'Community' as a landscape of intangible cultural heritage: Fasho-fu in Kijoka, a Japanese example of a traditional woven textile and its relationship with the public.

Abstract

This article explores the concept of ‘community’ as a place which engages with ‘self’ and ‘other’ in safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage. By observing a scheme piloted by the Japanese government to promote traditional craft industries, I will show how a cultural form and its practitioners are attached to a particular place, and how the government’s support of ‘traditional craft products’ invites outside evaluation and consumption of those products. The case study of a traditional woven textile, Kijoka-no-Basho-fu, produced in Okinawa Prefecture, suggests that ‘community’ allows practitioners to embody the time-space configuration of their work and also frames the public perception of this work as ‘tradition’. Cultural heritage within a community creates a site where one may recognise one’s self through one’s experience of outside values and social change.