Outside the glass case: The social life of urban heritage in Kyoto

Abstract

A B S T R A C TRecent anthropological and other literature tends to assume that the uses of heritage in modern societies lead to the falsification, petrification, desubstantiation, and enclosure of the things and practices so designated. Yet two traditions of Japan's ancient capital Kyoto-the historic town houses (kyô-machiya) that have found a new appreciation since the 1990s and the Gion matsuri, one of the most famous festivals of the nation-contradict these assumptions. Their well-documented histories are not widely distorted; they are not forever fixed but allowed to evolve; they are valued not only for their traditionality but also for other, substantive qualities; and their appreciation is not dominated by a concern for social boundaries. This is influenced by the urban, relatively sophisticated and cosmopolitan background of both traditions, as it is in parallel cases elsewhere. Greater attention to the perspectives of their carriers, however, will very likely show that the social uses of other traditions too are more complex than the standard assumptions lead one to believe. [Japan, cultural heritage, invention of tradition, vernacular architecture, festivals, urban anthropology] Four assumptions about the modern-day use of cultural heritage stand out. In simple and not-too-positivesounding terms, marking out things and practices as heritage leads to their falsification, petrification, desubstantiation, and enclosure.

On Keeping and Selling

“…It also convincingly shows how opposed forces unwittingly subscribe to the same notion of socially disembedded heritage that ends up sidelining the neighborhood association, which is the one body that wants to preserve social and not just buut fabric. I find many paraUels to what I observed in another historic city, in central Kyoto, where there is also architectural animism around the kyô-machiya, the traditional houses, which residents see as somehow alive (Brumann 2009(Brumann :288-289, 2012. And there too, people debate the relative merits of Tomas-style artisanal perfectionism versus the less exacting Fernando-style commercial renovations that have been spreading lately (Brumann 2012:116-129, 335-337), encouraged by the general fact that with urban heritage, there is often more tolerance for creative appropriations and a diversity of approaches (Brumann 2009(Brumann :291-293, 2012.…”

“…I find many paraUels to what I observed in another historic city, in central Kyoto, where there is also architectural animism around the kyô-machiya, the traditional houses, which residents see as somehow alive (Brumann 2009(Brumann :288-289, 2012. And there too, people debate the relative merits of Tomas-style artisanal perfectionism versus the less exacting Fernando-style commercial renovations that have been spreading lately (Brumann 2012:116-129, 335-337), encouraged by the general fact that with urban heritage, there is often more tolerance for creative appropriations and a diversity of approaches (Brumann 2009(Brumann :291-293, 2012. UntU very recently, however, discussing renovation styles was a side debate, as most of the conservationists' eftorts went into fighting the advance of run-of-the-mill high-rise buUdings thatin contrast to Palma-were the most common, lucrative, and perfectly legal way of urban redevelopment (Brumann 2012: 68-90).…”

“…Yet such sanctioning of the market-a perspective with which I am entirely sympatheticraises a number of issues: I am not convinced that objectifications, when historicized and examined closely, necessarily amount to a simplification or distortion of the quotidian (Brumann 2009). Even more basically, a nostalgia for the prelapsarian naturalizes everydayness, a modern condition produced via specific operations under capitalism (Lefebvre 2008).…”

Ruptured Landscapes

“…Currently heritage is studied in interdependence of collective-subjective meanings (Graham and Howard 2008;Brumann 2009;Gibson and Pendlebury 2009;Waterton and Watson 2010). These aspects are linked to knowledge of how to participate, see and hear in landscapes.…”

Landscape Accessibility: Spaces for Accessibility or Spaces for Communication?

“…Old urban inner city neighborhoods have been profoundly influenced by the creation of touristy commercial environments (Shenjing and Fulong, 2007). At the same time, vernacular urban landscapes are often ignored Living Reviews in Landscape Research http://www.livingreviews.org/lrlr-2010-4 Landscape Accessibility 9 by the urban municipalities, where the question of power and ideology remains, for whom and for which purposes the vernacular architecture becomes valuable as heritage (see Brumann, 2009). …”