人 文 地理 第57巻 第6号 (2005) Theorizing Local Culture: Cultural Turns in Contemporary Japanese Society and Current Studies on Local Culture FUKUDA Tamami I Introduction At the 28th session of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee held in 2004, "Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range" was included in the World Heritage List. Subsequently, there has been an increase in the number of visitors to this region, and there is growing expectation of the development of the regional economy. Consequently, conflicts between tourism and environmental conservation, between tourism and religion have emerged. Another notable problem that has emerged is the "no women permitted" problem. The World Cultural Heritage Site includes a part of Omine Mountains that remains out of bounds for women. The exclusion of women from these World Heritage Sites has given rise to a major controversy from the viewpoint of public interest. It is noteworthy that those who defended, whether staunchly or reluctantly, the religious "no women permitted" norm, justified it based on their culture and tradition. This paper does not intend to question the appropriateness of their religious traditions in contemporary society. It is more important to realize that local culture was a priori positioned as a reason for people's social stance. On the basis of the above instances, how can culture be perceived as stable and natural ? 1) Following James Duncan's criticism of the superorganic notion of culture, such interpretations of culture came to be widely criticized. It is necessary for us to consider culture as being inseparably related to social processes, eloquent and effective in the society. Over the past few decades, several arguments have been developed based on such an understanding of culture from the viewpoint of cultural politics. Culture-whether ethnic, local, or national-has been the primary focus of critical studies of social processes through which it is manipulated and objectified; Japanese cultural geographers are no exception to this norm. Although this is relevant to introducing "new" cultural geography and a cultural turn in the discipline, it is not isolated from a different type of cultural turn in the Japanese society. The 1990s have witnessed an increasing societal interest in local and ethnic culture. However, comprehending the context of contemporary Japanese local culture is not without complications. On one hand, the perceived powers and possibilities of culture attract people's 1) Duncan, J.,'The superorganic in American cultural geography', Annalsof the Association of American Geographers, 70, 1980, pp. 181-198. -3- 572 人 文 地 理 第57巻 第6号 (2005) attention and are often practiced; on the other hand, the notion of a stable culture is pervasive. Essentialist understandings of natural culture are pervasive throughout the country. Although these arguments on culture are assumed to have little credibility in academic disciplines, they have a strongand vocalpresence external to thesedisciplines2). Clarifying these ambivalent cultural states is one of the objectives of this paper. Although several arguments have been presented from the viewpoint of the politics of cultural representation at the national level, in this paper, we focus on the local level and analyze the present conditions 3) and problems associated with local culture. As ARAYAMA Masahiko suggested in his argument on the formation of the self that is inextricably linked to the issue of cultural representation, it is more often seen at the local level than the national level that culture is stabilized and objectified as natural and utilized in the formation of the self. This paper explores the various policies and practices of Japanese local cultures. The other objective is to outline current studies on local culture and review the possible directions of cultural geographical studies. However, in doing so, this paper does not limit its arguments to the realm of cultural geography. It explores the various perspectives in which local culture has been investigated, how it has been defined, and the stance of these studies on current social conditions. II Local Cultures under Crisis The crisis faced by local and regional cultures has often been highlighted. The most significant efforts to preserve local tradition and folk culture at the local level were made in the late twentieth century. This resulted in the revision of national cultural policies and an amendment of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties. This law, which was established in 1950 to conserve valuable cultural properties, has been amended several times and includes provisions for the protection of local cultures based on people's daily lives and the conservation of cultural environments. A designation system for Important Tangible Folk Cultural Materials and a selection system for Important Intangible Folk Cultural Materials were introduced in 1954; both were upgraded to the designation of Important Folk Cultural Properties in 1970. In the same year, a selection system of Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Historic Buildings- which covers the historic districts, including people's dwellings-was introduced. This transformation of the cultural preservation system aimed at preserving and utilizing ordinary cultural things and simultaneously promoting their redefinition and ordering. A question arises as to how the cultural properties were redefined through the institutionalization of their preservation. First, potential cultural properties were identified as objects of study, particularly in the case of folk cultural properties. These were not considered valuable by themselves but were considered to be of value as a group of "cultural properties that are indispensable for understanding the transition in the daily lives of the Japanese people."4) This 2) Brooker, P., A Glossary of Cultural Theory (Second Edition), Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 89. 3) Arayama, M., 'Sensasu, chizu, hakubutsukan', Edo no Shiso, 4, 1996, pp. 130-139. (J) 4) The Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, Chapter 1, Section 2, Article 3. -4- TheorizingLocal Culture: Cultural Turns in ContemporaryJapanese Society and Current Studieson LocalCulture (FUKUDA)573 complies with the national designation requirements; however, there exists a covert reference to academic knowledge. Attic Museum, presided over by SHIBUSAWA Keizo and his successors, such as MIYAMOTO Keitaro and HOURI Miyashizu, contributed to the establishment of the culturalpreservation system5). Second, related to point one, is that the system aimed to focus on the holistic picture of culture shared by people. In both the Preservation Districts for Groups of Historic Buildings, which was integrated with the surroundings, and the Folk Cultural Properties, representing everyday living cultures, objects were considered to be bound to culture as a way of life. Third, a sense of crisis has always been emphasized upon. The protection of cultural properties is premised on the critical condition whereby a nation has to protect its cultural properties. A more important is the context that is emphasized in the protection of cultural properties, wherein local cultures were considered permanent and natural in normal circumstances, but faced the threatof extinctionfollowing the drasticchanges brought about by the changingtimes6). It is evident that the redefinition of culture propagated by the system in order to conserve disappearing local traditions and cultures is not complete within the system. Academism, which supports and enhances the meaning of culture, plays a considerable role; the notion of a stable culture is reinforced through academic knowledge. There are two aspects to the engagement of academism. The first is that the definition established through academic discourse is highly valued and utilized outside the discipline. The notions of culture discussed in the following sections fall in this category. The other aspect involves a more direct engagement. Some scholars have taken great efforts to conserve preserve, document, and record disappearing local cultures. They have also assumed critical stances toward the current stance that inherent meanings of local culture were damaged through the rapid change of the society. The latter case can be observed in the discussions on folk performing arts and the enforcement 7) of the Festival Law in 1992. The alternation of folk performing arts was most emphasized. Even if scholars acknowledge that folk performing arts are changing with the times, they frown upon a change in the performers' positionality and their relations with local places and are opposed to the commodification of the folk performing arts through tourism. This stems from the understanding that a genuine native culture existed in the region, which has now been commodified and faces the threat of extinction. It is evident that the concept of authentic culture is formulatedand enhancedthrough academic discourses8). 5) Kikuchi, A., Yanagita Kunio to Minzokugaku no Kindai, Yoshikawa-koubunkan, 2001, pp. 21-67. (J) 6) I have already elaborated on the disappearing local culture and the development of Japanese regional museums. Fukuda, T., 'The region exhibited: toward a development of regional museum studies', Jimbun Chin, 49, 1997, pp. 442- 464. (JE) 7) The Society of Folkloric Performing Arts, 'Symposium: Folkloric performing arts and the Law of Omatsuri', Minzokugeino-Kenkyu, 17, 1993, pp. 78-97. (J) 8) It is interesting to note that while the academia