ARCHAEOLOGIA JAPONICA

The Committee for the Protection of Buried Cultural
Properties
OGASAWARA Nagataka1 & MABUCHI Kazuo1
The most outstanding topic of ﬁscal 2014 regarding protection of buried culturalproperties was various problems related to excavation research at reconstruction projects
for the Great East Japan Earthquake. Although progress was seen in excavation itself,
there is a severe conﬂict between promotion of reconstruction related projects such as
housing reconstruction, and protection of archaeological sites. While the deadline forreconstruction related excavation research is imminent in ﬁscal 2015, the environment
surrounding the excavation, such as physical support, is still not sufﬁcient, and thestructure after 2015 is opaque. These are problems that were anticipated from thebeginning and are now becoming real.
An alarming situation in recent years is that as so called baby boomers are retiringin huge numbers, new hires are not adequate. Even if sufﬁcient staffs are hired, they
are often temporary or part-time employees with a limited employment period. It
is undeniable that cultural properties administration is somewhat neglected withinmunicipalities. This situation will create a blank space between generations which
will become a big obstacle in the continuity of work and deepening of regional history
studies. Also, a more serious problem is that the ratios of the number of students who
major in archaeology to get a job as a specialist after graduation tend to be dropping.
This means that the fascination of archaeology is not being conveyed to the students, andeach of us who engages in archaeology should take this fact seriously.
Activities of the Committee for the Protection of Buried Cultural Properties consistof a monthly director meeting, a national member meeting and a poster session at thegeneral meeting of the Archaeological Association in spring, an information exchange
session at the Association convention in fall, and regional meetings dividing the country
into several groups.
The ﬁscal 2014 national spring meeting was held on May 16 (Fri.) from 14:00 to 17:00
at Nihon University, and it was attended by 32 committee members and responsible
directors. Due to reelection of members, YAJIMA Kunio was appointed as the newcommittee chairman, and FUJISAWA Atsushi and FUJINO Tsugifumi were appointed
1 c/o The Committee for the Protection of Buried Cultural Properties, The Japanese ArchaeologicalAssociation, 4th Floor, 5–15–5 Hirai, Edogawa Ward, Tokyo 132–0035, Japan(jjarch@archaeology.jp)
JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 4 (2016): 90–91© Japanese Archaeological Association90

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committee vice chairmen. Also 117 new committee members were approved at the boardof directors. Also discussions were held on the position of cultural properties within
local culture, reconﬁrmation of the original signiﬁcance of preserving records, promotionof data utilization, the increase of business due to the elimination and consolidation ofmuseums, the fading of cultural properties rescue in disaster areas, and so on. Also it wasconﬁrmed that since ﬁscal 2014 is the 10th year since the Committee started conducting
prefectural questionnaires on the status of buried cultural properties administration, theprocess of summarization will be started.
The ﬁscal 2014 information exchange session was held on Oct. 12 (Sun.) at the timeof the Date convention and was joined by a responsible director and ﬁve committee
members and association members. They exchanged opinions and discussed protection ofburied cultural properties in Hokkaido, excavation research on the Hokkaido Universitycampus, Jomon sites in Tohoku and so on.
The poster sessions at the general meeting and the convention were on “Situations ofExcavation Research for Reconstruction Projects of the Great East Japan Earthquake.”
A talk was held with the Cultural Agency on March 3, 2015, conﬁrming the position ofthe Agency toward the preservation problem of Irinosawa site, Kurihara City, Miyagi
Prefecture and so on.

© Japanese Archaeological Association91