<Articles>Cultural Properties and Modern Tourism: Tourism and Cultural Appreciation in Prewar Kyoto and Nara

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the theory of national integration through the institution of cultural properties and to present the significance of focusing on tourism in analyzing the historical formation of the custom concerning the appreciation of cultural properties. In previous discussions in Japan, the custom of viewing cultural properties, in which people visit and appreciate the treasures and architecture of shrines and temples, has been interpreted as having been created as a result of the government’s education and museum policies. This paper corrects this commonly held interpretation and discusses the practical aspect of tourism, which has not been examined in the past. In Chapter 1, we modify theories of national integration and the institution of cultural properties based on recent historical research. Results confirm a gap between the institutional design and its realization and show that the institution cannot be considered to have played a role in national integration immediately. Chapter 2 summarizes the significance of focusing on tourism in examining the functions of the institution of cultural properties. It presents the difficulty of examining the formation of the perception of treasures designated as cultural properties as traditional culture from only the perspectives of ideology and policy. In Chapter 3, we examine whether the expansion of tourism to Kyoto and Nara has played a role in promoting the appreciation of cultural properties based on multiple statistics. Chapter 4 examines the relationship between school trips to Kyoto and Nara and the spread of cultural property appreciation before World War II. Despite the fact that few studies have focused on the function of the cultural property system and the traffic of tourists and school excursions, it can be said that even before World War II, there was an implicit understanding that tourism to Kyoto and Nara was undertaken for the purpose of appreciating cultural properties. However, the Imperial Household Museums in Kyoto and Nara, which have exhibited treasures of shrines and temples as works of art since the Meiji period, did not noticeably attract visitors as the number of tourists to Kyoto and Nara increased. Prewar tourists did not appreciate cultural properties as traditional culture but visited various famous sites in both regions for entertainment. This paper presents the limitations of interpreting the cultural heritage system as a politically created tradition.