From heritage to people's house
Subtitle: Kyomachiya revitalization movements and regional identity in Kyoto
By: by Hyojin Kim
Published: 2008
Language: eng
Number of pages: 237
Description: This dissertation is an anthropological analysis of the recent emergence of Kyomachiya, Kyoto-style wooden townhouses, and their revitalization movements after the 1990s. Based on 27-months of fieldwork, conducted from 2001 to 2006, I address changes of public discourses on Kyoto, which enabled the movements to emerge and proliferate on the basis of Japanese people's anxiety over the deteriorated traditional townscape of Kyoto, perceived as unsuitable to the Old Capital. Not only as the most important component of Kyoto's traditional townscape, but also as a new symbol of authentic Kyoto culture, the revitalization of Kyomachiya, once old and dirty houses to be demolished, have gained nation-wide support. The Gold Coin Crossing Traditional Culture Festival is one of the local efforts to appropriate the current Kyomachiya boom in order to revitalize the depressed Nishijin economy. The success of the Festival resulted in extensive external interests such as the administration, mass media, universities, and so on. This later constituted an integral part of local politics over the production of knowledge centered on Kyomachiya revitalization.

The entrance of external agencies, however, brought about several unexpected outcomes: First, juxtaposed to established neighborhood organizations, the making of the Gold Coin Crossing as chiiki komyuniti , a once-forgotten name of the area and an invented tradition for the Festival; Second, intensified competition among external agencies over access to newcomers with revitalized Kyomachiya and manipulation of various states of "in-betweenness" as means of differentiation; Third, the exclusion of most residents as the result of competition, which eventually precipitated the decline of the Festival. Similar to the case of the Festival, the recent heritagization of Kyomachiya as a new symbol of authentic Kyoto culture signifies a fundamental change in Japanese people's perspective to Kyoto: the crystallization of Kyoto as `the Old Capital' through the exclusion of the changes and heterogeneities of a living city.
Notes: "May 2008."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Anthropology)--Harvard University, 2008.

Includes bibliographical references.