World Heritage, Secularisation, and the New “Public Sacred” in East Asia

Abstract

The category “heritage” is quickly gaining importance for the study of religion, not least in East Asia. Since the 1990s, Japanese governments, entrepreneurs, and NGO s have invested heavily in heritage preservation, production, and promotion, and other East Asian countries have followed suit. UNESCO recognition is sought after by various state and private actors, who see it as a useful tool for validating and popularising select historical narratives and for acquiring national and international legitimacy. These developments have led to far-reaching transformations in worship sites and ritual practices. Drawing on recent Japanese examples, and comparing these to cases elsewhere in the region, this article constitutes a first step towards a theory of the heritagisation of religion in East Asia. It argues that the heritagisation of worship sites often entails a process of deprivatisation, turning them into public properties that are simultaneously secular and sacred. The article distinguishes between three patterns, which many worship sites and ritual practices that have been inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage or Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists, in Japan and beyond, follow: 1) heritage-making constitutes a type of secularisation, 2) it gives rise to new processes of sacralisation, and 3) this enables mass tourism that can lead to far-reaching transformations. Focusing on the first two patterns, the article shows how heritage-making leads to the reconfiguration of sites and practices as national, public, and secular sacred properties.

Beyond Methodological Nationalism

“…Among other things, this will allow us to study nation-building practices comparatively. Such an approach will help us recognise similar developments in different parts of Asia-the simultaneous reinvention of Shinto and Daoism as national 'green religions' by state actors and NGOs (Rots 2017), for instance, or the ways in which the universal category 'heritage' functions to re-establish state control over sacred sites across the region (Rots 2019b)-which are otherwise overlooked.…”

Buddhism and Cultural Heritage in the Memorialization of the Hiroshima Bombing: The Art and Activism of Hirayama Ikuo

“…In light of recent research into religion and critical cultural heritage studies (Meyer and de Witte 2013; Rots 2019), Hirayama's stress on Buddhism as a form of international cultural heritage, rather than a religion, can be seen as a discourse of "heritagization" connected with practices of cultural heritage preservation, tourism, and marketization. But this process does not imply a form of secularization or the disappearance of religion; in fact, turning religion into heritage can expand its role in the public sphere, while religious discourses and practices transform into new forms of sacralization, which universalize and naturalize religious beliefs and practices-as Aike Rots shows in his analysis of the use of heritage in Japan (Rots 2019). Hirayama's use of the language of cultural heritage facilitated the possibility of collaboration between Japan and the PRC by avoiding the risks that a stress on the religious nature of Buddhist art could pose to fundraising and the involvement of public institutions.…”