Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 1
·
May 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
49
contribution to the making of municipalities. The programme represented a community-based
and ideological trend slowly integrated into the state's city planning institution with limited
direct input by local people. In the mid-1990s, however, shortly after the Great Hanshin
Earthquake, the government recognized the role played by the local and regional Non-Profit
(NPO) and volunteer organizations to cope with the crisis and the reconstruction of towns.
On this occasion, the social aspects of community development, the local dimension and the
involvement of peoples began to be taken into consideration as a set of priorities. As a result,
machi zukuri
programmes began to receive special attention, in particular between 2002 and
2007 (Mutafchieva 2009). At the same time,
the BLL began to use these programmes as the
political and institutional framework for reconstructing buraku areas.
Another important framework is the ACA's programmes for the promotion of cultural
landscapes (
bunkateki keikan
), and the preservation of the Japanese key industries. In this
context, government organizations, NPOs and NGOs were supported to help local people
‘learn the significance of discovering the value in the scenic landscapes with which they are
familiar in their daily lives’ and experience the ‘quintessence of the cultural landscapes’,
rooted in the traditional industries and mode of life of local hometowns (
furusato
). According
to the ACA, ‘cultural landscapes, being close to the hearts of people who were born, grew up
and live in the locality, symbolize the image of the hometown (
furusato
) (...) In order to
maintain and protect ‘cultural landscapes’ in an appropriate manner, it is necessary, building
upon the inherited mechanism of traditional industries and modes of life (...)’.
5
Furusato
— usually translated as hometown — is an important notion employed in
national policies and programmes, in particular in local and touristic advertising campaigns
where local cultures were promoted.
Furusato zukuri
(the evocation of furusato through
home/native-place making) is the making of some native aesthetics as temporally stable in
the social imaginary (Robertson 1988), and is strongly linked with the preservation of cultural
landscapes and traditional industries. Since the 1980s, images of furusato were also promoted
in urban settings: for instance, the nostalgia for a lost Japan was created through images of
romanticized rural landscapes in Tokyo’s urban environment, through the so called ‘Furusato
Tokyo campaign’, in which revival of crafts and culinary traditions were distributed
(Creighton 2009).
I argue that these conceptual frames were reformulated at the local level by the social
5
From the Report of the Study on the Protection of Cultural Landscapes Associated with Agriculture,
Forestry and Fisheries.
