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

CHRISTOPH BRUMANN
University of Cologne
Outside the glass case:
The social life of urban heritage in Kyoto
A B S T R A C T
Recent 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]
hallmark of advancing global modernity and the expectation of
constant progress is that the reverence for those things that do
not change is flourishing. Attempts to derive legitimacy from
past precedent are as old as humanity, and ever since the rise
of the modern nation-state, the imagination of ethnic and national communities has been underpinned by the construction of a suitable shared past and the increasingly professionalized preservation of its
glorious relics. Since the 1960s, a “heritage boom” (Walsh 1992:94) has
occurred in Western societies, widening the monumental gaze to include
vernacular architecture and everyday culture and popularizing the concern with history and antiques as part of modern lifestyles. Both trends
and their supporting institutions, such as the museum and the historic
theme park, have spread worldwide, and UNESCO and its highly successful
World Heritage List (Breidenbach and Nyı́ri 2007; Turtinen 2000)—recently
supplemented by a sister program for immaterial heritage (KirshenblattGimblett 2004; Nas 2002)—help bring heritage preservation into the remotest corners of the globe, converting it into a moral duty for all of
humankind. Tourism to historic sites and traditional rites is likewise
flourishing.
The modern-day “social life” (Appadurai 1986) of cultural heritage has
attracted considerable attention in the social sciences, and much has been
learned about the motives and meanings with which people engage the
past and its remnants. Most of the relevant literature is dominated by
a small set of assumptions that, more often than not, appear in combination, underlying a fixed interpretive pattern. These assumptions are
popular, quite simply, because they hold true for many empirical cases.
Exceptions occur, however, and in this article I present a case study of
two traditions in Kyoto that deviate from them in important ways. These
pieces of heritage exist in specific circumstances, particularly with respect
to their urban setting, but they nonetheless throw up the question whether
the dominant assumptions have been applied too readily in previous
research.
A
AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 276–299, ISSN 0094-0496, online
C 2009 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1548-1425. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2009.01135.x
Outside the glass case
The dominant assumptions
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.
Falsification
The narratives of the past upheld by specific pieces of
heritage and their carriers deviate more or less widely
from “real,” or documented, historical conditions. The less
enticing elements of the latter are downplayed or entirely forgotten, others are beautified, and still others are
invented outright so that “fakelore” (Dorson 1950) or a
wholesale “golden age” may be retrospectively created.
This gap is what the famous “invention of tradition” approach (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) emphasizes, for instance, when it reveals the seemingly ages-old Scottish kilt
to be the 18th-century design of an Englishman (TrevorRoper 1983). In anthropology, “invention” has had a strong
echo, although most subsequent work did not follow Eric
Hobsbawm’s distinction between invented traditions and
(supposedly authentic) “custom” (see Hobsbawm 1983:2–
3). Instead, the view that “the origin of cultural practices is
largely irrelevant to the experience of tradition; authenticity
is always defined in the present” and that “traditional . . . is
an arbitrary symbolic designation; an assigned meaning
rather than an objective quality” (Handler and Linnekin
1984:286) is more widespread. Yet even those studies that
locate the past entirely in the eye of the beholder often juxtapose conflicting versions of that past, for example, those
of the carriers of a specific heritage and those of professional historians and archaeologists. Doing so relativizes
the truth claims of all versions, amounting to generalized
spuriousness in many people’s understanding (for an instructive case in point, see Hanson 1989, 1991; Linnekin
1991).
Petrification
Public recognition of things and practices as heritage produces social pressure to fix those things and practices in
time. Not only are they seen as unchanged survivals from
an earlier day but they also may no longer evolve freely,
being effectively placed under a glass case. Heritage may
come to be imagined as entirely timeless, separated not just
from the present but also from historical process as such.
Many authors see this as the root condition of nostalgia,
the schizophrenic yearning for a lost age, which simultaneously is kept at arm’s length, not meant to be brought
back in earnest.1 At the same time, innovation, experimentation, and creativity—the very forces that allow people to
challenge the established order—are pushed aside, usually
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to the benefit of those who reap wealth, power, and status
from the present conditions.
Desubstantiation
The heritage process separates the things and practices
designated as “traditional” from their accustomed role in
everyday life. What once was simply an unmarked ritual, practical object, or decorative item is objectified and
brought into a new register of classification, display, admiration, and, sometimes, rather conscious “cultural editing”
(Volkman 1990; see also Rockefeller 1998). If only because of
an increased self-consciousness, this invariably affects the
original carriers’ relationship to their heritage, often alienating them from it, and the objects and practices in question may end up devoid of any substance other than their
emblematic function.
Enclosure
The most widespread assumption sees an interest in heritage as motivated by the wish to draw boundaries around
the groups formed by the owners and custodians of the
things and practices at issue, either by strengthening their
internal ties, shutting out those who do not belong, or both:
“All invented traditions . . . use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesions,” writes Hobsbawm
(1983:12). Sometimes, these units are small communities
such as kin groups or villages, but, more often, heritage
sustains the “imagination work”—in Benedict Anderson’s
(1983) sense—of communities that are too large to be experienced directly, such as nations, ethnic groups, the inhabitants of a region, or religious groups. Shared heritage convinces the members of these communities that they have
not just a past but also a future in common, thus bolstering
their collective identity, self-esteem, and feelings of superiority over other such communities. The heritage of elites is
often more impressive and durable than that of the lesser
classes, such that established privilege is sustained and the
powerful celebrated, resulting in “Thatcherism in period
dress” (Samuel 1994:290). Thus, an elite angle ends up determining how entire societies look at their past.
No necessary connection exists between these four
assumptions, and they do not always co-occur in actual fact. As anthropologists know very well, a traditional
heritage may be the only significant resource of otherwise underprivileged (e.g., indigenous) groups and thus
can strengthen the weak rather than the powerful. Karen
Fog Olwig’s conviction that “exclusionary practices . . . form
the backbone of heritage politics” (1999:370), however, is
echoed by scores of anthropological studies worldwide
(e.g., Deltsou 2000:131–132; Gable and Handler 1996:574;
Gewertz and Errington 1996:121–123; Haley and Wilcoxon
1997:776–777; Handler 1988; Herzfeld 1991:257; Owens
2002:297; Sant Cassia 1999:257; Scher 2002:477–478; Sutton
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1996:76). And the more the focus shifts to industrialized
and Western countries, the more the other assumptions too
are taken for granted in much social scientific research, often requiring only little supporting evidence. Particularly
outside anthropology, the tone can then turn distinctly
sour:
Heritage . . . is largely focused on an idealized past
whose social values are those of an earlier age of privilege and exploitation that it serves to preserve and
bring forward into the present. [Hewison 1989:21]
Worship of a bloated heritage invites passive reliance
on received authority, imperils rational inquiry, replaces past realities with feel-good history, and saps
creative innovation. . . . Prejudiced pride in the past is
not a sorry consequence of heritage; it is its essential
purpose. [Lowenthal 1996:12, 122]
Heritage successfully mediates all our pasts as
ephemeral snapshots exploited in the present . . . to
guarantee the success of capital in its attempt to
develop new superfluous markets. [Walsh 1992:149]
In short, heritage is there to deceive, and its hidden
purposes must be exposed.
There is no doubt that the four assumptions do, in fact,
often apply, and anthropologists are best advised to maintain a healthy distance whenever traditions and cultural
heritage are adulated by present-day people. Yet, if only because all these assumptions typically spring from an etic
analysis, not from what informants themselves say about
their heritage, we should also remain open to other possibilities. I now turn to two cases of urban heritage that speak
very strongly for such a stance.
Heritage in Japan and Kyoto
The public role of traditions and heritage in Japan is certainly no smaller than in other industrialized countries.
Documented reverence for ancient things goes back a long
time (Guichard-Anguis 2000), and despite the country’s
no-holds-barred adoption of Western knowledge and lifeways after the Meiji restoration of 1868, Japan took only
15 years longer than the pioneer, Great Britain, to pass
its first preservation law for architectural heritage, in 1897
(Larkham 1996:37). Ever since, Japanese modernity has
gone hand in hand with an increasingly institutionalized
appreciation of heritage and its preservation. Outright cases
of invention in the Hobsbawmian sense are numerous, the
most fateful concerning the postrestoration raising of the
emperor from political marginality to godlike status and
the conversion of Shintoism into a state cult (Antoni 1992,
1998; Chamberlain 1912; Fujitani 1992, 1996; Gluck 1985;
Lokowandt 1997). Two edited volumes deal entirely with
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these and other invented traditions (Antoni 1997; Vlastos
1998). Other studies have shown how the formation of highcultural canons (e.g., Reynolds 2001; Shirane and Suzuki
2000; Weston 2004) and the popular perception of everyday
culture (e.g., Cwiertka 2005; Goldstein-Gidoni 2000, 2005),
the countryside (e.g., Ivy 1995; Robertson 1991; Yano 2002),
specific historical periods (e.g., Gluck 1998), and supposedly unique psychocultural characteristics (e.g., Itô 1998)
contribute to imagining the nation and producing Japaneseness. In addition to that of enclosure, the other assumptions also appear and sometimes give rise to very critical
analyses (see, particularly, Ehrentraut 1989, 1993, 1995; Ivy
1995; Robertson 1991, 1995, 1998).
One should expect Kyoto to be a specific case in point.
After all, the city was the seat of the emperor from its foundation in C.E. 794 to 1868 and among the leading urban centers throughout that period. It continues to be a stronghold
for traditional institutions today: Most sects of Japanese
Buddhism and many traditional arts and crafts (dô), including the influential schools of tea ceremony, have their national headquarters there. Kyoto is also the national center of kimono production and trade, and the geisha districts
of the city (cf. Dalby 1983) rank among the most renowned
and mystified (see, e.g., Golden 1997 and the eponymous
feature film [Marshall 2005]). Above all else, almost 50 million visitors annually come to enjoy the city’s unmatched architectural heritage of Buddhist temples, Shintoist shrines,
imperial palaces, and beautiful gardens and to search for
ancient Japan and its refined aesthetics in what is often called “Nihon no kokoro no furusato” [home of the
Japanese heart–mind]. Heritage has tangible benefits: Not
only tourism but also other local industries and the numerous educational institutions partake of the highbrow, elegant reputation of the city.
Clearly, Kyoto and its glorious past do contribute to
tales of national grandeur and involve invention in Hobsbawm and Ranger’s sense. Much as, for example, Genji
monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and Makura no zôshi (The
Pillow Book) are celebrated as world literature today, recognition for the works of the Heian-period (794–1185) court
ladies did not come before the 1920s (Shirane 2000:11). And
the city’s perception as “imperial Kyoto” is also recent, with
important monuments such as the Imperial Palace, Heian
Shrine, and the various rikyû (detached palaces) having
been built or substantially renovated only after the emperor
left for Tokyo. One could also expect similar processes
to be at work in two of the most popular pieces of local
heritage that I observed during ethnographic fieldwork in
Kyoto in 1998–99 (17 months), 2001 (2 months), and 2007
(1 month). One is the Gion matsuri, arguably the most
famous festival of Japan; the other the kyô-machiya, the
traditional town house. The festival is now a state-listed
cultural property and major tourist attraction, and the
houses have experienced a considerable revival in recent
Outside the glass case
years.2 I introduce the two traditions before investigating
their fit with the standard assumptions.
The kyô-machiya boom
Twenty years ago, hardly anybody would have foreseen the
spectacular surge of public interest in Kyoto’s traditional
town houses. When urban land prices soared in the late
1990s, these structures were widely regarded as little more
than an economic liability, best torn down swiftly to make
way for more profitable modern buildings and parking lots.
Now, however, many of the houses have been revitalized
and provide the focus for a remarkable number of social
activities. Kyotoites agree that a “machiya boom” (machiya
bûmu) is occurring, and its scope continues to surprise
even those who had been hoping for a reappraisal all along.
Machiya translates as “town house” and applies to any
traditional urban commoner dwelling, but prefixing kyô,
for Kyoto, recognizes a variety of locally specific features.
Among these are specific façade details (see Figure 1) and
a certain layout: the street front is rarely wider than six
meters, yet the plot can be four or five times as deep. In
what is nicknamed a “bedchamber of eels” (unagi no nedoko), this narrow strip of land is filled with a series of
interconnected, usually two-storied buildings, including a
shop (mise or omoteya) facing the street, a larger residential building (omoya) farther back, and one or more storehouses (kura or dozô) in the rear (see Figure 2), all built
from natural materials—timber, earth, straw, and paper. Sit-
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uated between the buildings are gardens of often minuscule
size but great aesthetic appeal (see Figure 3). Most town
houses are smaller than this stock pattern, and tiny apartments in machiya row houses (nagaya) line the back alleys,
but certain architectural features are shared by all. Standardization of basic measures make sliding doors, decorative features, and even structural parts interchangeable,
anticipating Bauhaus ideas of modular architecture and
greatly simplifying the building process. (For further details,
see Kyô-machiya sakujigumi 2002; Löfgren 2003; Nakamura
1994; Shimamura and Suzuka 1971; Takahashi 2003.)
Large machiya were historically inhabited by as many
as two dozen people. Their mutual relations and household
enterprise were governed by the patriarchal template of the
ie (house; also household, line of descent), in which, ideally, the eldest son succeeded as household head (tôshu)
and all his siblings married out. Hierarchy was reflected in
a detailed grading of access to rooms and entrances, and
even the maids were sorted into those allowed on the raised
tatami floors and those confined to the dirt floor of kitchen
and yard. Ie ideology also governed construction and maintenance of the kyô-machiya: Each member of the fairly limited circle of house owners had a regular master carpenter
(tôryô)—himself too the head of an ongoing ie—who designed and regularly inspected the houses, calling in specialized craftsmen if needed.
Although WWII spared Kyoto almost completely, the
postwar era brought the machiya close to extinction. Building laws unsympathetic to flammable structures; modern
Figure 1. Street front of classical kyô-machiya.
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Figure 2. Paper model and floor plan of classical kyô-machiya.
demands for lighting, heating, air conditioning, acoustic
privacy, and advanced kitchen and sanitary facilities that
were difficult to realize in a machiya; the perceived difficulty and costliness of maintenance; and the demise of ie
organization in favor of smaller families all contributed to
the decline of the houses. In the 1980s, demolition and replacement with high-rise office buildings and condominiums, prefabricated single-family houses, or parking lots accelerated greatly. Kyô-machiya appeared doomed, and the
current 25,000 or so houses are only a fraction of former
figures.
Around 1990, however, a renaissance began, and it continues in full swing today. Hundreds of houses have been
renovated for commercial usage (see Figure 4), mainly as
cafés, restaurants, and shops but also for other purposes
such as housing an IT office, a day-care center for the elderly, a wedding parlor, or a supermarket. Kyô-machiya
renovated for residential use are very likely even more
numerous, and mediation services for machiya sale and
rental receive hundreds of search inquiries. Open-house
days, exhibitions, concerts, or cooking classes in machiya
draw crowds, as do public symposiums and workshops
that discuss the structures. The mass media pay generous attention, and specialized publications—from coffee-
280
table books to residents’ accounts and academic treatises—
inhabit special corners in Kyoto’s bookstores. As tourist attractions, the houses now rival the famous temples, shrines,
and palaces, and specialized guidebooks and walking maps
are numerous.
Salient as well are the many derivatives, starting with
the hundreds of modern, nonwooden buildings—including
high-rises and even a garbage incinerator—that have incorporated machiya design elements (see Figure 5). Machiya
models and paper crafts are sold and can be downloaded
from the Internet (see Dı̂pu Nettowâku Arenjimento 2007).
Major real-estate developers slyly advertise their high-rise
condominiums with photos showing nearby traditional
houses that they have not yet forced out. The trend continues to spread: Feature articles appear in national magazines, and restaurants and shopping malls playing on the
kyô-machiya theme can be found in the Tokyo area and in
Kansai International Airport (see Kyoto Shinbun News 2005,
2006;3 Ramla 2006).
Nevertheless, kyô-machiya continue to disappear, and
high-rises are still vastly more profitable (Brumann 2001,
2004). Yet affection for the houses unites young and old,
male and female, native and newcomer. Virtually everyone wants them preserved, and thousands of people are
Outside the glass case
Figure 3. Kyô-machiya interior and garden.
engaged substantially with the houses, through the numerous citizens’ groups, local government agencies, architectural offices, craft workshops, and university departments
that deal with machiya or as residents or proprietors who
use them for social functions and outreach.
The Gion matsuri
In a country where the celebration of traditional festivals
(matsuri) is a popular pastime, my second case—the Gion
matsuri—is probably the most famous festival of all.4 It
is dedicated to the Yasaka shrine (Yasaka jinja or Yasaka
taisha, formerly the Gion shrine [Gion-sha]), a Shintoist (in
the past, also Buddhist) sanctuary on the eastern fringe of
historical Kyoto, next to Japan’s most famous geisha district, to which it gave its name. A large number of ceremonies unfold over the entire month of July, but most
people equate the Gion matsuri with the Yamaboko junkô
(Float parade), a parade that takes place on the morning of
July 17. Thirty-two float-carts leave their home base—a cou-
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ple of adjoining neighborhoods in the Muromachi kimonowholesalers’ district—and proceed in single file on a threekilometer course over several major avenues in the center
of town. The majority of the floats are of the yama (mountain) type, formerly carried on long poles but now set on
small wheels and pushed by up to two dozen helpers. Most
of the yama have a platform adorned with accessories and
a shingi (sacred tree) on which mythical, legendary, or historical scenes are depicted (see Figure 6). More spectacular are floats of the hoko (halberd, as they are crowned by
halberd heads) type, enormous structures that may reach
as high as 27 meters and weigh up to 12 tons. These have a
roofed platform halfway up, where—surrounding the chigo
(sacred child, most often a puppet)—a troupe of up to 60
musicians (hayashikata) plays the festival music, known as
gion-bayashi, on flutes, gongs, and drums. Hoko are set on
large wooden wheels and pulled by 30 to 40 helpers with
long straw ropes (see Figures 7 and 8).5 Around 3,000 people participate in the parade, which normally attracts more
than 100,000 spectators.
Even more people visit the festival neighborhoods
during the preceding days when the floats are laboriously assembled and decorated, mainly with often-antique
tapestries and gobelins from all over the Eurasian world,
which are hung on all sides. In the evenings, up to half
a million people crowd the streets in frightening density
to admire the floats and the family valuables put on display in neighborhood houses; amuse themselves at the fair
stalls that line the streets; visit acquaintances in the festival neighborhoods; or enjoy the unrelated concerts, exhibition openings, fashion shows, or special sales that target
the festival days. Hardly anyone returns home without having eaten, drunk, shopped, bought chimaki (straw amulets)
and other souvenirs, or climbed onto the hoko platforms for
a fee, thus contributing to Kyoto business and tax revenues.
No news broadcast or newspaper in Japan fails to mention
the event, however briefly.
The parade has long historical roots. Vengeful souls believed to cause epidemics were entertained at the current
shrine grounds in the tenth century (Wakita 1999:8, 17), and
since at least the 11th century (1999:19), portable shrines
(mikoshi) carrying the ox-headed god Gozu tennô (later
reinterpreted as Susano-o no mikoto) and his entourage—
the presumed lords over the dreaded summer diseases—
have been ceremoniously transported to a temporary abode
(o-tabisho) in the center of town, where they remain for a
week. The float parades were started as a mere sideshow to
amuse the gods but grew such that they attracted elite attention (Wakita 1999:169–173; also see Ôzuka 1994:34–35)
by the 14th century. Ever since 1500, when the festival was
revitalized after a war-induced hiatus of 33 years, each float
has been under the care of a specific neighborhood in the
merchants’ and craftspeople’s quarter, Shimogyô (nowadays, Muromachi), whose residents assemble and sponsor
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Figure 4. Kyô-machiya renovated as pastry shop.
it and also accompany it during the parade, wearing the
characteristic kamishimo garments with shoulder pieces
reminiscent of butterfly wings. In five centuries, the names,
topics, and appearances of the floats have changed only in
tiny details, making for a spectacular case of cultural conti-
nuity. Hundreds of imitations of shrine, festival, and parade
have spread throughout Japan (Ôzuka 1994:51–54; Wakita
1999:216–220; Yanagimoto 1994; Yoneyama 1974:22).
The festival was seriously disrupted by several devastating fires, Kyoto’s loss of capital status, and WWII, but it
Figure 5. Entrance to high-rise condominium featuring kyô-machiya style elements.
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Outside the glass case
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Figure 6. Yama float during parade.
was the postwar period that saw the greatest changes. Not
only was the festival listed as an important cultural property of the Japanese state but the emerging festival tourism
also motivated the redirection of the parade from the small
streets that form the perimeter of the Yasaka shrine parish
(ujiko) to large avenues that offered more room for spectators. Also, the two parades formerly held on the gods’ arrival and departure days were merged into a single, more
impressive one that now takes place on July 17 and passes
by the o-tabisho before the gods have even arrived there.
Figure 7. Hoko float with musicians during parade.
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Figure 8. Hoko float during parade.
In addition, the population of the participating neighborhoods has dropped, sometimes to zero, requiring the integration of business firms and their employees into parade
organization. Yet the sense of crisis that quite a few participants expressed in 1973, worrying about the event’s future
prospects (Yoneyama 1974:35, 47–48, 53–54, 207), was not in
evidence during my fieldwork: Crowds are larger than ever,
and participants are determined to perpetuate the festival.
(For further details, see Tani and Masui 1994; Wakita 1999;
Yoneyama 1974, 1986; Yoshii 1994b.)
Genuine heritage
How do the kyô-machiya and the Gion matsuri violate the
common assumptions about traditions I discuss above? To
begin with, the way they are presented today does not involve as much falsification as in many other cases. There
is one blatant instance of “invention” related to the Gion
matsuri, a popular origin story with imperial and national
overtones: In 869, 66 halberds, one for each province of the
empire, were erected by imperial decree, and a mikoshi procession, ancestral to the Gion matsuri, was held. This story
continues to be told in festival leaflets and a major encyclopedia (Sawa et al. 1984:229), although it is apocryphal
(Sekiguchi 1994:30; Yoshii 1994a:4–5). Otherwise, however,
history is readily acknowledged. No attempts are made,
for instance, to conceal the relative recency of almost all
present-day machiya (built after the last big fire of 1864)
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or unpleasant aspects of the past such as the hierarchical
and patriarchal character of ie organization that supported
both the kyô-machiya and the Gion matsuri. Quite a few
parade participants, machiya owners, and fans take an active interest in the history of both traditions, attending lectures and reading the same scholarly books that I cite. Historical evidence is also made to count in cases of conflict,
as, for example, in the debate about female participation in
the Gion matsuri (see below). Thus, the hostility between
heritage display and academic history that Raphael Samuel
(1994:268–271) considers typical is not in evidence, and neither is there a strong tendency to situate the two traditions
in an extrahistorical space too good to be true.
Living heritage
The present-day kyô-machiya and Gion matsuri not only remain linked with a relatively undistorted past but are also
allowed to have a future, so to speak. The conventional
ideal of Japanese architectural preservation, applied to the
famous temples and shrines and often dubbed “freezing
preservation” (tôketsu hozon), is premised on the unaltered
retention of the physical structure, and several kyô-machiya
are, indeed, meticulously kept in their original condition,
listed as cultural properties, and often used as exhibition
space. Nobody I met seriously disputes the quality of these
houses and the importance of their preservation. Yet the
catchphrase of the machiya movement is machiya saisei
Outside the glass case
(machiya revival or revitalization), and there is widespread
agreement that, for the vast majority of the houses, “freezing” will not do. Instead, something original has to be done
with them to make their continued existence viable and
meaningful, and this may involve their physical structure,
uses, or both.
The most visible instance of such “defrosting” is exclusive commercial use of a house as a restaurant or shop, with
rooms thrown open to indiscriminate rather than socially
graded access. This repurposing often requires substantial
physical modifications, such as the use of show windows
instead of the original wooden front lattices (kôshi) or the
replacement of raised tatami floors with street-level tiled
floors. Often, such modification is justified as a necessary
compromise. But there are also “postmodernist” renovations in which the contrast and anachronisms become the
very point of interest, such as by juxtaposing earthen walls
with stainless-steel partitions and halogen lighting (e.g.,
Gyararı̂ Ma 1998:60) or by combining a machiya façade with
European-style street-café elements (see Figure 9). Conspicuous façade details such as stained-glass windows, little turrets, or colorful paint (see Figure 10) make the house
stand out and look “cute” (kawaii)—an important value
in Japanese mass consumption—but then it no longer observes the received ideal of blending gracefully into long
rows of similar structures. Several different time frames may
be combined, as in one machiya housing an antiques shop:
Built in the 19th century, it had been innovatively deco-
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rated with wallpaper made of newspapers from the 1930s
and 1940s, and it offered vinyl records, accessories, and trinkets from the 1950s and 1960s for sale. Bringing in still another time period, the café in the former back garden was
covered by a modern steel-and-glass roof. The owner was
a secondhand manga (comics) dealer in his forties, a declared fan of the Beatles and Bob Marley who sported a
reggae-style peaked cap when I interviewed him. His own
childhood in a traditional house in the suburbs had played
a role in his decision to acquire the machiya, but reflecting the eclecticism of the renovation, he emphasized his
allegiance to “the good things” (ii mono) of all countries
and times.
All of these cases concern the material side of the
houses, yet one of the most common complaints in
machiya discourse is that the hâdo (hardware, i.e., architecture) is emphasized too much, whereas the sofuto (software, i.e., the activities taking place in the house) is being
neglected. In its simplest form, the argument requires that
the dwelling function not be lost, a standard demand of citizen preservation groups. Longtime owners equate sofuto
with the set customs (shikitari or kimarigoto) that used to
be generally observed in the past, including the specific rituals, decorations, meals, and clothing habits that go with
the cycle of annual festivals (nenjû gyôji) and religious observances. Increasingly exotic to contemporary Japanese,
these customs are often highlighted in organized visits and
mass media coverage.
Figure 9. Renovated kyô-machiya with features of European street café.
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Figure 10. Renovated kyô-machiya with nonclassical façade features.
Yet there are also modern interpretations of sofuto. Led
by a Buddhist priest and a Tokyo-born photographer in
their forties, several dozen young artists and craftspeople
have moved into vacant, often run-down machiya in the
old weavers’ quarter of Nishijin, an appropriation somewhat reminiscent of that of New York’s SoHo warehouses
in the 1960s and 1970s. These youngsters lack experience
of traditional architecture and an interest in perpetuating
ancient customs. Instead, they adorn the tokonoma (the alcove that usually displays a traditional painting or calligraphy) with Indian god posters or grace the façade with a discarded electric guitar exposed to the elements. As the priest
and leader emphasizes, however, the artists follow historical
precedent, since what used to be the homes of silk weavers
producing the nation’s most refined textiles (cf. Hareven
2002) once again house creative expression.
Further evidence of people’s preference for a “living”
past also comes from a questionnaire I received back from
59 members—more than one-half—of the Town House
Friends,6 a citizens’ group for machiya preservation. This
group includes owners and residents, architects, craftspeople, university researchers, local government bureaucrats,
and ordinary fans, making for as good a cross-section of
the preservation movement as can be had.7 In the questionnaire, I asked informants to identify their personal reasons
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for engaging in machiya preservation, giving them a list of
possible reasons to choose from (see Table 1).8
Not all preservation reasons that explicitly mention or
strongly imply the past (marked with a P in the second column of Table 1) were chosen by large numbers of respondents. For instance, less than one-fifth of the respondents
selected “because they are old (furui kara),” whereas more
than three-quarters selected “because they are traditional
(dentôteki da kara).” This contrast suggests that “traditional” (dentôteki) means more than just age here and must
include the process of generation-to-generation transmission of the houses. Almost equally salient are the set customs (shikitari) associated with the machiya that have been
handed down in a similar way. Reasons associated with the
ancestors, one’s own childhood memories, the connection
to the old-style “family system” (i.e., ie organization)—all
the things that are gone for good—were less often chosen or
were even rejected. What appears to matter is a link with the
present and with the future, with all the potential for adaptation and incremental innovation it suggests.
The idea of “freezing” is more prominent in preservation approaches to the Gion matsuri, as the parade falls under the authority of state heritage policy. In 1962, the floats
were collectively designated an “Important Material Folk
Cultural Property” (jûyô yûkei minzoku bunkazai) by the
Note. The question was “Why are kyô-machiya important for you and should be preserved and revitalized?” [Kyô-machiya wa anata ni totte naze daiji de, hozon/saisei subeki desu
ka?]. Informants were asked to mark items that are reasons for them (jibun de atehamaru riyû) and those that are no reasons, leaving all other items blank. Informants were also
asked to mark particularly strong reasons if there were any. No numerical limit for the numbers of reasons, strong reasons, or rejected reasons was suggested. H = reason is related to aesthetic and emotional harmony, N = reason is related to closeness to nature, P = reason is related to the past, C = reason is related to Kyoto, Japan, or Japanese architecture.
Table 1: Personal reasons for supporting kyô-machiya preservation given by members of one citizens’ group
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Japanese government, and in 1979, the entire festival was
declared an “Important Immaterial Folk Cultural Property”
(jûyô mukei minzoku bunkazai). This status legitimizes
public subsidies for the festival that now cover almost the
entire cost. At the same time, the national Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkachô) established a standing advisory
committee (shingikai) of scholars and preservation experts
that must approve all repairs, replacements, and applications for subsidies.
The guiding principle of this body is, in fact, “freezing,” that is, keeping the festival as it was at the time of
designation, which arouses little opposition among participants. That the floats, demonstrably, have changed so
little over the centuries certainly contributes to this approach.9 Participants take great care to preserve everything
as is, and in addition to relying on memory, they also prepare photographic documentation of festival displays or
even detailed manuals so they can reproduce the festival
from year to year down to the smallest details. One informant strongly engaged in both lines of tradition drew an
explicit contrast in approaches to their preservation: Kyômachiya must be revived to be useful today, but the festival, she said, is a matter of preservation (hozon), not revitalization (saisei). And, indeed, I never heard anyone seriously
consider the modernization of festival floats, accessories,
or costumes, and one of the youngest participants in the
Miyabiyama neighborhood—in which I undertook extensive participant-observation—said that it is easy to change
culture but difficult to preserve it, suggesting that the latter
task is valued for the very challenge it presents.
This ideal does not extend to every aspect of the festival, however. Through constant use in the parade, the
tapestries and gobelins decorating the floats (see Figures 6
and 7) eventually become worn and must be replaced, at
least for festival use. For the more valuable pieces, the
mainstream solution in recent years had been commissioning exact reproductions. In the Miyabiyama neighborhood,
however, participants do not hold replicas in high regard,
and after voicing their discomfort with them, they won permission from the supervising advisory board to use public
subsidies to buy an original antique tapestry in England. In
this, they saw themselves as following the example of their
ancestors, who, during a time of national self-seclusion, had
also acquired cosmopolitan pieces through what little international trade was going on. So, although the looks of
the festival have changed with such new pieces, the participants are convinced that they remain all the more true to its
spirit.
Substantial heritage
Yet do owners, adherents, and participants reduce the kyômachiya and the Gion matsuri to mere symbols of the past?
Conventional analyses of heritage often suggest so, treat-
288
ing, for instance, the kilt as an emblem of Scottishness and
only secondarily as a garment with special sensory qualities. Many of the most important reasons for kyô-machiya
preservation, according to my questionnaire respondents,
however, are unrelated to the traditionality of the houses.
They can be grouped into two sets, those that focus on the
aesthetic and emotional harmony that the houses are perceived as producing (marked with an H in Table 1) and
those that stress the machiya’s closeness to nature (marked
with an N). The first set of reasons—beauty, townscape contribution, atmosphere—also stood out in interviews and
public lectures, panel discussions, and written materials.
People with otherwise very diverse preservation philosophies returned to the word ochitsukeru (to quiet, calm,
soothe) or its grammatical variants when describing their
experience in the kyô-machiya. Closely related were claims
that the flow of time seems to slow down when one is in
the houses; that even the most unruly children start to behave in them; or that, in a machiya turned cram school
(juku), students put away their manga on their own initiative and return to their studies. Informants rarely elaborated on ochitsukeru, yet the things they mentioned as destroying it—large window panes, shiny white walls, brilliant
light, garish colors, helter-skelter combinations of building
styles—show that the houses’ cultivated restraint in terms
of form, size, color, light, and space is conducive to the perception of balance and harmony.
The reasons in the second set—wooden material, gardens, tangibility of the seasons, environmental friendliness—were also evident in interviews and
participant-observation. In a fairly common trope, the
natural quality was pushed to the extreme; namely, people
spoke of the houses’ being “alive.” For example, in a public
lecture, an earthquake researcher said that machiya are
“natural bodies” (shizentai) and behave instinctively during
quakes. A large number of people likened the unimpeded
air circulation in machiya—more prosaically, draft—to
the house’s “breathing.” An architect who, after numerous
machiya renovations, has now acquired one for herself told
me that “you come home, and even when nobody’s there,
you feel like saying ‘Hello, I’m back!’ to the house” [Ie ni
haitte, dare ga inakute mo, ie ni “tadaima!” tte]. A successful
company owner who, as an enthusiast, had bought a large
machiya and used it for all kinds of activities, told me that
a machiya is a living being (ikimono). Pushed to the brink
of destruction, this special house had been very ill, but
now, it had recovered with the help of the breath, smell,
and sweat of the people going in and out. Visitors moving
through it are the blood in the structure’s arteries, and a
fish stew not only feeds a group of seminar participants
staying overnight but, by the smell that lingers for days, also
nurtures the house, contributing to its recovery. Several
informants, most of them female, dwelled on the cleaning
habits, aesthetic sensibilities, or even bodily comportment
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a machiya enforces, saying or quoting their mothers or
mothers-in-law to the effect that the houses “teach,”
even “shape,” their inhabitants. A female informant with
a long family history of machiya residence spoke of the
house as “wrapping” her; she also said that the feelings of
the people who formerly lived in it have seeped into the
physical structure. People and house, thus, start to form a
joint ecological system, as was also the case for one of the
artist network leaders: “In such a house, the person too is
only a part” [Kô iu yô na ie wa ningen mo ichibu desu].
No informant insisted that machiya are really alive, and
all these comments are best seen as metaphoric speech.
Still, machiya invite such architectural animism, however
playfully deployed.
The “living house” acquires its appeal, I believe, in
no small part because of the contrast to modern Japanese
homes: The features most praised in the kyô-machiya are
those conspicuously absent from the condominiums and
prefabricated houses that form the mainstay of Japan’s
enormous present-day housing industry (cf., e.g., Waswo
2002). New structures hide their natural materials (such
as the wooden framework of most prefabricated houses)
or imitate them (e.g., through plastic wallpaper or plastic
furôringu [flooring] that looks like wooden planks), avoid
costly design efforts, strive to be modern and cosmopolitan
rather than traditional (e.g., by sporting English-language
names such as “Kawaramachi Garden Heights”), and look
alike all over Japan. I certainly never heard anyone describe these houses as “alive.” In almost all areas, Japan’s incorporation into the “global ecumene” (Hannerz 1992:217–
268) of modern material culture—to which it itself massively contributes—is nearing completion. I therefore find it
understandable that a countermovement, however limited
and locally circumscribed, is occurring in the one realm—
housing—in which recovering lost culture would be most
laborious and costly.
The sheer traditionality of the Gion matsuri looms
larger than that of the kyô-machiya, yet here too, participants also appreciate aspects unrelated to its heritage
value. Much as the responsibility and the workload are felt,
the sheer fun of festival participation is often emphasized.
Miyabiyama neighborhood residents said that the festival
is, first and foremost, asobi (play, fun): Once a year, one is allowed to go “festival crazy” (matsuri baka), said one foundation officeholder, and the weaker the original religious component has become, the more this aspect has moved to the
forefront. Participants are much more accurately described
as excited about and cheerfully absorbed in festival activities than as preoccupied or exhausted because of them, and
this also applies for other neighborhoods whose festival activities I witnessed.
The religious aspect also continues to be significant.
No informant denied, and many emphasized, that it has
greatly decreased in importance, demonstrated also by the
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way tourism overrode religious significance when the two
parades were merged (see above). Only one Miyabiyama
informant—a young man in his midthirties—brought up
the original festival rationale and did, indeed, claim that
the event might bring supernatural protection against
diseases. Yet more characteristic is what one male officeholder in his late fifties said about the ceremonial festival
gifts from the Yasaka shrine that are distributed to all
households: “I receive this respectfully, thinking that it is
something coming from the god/divinity, but I’ve never
thought that this is religious or something” [Kami-sama
no mon ya to omotte daiji ni wa itadaku keredomo, kore
ga shûkyôteki ni dô no kô no tte wa kangaeta koto nai
desu wa]. This seemingly contradictory statement draws
a line between shinji (Shintoist ritual, lit. god business)
and shûkyô (religion), with the latter term appearing to
associate with an encompassing creed with far-reaching
personal exigencies, such as the large monotheistic religions or the so-called new religions in Japan (shin-shûkyô)
expect to provide for their followers. If anything, informants’ private Buddhist beliefs seemed to lean in the latter
direction,10 yet shinji implies a fairly low level of religious
intensity, and this apparently allows festival participation
without compromising one’s private religious or atheistic
commitments.
Weak as the supporting beliefs may be, however,
all the required religious rites are performed painstakingly in the Miyabiyama neighborhood, festival accessories
are ceremonially purified, and the ritual services of the
Yasaka shrine priests and visiting yamabushi (mountain ascetics) are properly acknowledged. Central ceremonies at
the Yasaka shrine are attended, calls for donations from
the shrine are responded to, and the shrine clergy’s special authority over festival matters is recognized. Also, the
large effigies that depict a famous historical scene on the
Miyabiyama float undergo a transformation, turning from
“puppets” (ningyô) into (go-)shintai (lit. god bodies, i.e., divine abodes). Their wooden cores lie around rather unceremoniously at the start of festival preparation, but after they
have been clothed, given their face masks, put on display,
and ritually purified, they are treated and referred to with
reverence.11
The neighborhood has even extended its ritual roster
in recent years: Ever since residents learned the whereabouts of the grave of one of the depicted historical figures and about the archaeological discovery of their former
temple home, a small delegation has visited both sites at
the beginning of the festival period to deliver prayers and
perform a short ritual.12 These are rather perfunctory ceremonies, but still, people feel that, once started, they should
be continued. Also, the taboo on the participation of people in mourning—ritually polluting, according to Shintoist
beliefs—is strictly observed. Religion thus remains a significant dimension for festival participants, and the festival,
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just like the machiya, is more than just heritage for those
who care for it.
Everyone’s heritage
The most widespread assumption about heritage, central to both “inventionist” analyses and the proponents
of multiple, situated pasts, sees it as strengthening social boundaries and supporting imagined communities. But
here again, kyô-machiya and Gion matsuri fall short of expectations: Identifying with Kyoto and Japan are not dominant concerns for their carriers, and most social boundaries
around the two traditions have been considerably eroded in
recent years.
In my questionnaire, a majority of respondents chose
as a personal reason for machiya preservation the machiya’s
representation of Kyoto, Japan, or Japanese architecture
(marked with a C in Table 1). Other reasons are more
widespread, however, and I never heard anyone justify his
or her own preservation of a machiya as a localist or patriotic act or of nationalists having a weak spot for the houses.
One certainly finds references to Kyoto or the nation, particularly in the mass media, tourism promotion, and political
speeches, but they are not particularly frequent and not a
primary concern for most people involved in preservation
activities.
I think that this absence of reasons related to collective identities relates to the fact that the kyô-machiya
preservation movement continues to be a grassroots affair.
Several citizen groups and various bureaus, departments,
and semi-independent bodies of the city government organize lectures, guided visits, exhibitions, symposiums, and
seminars; conduct surveys; run counseling and mediation services; provide experts for public meetings, advisory
councils, and talk shows; and publish books about machiya
renovation and maintenance. Limited public subsidies are
available for repairing those houses registered as cultural
properties or standing in protected districts and also for the
conversion of machiya into public housing, and zoning and
building regulations have recently been adapted in several
machiya-friendly ways. Yet the true carriers of the preservation movement are the private individuals, families, and
small or medium-sized companies who own or rent the
houses and the small-scale architectural and craft firms
who repair and renovate them. They act in clear awareness of one another’s activities but without central coordination, and although they tend to be somewhat wealthier and better educated than the average Kyotoite, they are
quite diverse and have little awareness of forming a special
category. What one could call a machiya “nobility” of families looks back on local pedigrees of up to 15 generations
and owns the most splendid houses, and some members
of these families clearly enjoy the social recognition they
can now draw from their homes. Their strategies vis-à-vis
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the machiya are varied, however, and they neither form an
exclusive group nor challenge the considerable number of
leading machiya activists who come from outside central
Kyoto or who do not live in a machiya.
In the many interviews I conducted with people who
have renovated or moved into a machiya, personal motives
for doing so stood out; if anything, my informants were
more intent on being true to themselves and their individual callings than on being like others. This holds true for
many of the young machiya artists in Nishijin, who deliberately pursue nonstandard life courses, but also, for instance, for one middle-aged architect who, at the time he
moved into a rented machiya, quit his long-year employment in an ordinary renovation firm to accept less lucrative
but more rewarding individual commissions and to engage
in activism in a machiya citizens’ group.
Along with greater self-realization, this architect and
other informants intend to create meeting places through
their houses. But this presumes an open-ended style of sociality, not one predicated on collective identification and
boundaries. The one collective unit that does figure strongly
in some cases is not very large: Identification with one’s
family and line of descent continues to be an important
motive for some—certainly not all—of my informants who
want to hand down intact to their offspring what their parents and ancestors have bequeathed to them. This means
that, if an “imagined community” with people one has not
met (Anderson 1983) is significant, it is the diachronic one
with distant ancestors and descendants, not the synchronic
one with fellow Kyotoites or Japanese. If anything, the interests of the family and the heritage value of the house
for Kyoto or the nation can clash: In some cases, machiya
owners, despite multiple appeals to preserve an especially
beautiful house, preferred demolition over sale, not least to
avoid relinquishing family space to strangers. If powerful
groups and organizations were more strongly involved in
kyô-machiya preservation, there would certainly be more
pressure to follow set models and interpretations, more
standardization of preservation approaches, and a greater
likelihood of the houses becoming symbols of particular
collectivities. But, as things stand now, one is far more likely
to find a foreign national flag on a machiya façade—for
example, indicative of the national cuisine offered in the
restaurant inside—than that of the Japanese nation.
The Gion matsuri is a more established collective symbol and officially recognized part of national heritage. Participants are aware of the festival’s fame and derive both a
half-concealed pride in and a sense of responsibility from
it, yet here too, contributing to Kyoto or national glory—
although not explicitly rejected—does not loom large as a
preservation motive among my informants. Instead, the parade develops its most cohesive force at the neighborhood
level, as the residents of Miyabiyama neighborhood, in particular, emphasized. Since 1500, the neighborhoods (chô or,
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today, [o-]chônai) in the festival area—encompassing the
households on both sides of a street from one corner to
the next—and anybody they choose to entitle have been
the only legitimate participants and sponsors of the parade. The 32 neighborhoods manage, prepare, and run their
floats in studied independence from one another. Most
neighborhoods depend heavily on public subsidies and
have made the necessary adaptations, such as incorporating as nonprofit foundations (zaidan hôjin) to which public
monies can flow more easily. The advisory council and the
central festival committee, however, are perceived as more
or less external bodies or even adversaries with which only
the topmost officeholders have intermittent contact.
Neighborhood independence was demonstrated
vividly when it came out in 2001 that, for several years,
one hoko had secretly allowed two young girls among the
troupe of float musicians during the parade. The Shintoist
belief that women are polluting relegates them to backstage
support today, despite hints of front-line participation in
earlier historical periods (Wakita 1999:221). Pressure by the
central festival committee did not sway the recalcitrant
neighborhood, however, so, in the end, the committee
chairman ruled that all neighborhoods were now free
to incorporate women if they wished. His decision was
criticized as autocratic by some neighborhoods, but, in
practical terms, he did no more than strengthen their
independence and weaken centralized control. Responding
to public opinion, however, he did adapt the festival to
present-day gender egalitarianism and erode male privilege, and although there is, as yet, little substantial change,
female participation could well increase in the future.
This gender debate had another, hidden antiexclusionist dimension: In the case of the rebellious float and another
one that added women after the chairman’s decision, it was
the festival musicians who had pushed the issue. In the past,
they were recruited from among people dependent on the
sponsors of the neighborhood float—for example, relatives
of employees of a sponsoring business—whereas residents,
rather than participating in the music making, which they
considered an ancillary activity, would proudly walk behind
the float. Yet, according to an informant from the rebellious neighborhood, an officeholder to whom she had complained about the inclusion of girls told her that, much as
he would like to, he was in no position to give orders to the
musicians. The hierarchies of old no longer function.
A tendency to more egalitarian and comprehensive
participation is also apparent in other details. Before WWII,
land and house owners formed an internal elite, sharing
the costs but making all decisions, ordering around the
mere tenants and live-in employees, and emphasizing status differences, for instance, by seating arrangements, in
a way deeply resented by many. Nowadays, however, the
public subsidies for state cultural properties have obviated
the base for inequality so that no float neighborhood of-
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ficially distinguishes between house owners and tenants.
In the Miyabiyama neighborhood, the old ways died hard,
and the foundation chairman continued to decide everything by himself, down to choosing a deputy who would
later succeed him. The chairman in office during my fieldwork, however, had started to make a point of consulting
his, at that time, three deputies and making festival management more transparent, with detailed spreadsheets covering everything down to the disposal of the last donated
beer can. As a consequence, the general climate of discussion has become much more open, with younger residents
no longer afraid of speaking their minds. And, in a parallel to
most other float neighborhoods, the residents of the apartments in a newly built high-rise condominium were invited
to participate, at first with a somewhat reduced status but
now with full-scale membership for the most enthusiastic
among them. In the chairman’s eyes, egalitarianism and inclusiveness are the only ways to secure the festival’s future.
No doubt toward the periphery of kyô-machiya and
Gion matsuri appreciation, for instance, in tourist advertising or in political speeches, these celebrated expressions
of heritage can become emblems of Kyoto or the nation.
But for their carriers and also for many ordinary Kyotoites,
this is not a dominant concern, and the social boundaries
around them have been eroded rather than strengthened.
The more the houses and festival have entered the heritage
register, the more they have become everyone’s heritage
rather than that of a privileged few.
An urban heritage
The common assumptions about tradition and heritage, I
hope to have shown, account only for a very small part of
the social life of the kyô-machiya and the Gion matsuri, and
they are less important the more intensely people are involved with the houses and the festival. I think that much
of this can be explained by reference to the urban environment. In most societies, past and present, wealth, power,
status, intellectual and creative resources, and cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism are disproportionately concentrated in cities. In general, an urban context works more
strongly against falsified, petrified, desubstantiated, and
enclosed heritage than the social conditions of the countryside do.
To begin with, there are usually more documents of all
kinds in cities (Bestor 2002:147–148, 160; Gmelch 2002:177),
a fact that is connected to the presence of power and wealth.
And in the case of kyô-machiya and Gion matsuri, the
weight of the historical (particularly visual) sources does
play a role. The houses depicted in 11th-century picture
scrolls (Löfgren 2003:65–71) clearly resemble those of today,
and in their present-day appearance, the individual parade
floats differ only in very minor details from those depicted
on 16th- and 17th-century painted screens (byôbu-e),
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making for a spectacular case of cultural continuity. Such
pedigrees do not require invention to be respectable.
Moreover (although unrelated to the urban setting), both
traditions have a relatively large number of carriers who
acquire their expertise in independent lines of personal
transmission that, despite crises, have never been completely severed. Were documentation less extensive, carriers fewer, and control more centralized, I believe there
would be more room for clandestine innovation, as in those
cases of Japanese traditions that were revived from the
brink of demise or entirely re-created (e.g., Law 1997; Moon
1989:166, 175; Robertson 1991:38–39) and could then be
modified in major ways, such as by casting aside undesirable obscenity (Ivy 1995:137–139) or racial stigma (Law
1997:227–229).
The concentration of wealth and power in cities usually
also means that dispossessing urban inhabitants of their
heritage is comparatively difficult. And much as the Gion
matsuri and the kyô-machiya movements are now attracting the attention of tourists and professional experts, they
continue to be carried mainly by Kyotoites and cater primarily to their tastes. Relying on strangers to Kyoto only,
the festival could not be sustained and the machiya movement would shrink to a mere fraction of its current size.
If outsiders played a larger role, there would certainly be
more attempts to invent history; more superficial stagings
of “old Kyoto” instead of the sophisticated renovations I
have described, whose appreciation requires local knowledge; and a greater readiness to enlist the traditions for
imagined communities such as the Japanese nation.13
The situation tends to be different for rural heritage. It
appears that the less the Japanese actually wish to live in
the countryside, the more they have converted it into a projecting screen for nostalgic longings for primeval wholeness
and an unadulterated ur-Japan where time stands still, similar to, but probably more intense than, what has been observed for Great Britain (Williams 1973), Quebec (Handler
1988:52–80), Hawai‘i (Handler and Linnekin 1984:282), and
other modern nations. And it is urbanites who have generally stood at the forefront of orientalizing the Japanese
countryside.14 Numerous ethnographic studies have shown
that the inhabitants of villages and country towns are quite
adept at playing to these outsider expectations (Ben-Ari
1992; Kelly 1986, 1990; Martinez 1990; Moeran 1984, 1997;
Moon 1989; Schnell 1999, 2005), but they are still best seen
as reacting to a discourse originating elsewhere rather than
controlling it themselves. It is difficult to deny that the
power differential between city and countryside plays a role
here and that rural heritage, in general, is more vulnerable to far-reaching reinterpretation by people other than its
original carriers.
Rural culture is folk culture, often believed to be unconsciously created and unthinkingly lived, and the spatial remove of the countryside in these outsiders’ appropriations
292
is turned into temporal distance (Hashimoto 1998b:137,
138, 141; Martinez 1990:105; Robertson 1991:117), recalling the “denial of coevalness” (Fabian 1983) in the ethnographic writing of an earlier day. The kyô-machiya and the
Gion matsuri too were folk culture rather than high culture,
historically carried by the machishû, that is, the ordinary
townsfolk of merchants and craftspeople, not by the aristocratic, warrior, or clerical elites. Yet they are based in the
most prestigious and—in terms of continuous settlement—
oldest parts of the nation’s historically most prominent
metropolis. Town houses and parade stood at the apex of
commoner culture, not at its margins, and were characterized by the pursuit of elegance and refinement, often
encouraged by what trickled down from the elite lifestyles
glimpsed at close quarters. The builders of the kyô-machiya
avoided all rusticity, economizing on the use of wood, cultivating a deliberate frailty of the structural frame, and preferring elegance over functionality by relying on careful finishing and incorporating design elements in the sophisticated
sukiya style, full-fledged tea-ceremony rooms (chashitsu),
or, after the turn of the 20th century, Western-style sitting
rooms. Clearly, the kyô-machiya stand at the refined end
of vernacular architecture, and the above-mentioned postmodernist renovations also presuppose an acclaimed academic and artistic center as background.
The Gion matsuri explicitly stages the contrast between
city and countryside: The volunteers and helpers moving
the floats dress as peasants, with sedge hats and straw sandals on naked feet, whereas the neighborhood residents
follow the floats in zôri (elegant sandals), shirotabi (white
socklike footwear, formerly a common synonym for the
ruling classes), and the prestigious samurai garments they
were only allowed to wear at festival time, a distinctly nonrural attire (see Figure 11). And, although the Gion shrine
lies outside the historical city limits, the parade never leaves
the city, in contrast to many of the derived festivals in which
the floats congregate at the shrine they celebrate. A more
conscientiously antirural festival is difficult to imagine.
The Gion matsuri also relies on eclecticism and cosmopolitanism much more than on primeval roots. It appears that the float topics were consciously chosen, rather
than unreflectively continued from time immemorial,15
taken from tales, legends, and myths that feature in war
epics, noh plays, and Japanese and Chinese classics. These
were high-cultural sources, even when they reached urban commoners through the popular versions of itinerant
singers (Wakita 1999:212). They belonged to a wider East
Asian sphere of cultural exchange very much alive in the
medieval period (cf., e.g., Kônoshi 2000:60–61), in which
imported Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism freely
mixed with purportedly native Shintoism. Later, globalization became important again when the foreign tapestries
and gobelins made their appearance, and today, a considerable number of recognizable foreigners figure among the
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American Ethnologist
Figure 11. Float neighborhood residents (left) address helpers (right).
student helpers who pull the floats. According to a wellplaced informant, the Agency of Cultural Affairs expressed
concern about their participation sometime in the 1990s,
and for a while their numbers declined, but now, there are
more than ever, showing that not even nonnationals are excluded. Constructing pristine Japaneseness from such material would be difficult, indeed.
Conclusion
I think that the relationship just outlined holds not only for
Japan but also for urban heritage, more generally. Ethnographic research delving into the outlined aspects is scarce,
but some hints can be gleaned from descriptions of vernacular architecture and festivals in cities elsewhere.
Interest in historic town centers and their traditional architecture is increasing the world over, and I find
comparable social processes in other large cities where
colonialism has not penetrated (China) or has left the old
urban cores largely untouched (the Arab world). In these
cities, the vernacular courtyard houses now being rediscovered share many features of the kyô-machiya, notably, the
interior gardens, and Damascene residents of bait arabi,
for example, speak of their houses as natural, alive, and
quieting too, contrasting them to modern apartments,
which they see as mere artificial boxes (Meier 2004:25–27,
30). Similar also are the innovative ways in which a growing
number of the remaining siheyuan of Beijing, the riad of
many Moroccan medinas—particularly, Marrakech and
Essaouira—and the houses in the Old City of Damascus
are now being converted to modern tastes and functions,
as part of preservation movements that resemble that
focused on the kyô-machiya (even when, in the case
of Beijing, high-rise development is the much stronger
force [Abramson 2007]). State involvement in the form
of UNESCO World Heritage nominations (in Damascus,
Marrakech, Essaouira, and Fès) and protected districts
(in Beijing [Abramson 2001:12]) can be more important
than in Kyoto, but in these cases too, private initiative is
the main driving force. Although foreigners are heavily involved in the Moroccan cities (Escher and Petermann 2004;
McGuinness 2007) and overseas Chinese, to some degree, in
Beijing (Abramson 2001:16), in Damascus, the new appreciation for the old houses is an entirely Syrian affair (Wilson
2004). In Beijing and the Moroccan cities, collective identity
does not seem to be a particularly central concern, and
although Christa Salamandra (2004:7–15, 125–126) reads
enthusiasm for the Old City of Damascus as a political
statement against the rural-born political elite and the nouveaux riches of today, it is not the grand tale of the nation
either. Rather, in such establishments as the bar “Shuiguiqi”
(Nilsson 2007) and the restaurant “Whampoa Club” (Iveson
2007) in Beijing, “Le Piano Bar” in Damascus (Salamandra
2004:1–2), and the Moroccan courtyard houses turned
hotels that are featured on Internet websites (see, e.g.,
http://www.espace-maroc.com), it appears that private,
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Volume 36 Number 2 May 2009
independently acting investors in search of a substantial
heritage, innovatively combined with modern—if, in
Morocco, rather orientalist—elements, are no less crucial
than in the case of the kyô-machiya. Further ethnographic
research is required here, but I strongly suspect that, for
these urban cases too, the common assumptions about
heritage have only limited explanatory value.
Descriptions of festivals comparable to the Gion matsuri are more difficult to find, but the famous Palio of
Siena—a twice-yearly horse race preceded by a historical parade and surrounded by many ancillary rites and
customary events—shares many features in common.16
“Invention” is certainly involved, as reference to the glorious days of the medieval city republic—which actually
predates the festival in its present shape—has considerably
increased over time (Park 1992:81–83; Silverman 1989:231,
234). Claims to great age are nonetheless justified, as antecedents can be traced back to the 13th century (Dundes
and Falassi 1983:5–6), and the basic form was established
by 1656 (Silverman 1989:230), quite in contrast to the
many similar public races and games in other Tuscan cities
that are of recent origin (Silverman 1989:224). A committee watches over the painstaking preservation of the festival, down to its correct depiction on souvenirs (Warner
2004:255). This does not extend to every detail of the costumes or the name-giving silk banner (palio) for the winner,
however, and some amount of artistic innovation is considered legitimate here (Seydoux 2000:147–149, 162–182). New
customs, such as awarding a bonnet to the “grandmother,”
the participant contrada (corporate neighborhood) that
goes longest without a victory (Seydoux 2000:341–346),
have also been introduced. Therefore, “While the rules and
customs of the Palio are backed by the force of tradition of
almost mythic proportions, they are not frozen traditions;
they have evolved over time and are continually reexamined
and renegotiated” (Silverman 1989:229). Also, participants
see every Palio as a unique event, not just as a mere repetition of a set scenario (Seydoux 2000:445–446).
The Palio of today has definitely entered the heritage
register, having depended on public or semipublic funding
since the 19th century (Drechsler 2006:115–116; Silverman
1989:231, 236) and become a tourist event attracting tens of
thousands of visitors (including James Bond, in the film series’ most recent installment [Forster 2008]). This deters at
least some of the carriers from certain forms of participation (Warner 2004:242–243). Yet the festival is much more
than a showcase tradition for its carriers: Its rationale continues to be religious, with masses being held and blessings given (Silverman 1989:227), and the beauty of festival
paraphernalia is a major concern for participants (Seydoux
2000:185–186, 330). The competitive-game aspect of the
Palio arouses extremely strong passions among the participating contrade (Park 1992:90; Warner 2004:142–144, 154–
156), and contrada members describe festival time as a to-
294
tal experience involving the suspension of most everyday
routines (Warner 2004:155). A large number of metaphoric
expressions commonly used in Siena refer to specific Palio
aspects and situations (Dundes and Falassi 1983:156–161),
showing also that the festival’s substance counts. And, although the festival is certainly made to stand metonymically for the city, the nation appears to be less present, and
both of these imagined communities pale against the personally experienced ones of the contrade and their mutual
rivalries, which are, by far, the most significant frame of
reference for the carriers (Logan 1978; Silverman 1979:416;
Warner 2004:158–215). The contrade themselves, however,
have become less exclusive in recent decades, as they no
longer restrict membership to those born and residing in
their territory but also accept nonresident descendants and
completely unrelated fans, including foreigners (Drechsler
2006:118–120).
The urban background aside, I suspect that rural heritage or heritage without a specific home base will also appear less falsified, petrified, desubstantiated, and enclosed
if one looks more actively for contrary evidence. What has
been called “inventiveness of tradition” (Sahlins 1999:408)
and, in a major revision by Terence Ranger himself, “invention by tradition” (1993:76) must be fully taken into account. Interestingly, Marshall Sahlins also uses a Japanese
example—modern sumo—to show that an ancient aura can
hide rather conscious and recent innovations. Yet the latter cannot be fully accounted for by “some group’s quest
for power, material gain, resistance or a need of identity”
(Sahlins 1999:407). Instead,
modern sumo is clearly a permutation of older forms
and relationships, made appropriate to novel situations. . . . This is a living tradition, precisely one that has
been able to traverse history. That it might be suitably reinvented to fit the occasion might better be
understood as a sign of vitality rather than of decadence . . . traditions are invented in the specific terms of
the people who construct them. [Sahlins 1999:408–409]
A similar point has also been made by Christopher
Tilley, who, after his thorough deconstruction of a “traditional” ritual that his Wala informants perform for a
tourist audience, finds parallels to the indigenous recombination of imported resources that has always been crucial in
Melanesian societies. “By constructing a bricolage of different elements from different sources they are true followers
of ‘ancestral ways,’” he writes (Tilley 1997:84).17 There is every room for creativeness and innovation when resources
marked as heritage are being used, and anthropologists
should look out for them. And even when the cultural editing takes place in precisely the way predicted by the common assumptions, other studies of Japanese heritage show
that self-subjection to the tourist gaze does not necessarily
Outside the glass case
deprive its carriers of their agency and that it can help them
ward off community disintegration (Kelly 1986:609–610;
Martinez 1990:98; Moon 1989:175–177), overcome racism
(Law 1997:263), or maintain those handed-down customs
that are deliberately not put on display (Martinez 1990:104–
105, 106).
The key to a more comprehensive understanding of the
social life of cultural heritage, I believe, lies in the sufficient
inclusion of emic perspectives. By listening to what a wide
range of informants—and not just the professional interpreters and established spokespeople—have to say about
their heritage and their own motives for keeping it up, one
is able to grasp the full range of the diverse, not necessarily
congruous, and sometimes surprising meanings and practices informing them (see also Bruner 1994:409–412; Law
1997:219). The etic perspective from which the standard
assumptions about heritage are most commonly derived
should not be abandoned, but neither should it be relied
on exclusively. That the things and practices recognized as
heritage are ascribed a more glorious past than they warrant, are arrested in an eternal yesterday, become reduced
to a symbolic existence, and are used to draw lines of division has now been convincingly shown to apply to a large
number of cases. This must not be all there is to heritage,
however, and it will be rewarding to look for other aspects
too.
Notes
Acknowledgments. Fieldwork in 1998–99 and 2007 was financed by postdoctoral fellowships from the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science, held at the National Museum of Ethnology
(Minpaku) in Osaka. Heartfelt thanks go to Hirochika Nakamaki for
acting as my academic host and guardian angel. Fieldwork in 2001
and data analysis in 2001–03 was supported by a habilitation scholarship and additional funding from the German Research Association (DFG). I also thank the two anonymous reviewers, the editor, and the copy editor for their valuable comments. Any errors are
mine alone.
1. Susan Stewart notes,
The nostalgic is enamored of distance, not of the reference itself. Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss. For the nostalgic to reach his or her goal of closing the gap between resemblance and identity, lived experience would have to take
place, an erasure of the gap between sign and signified, an experience which would cancel out the desire that is nostalgia’s
reason for existence. [1984:145]
And Marilyn Ivy points to
the consuming and consumable pleasures of nostalgia as an
ambivalent longing to erase the temporal difference between
subject and object of desire, shot through with not only the
impossibility but also the ultimate unwillingness to reinstate
what was lost. For the loss of nostalgia—that is, the loss of the
desire to long for what is lost because one has found the lost
American Ethnologist
object—can be more unwelcome than the original loss itself.
[1995:10]
See also Kondo 1990:72, Robertson 1991:16, and Salamandra
2004:77.
2. The two traditions are not only the most prominent in urban Kyoto but they are also connected: They were carried by the
same stratum of merchants and craftspeople in the past, the festival
neighborhoods are those with the most splendid kyô-machiya, and
in those neighborhoods, machiya architecture is adapted to festival
participation, for example, by featuring removable street fronts for
festival displays.
3. Kyoto Shinbun News is the Internet website of Kyoto’s local
newspaper, the Kyôto Shinbun. Older articles can be accessed online only through commercial subscriber services.
4. It counts among the proverbial “three big festivals of Japan”
(Nihon sandai matsuri) and produces many times more Internet
search hits than the other two.
5. A third type of float, hikiyama (lit. pulled mountain), has the
size, appearance (minus the halberd), and music of hoko. Three
floats of this type appear in the parade. Two kasaboko, large umbrellas that have lost their historical floats, are now paraded with
performers of traditional dances.
6. All names of informants’ organizations are pseudonyms.
7. I also distributed the questionnaire to other citizens’ groups,
the staff of Kyoto Workshop (see below), participants in organized
activities held in machiya, and other informants. Response rates
were lower among these groups, so I exclude them from detailed
analysis here. The general trends, however, conformed to those
among the Town House Friends.
8. The reasons were those that had suggested themselves to me
after about a year of participant-observation and more than one
hundred interviews. I also included reasons commonly rejected by
machiya activists—such as the houses’ being currently in fashion—
to test reactions. I discussed the reasons and their phrasing with
one group member before sending out the questionnaire. I was
well known in that group, and many members were personal informants, so I expected answers to be relatively honest. In hindsight, I
regret that it did not occur to me to include the following options:
natsukashii kara (because they are nostalgic) and kenkô ni ii kara
(because they are good for your health).
9. Besides, the festival has been a consciously recognized tradition for more than five centuries: The revitalization in 1500 was
preceded by an investigation in which elderly residents were asked
about the details of the festival as it was held before the Ônin War
(1467–77), to revive the parade just as it had been staged in those
days (Wakita 1999:162, 186–189).
10. Thus, the aforementioned officeholder expressed uncertainty whether the Buddhist affiliation of his family collides with
festival participation, and another informant stated that, because
her neighborhood’s float displays a Buddhist effigy (and not just
Shintoist paraphernalia), she does not feel ill at ease (iwakan o kanjinai).
11. When pressed about the shintai transformation, one informant said that the puppets are “god bodies” only because they are
important, not the other way round, and also only at this particular
time. Another equated the kami (god[s]) with the entire neighborhood, dissolving religious belief into social cohesion in a way Émile
Durkheim would have approved of. When I pointed out the dogmatic fuzziness, people repeatedly characterized it as typical of the
festival, nothing to be pondered too deeply.
12. Given that the depicted persons died in battle, residents may
actually be seen as returning to the propitiation of vengeful souls,
that is, the historical origins of the festival.
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Volume 36 Number 2 May 2009
13. In 2007, informants complained that, in the most central
area, kyô-machiya were increasingly targeted by Tokyo-based businesses, crowding out Kyotoites, and that, among the vastly increased number of shops and restaurants, unambitious and purposely cosmetic renovations and uses could be spotted. In the
somewhat more peripheral areas, however, the machiya boom had
continued to grow at a fairly constant rate and showed no signs
of decreasing sophistication, and neither did the social activities
around the town houses.
14. Examples include Yanagita Kunio’s folklore studies (minzokugaku; Harootunian 1998; Hashimoto 1998b; Ivy 1995:72–140),
Yanagi Sôetsu’s folk art (mingei) movement (Kikuchi 2004; Moeran
1984:14–16, 1997), the rediscovery of rural folk theater (Kelly
1986:610; Law 1997:204–206), and the commercial “old home village” (furusato) boom since the 1970s (Creighton 1997; Ivy 1995;
Knight 1994; Robertson 1991; Yano 1999).
15. There are almost no written sources on the formative period
of the festival, but in the kyôgen (noh theater comic interlude) play
Kujizainin from the 14th or 15th century, several commoners assemble to discuss what to put on their float. They mention other
floats that have already monopolized a particular fixed theme (as
was to become common after 1500), recall earlier failures, and try to
find something new and more compelling (Ôzuka 1994:40; Wakita
1999:180–181).
16. In the past, this reached all the way to float-carts depicting mythological and historical themes, one of which continues
to appear in the historic pageant preceding the horse race (Park
1992:82).
17. In a way, it is the mode of appropriation rather than the
appropriated things that is continuous here, calling to mind the
Miyabiyama neighborhood residents’ wish to perpetuate the precedent of their neighborhood ancestors by bringing in the excitement
of new things.
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accepted November 30, 2008
final version submitted December 3, 2008
Christoph Brumann
Institute of Cultural and Social Anthropology (Institut für
Ethnologie)
University of Cologne (Universität zu Köln)
50923 Köln, Germany
[email protected]
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