Making Japanese Heritage

This book examines the making of Japanese heritage, investigating the ways in which particular objects, practices and institutions are ascribed public recognition and political significance. Through detailed ethnographic and historical case studies, it analyses the social, economic, and even global dimensions of cultural heritage. It shows how claims to heritage status in Japan stress different material qualities of objects, places and people-based upon their ages, originality and usage.

Christoph Brumann is a DFG Heisenberg Fellow at the University of Cologne, Germany. He has published widely on utopian communes in Japan and worldwide, gift-giving in Japan, the anthropological concept of culture, globalisation and urban anthropology. Rupert Cox is Lecturer in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester, UK. His research is on the intersection of art and anthropology with a particular emphasis on sound recording. His books include The Zen Arts: An Anthropological Study of the Culture of Aesthetic From in Japan and The Culture of Copying in Japan (both published by Routledge).