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TOKYO — A total of 102 festivals and other cultural events designated by 31 prefectural governments as intangible folk cultural properties have been suspended or had those designations lifted, due in many cases to a lack of people, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned.
In a majority of cases, the designations were removed due to the aging of participants or a decline in the population of young people. The situation underscores the difficulties in passing on folk customs as the nation’s population shrinks.
Traditional events and festivals that are judged to have particular value are protected by the Japanese government and local bodies as designated cultural properties. In its survey, the Mainichi Shimbun focused on intangible folk cultural assets designated by prefectural governments. It asked how many designations had been lifted and how many cases there were in which the designations were maintained but the festivals or other events couldn’t be held, leaving them in a dormant state. The Mainichi obtained responses from all 47 prefectural governments in Japan.
The results showed that since 1975, when the current system of designating cultural properties began, there were nine cases across four prefectures in which designations had been lifted. Chiba Prefecture removed the designation for six traditions including Ino Kabuki, a type of Kabuki performed in the city of Narita, due to the loss of groups to carry on the performances. Saitama, Aichi and Oita prefectures also recorded one case each.
These figures did not include traditions whose prefectural designations had been lifted because the events had been upgraded to receive national recognition, or cases where the designation had once been lifted but later reinstated.
There were 93 cases across 30 prefectures in which the events had been suspended. By prefecture, Kumamoto recorded the most, at 11, followed by eight in Kochi, seven in Fukui, and five each in Miyagi, Chiba, Nara and Wakayama prefectures. The four prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Tokushima and Okayama said they were not disclosing the names of individual traditions, though Okayama partially did so, while Mie Prefecture said it did not know the facts about the situation.
In many cases, the events were suspended in or after the 2000s. In almost all of them, the reason was a shortage of children or young bearers of the traditions or a lack of successors. There were also cases attributed to a lack of funds to run festivals.
(Japanese original by Takashi Yamashita, Business News Department, and Shu Hatakeyama, Digital News Group)
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