Textual Heritage Embodied: Entanglements of Tangible and Intangible in the Aoi no ue utaibon of the Hōshō School of Noh

Abstract

The word heritage has been the object in recent decades of growing interest both from the general public as well as from policy makers and local and national institutions. Specifically, the concept of cultural heritage has assumed an implicitly positive meaning among the public. This positive view has been furthered by the popularity of UNESCO’s World Heritage List, instituted in 1972 with the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage.1 Attracted by the possibility of reinforcing their symbolic capital and soft power, a growing number of countries have ratified the convention, investing a remarkable amount of funding and other resources into heritage safeguarding. Nonetheless, because the parameters for inscribing a site on the UNESCO World Heritage List are based overwhelmingly on European and Western values and principles, the struggle to have one’s items inscribed therein has always been biased in favor of Western countries. As of this writing, more than half of all World Heritage List sites are located in Europe or North America. This imbalance and unfairness in the UNESCO rules has been criticized by non-Western countries, as well as by postcolonial scholars, especially since the mid-1980s.2 Partly as a consequence of this criticism and largely as a result of non-Western countries’ demands for a fairer and more inclusive definition of heritage, UNESCO promoted the new category of intangible cultural heritage through the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (hereafter the ICH Convention) in 2003.3 With the Textual Heritage Embodied: Entanglements of Tangible and Intangible in the Aoi no ue utaibon of the Hōshō school of Noh