of October 30, 2017. The lecturer was Mr. Tomo ISHIMURA, Head of the Audio-Visual Documentation Section of the Department.
This seminar attracted six trainees from the Pacific region, who were experts engaged in practical affairs at museums (three from Fiji, two from Papua New Guinea, and one from the Solomon Islands). In the first half of the seminar, the Japanese system to protect intangible cultural properties was explained while in the last half, how to record intangible cultural heritage was presented concretely. Particularly, focus was placed on image recording by using videos recorded actually by the Department (Kodan storytelling, a technique to make winnowing baskets from Japanese wisteria in the Kizumi area, and others recorded as videos) as visual aids.
Although there is a wide variety of intangible cultural heritage in the Pacific region, from which the trainees came, it seems that records have not been sufficiently prepared yet. They recognized the significance of video recording well since most of the intangible techniques require manual movements in particular, which cannot be fully covered with written records in many cases. We felt that they had much interest in recording while answering their specific questions, including one referring to “how oral traditions have been recorded in Japan.”
We realized that it would be meaningful to utilize the research outcomes accumulated by the Department for the protection of cultural heritage not only at home but also abroad.