Law Media Bridge
Text/Lemon Lee
Sichuan Yue
"Kawagoe" to Edo – see the preservation of Japan's historic districts
Note: A Japanese friend saw the article and quickly proposed changes, I noted at the beginning, not to make changes to the main text, mainly focused on the organization of the "Town Association". She said that Japan's municipalities will not undertake the work of household registration, conduct polls and censuses, which are done by government departments. In addition, there is no remuneration for the staff of the town association, and the "monthly fee" paid by the residents is office expenses and not labor remuneration. At the same time, there will be no property income in the town. I note that at the beginning, I will not change it in the main text, so as not to play a role in emphasizing. (Text/Li Meng)
"Kawagoe" to Edo
- See the preservation of historical districts in Japan
(Tibetan-made buildings on Ichiban Street in Kawagoe City, photo by Li Meng)
Tokyo was a small, sparsely populated fishing village called "Edo" 500 years ago. In 1457, a samurai named Ota Michikura built Edo Castle here, which gradually developed into the political and economic center of the Kanto Plain in Japan. In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo that actually ruled Japan for 265 years, and Edo became the political and economic center of the country, known as the "Edo period". The Emperor was only the titular supreme ruler of Japan, living in Kyoto, located in the Kansai Plain. In 1867, the Tokugawa shogunate was "restored by the Great Government", and after the Meiji Emperor actually took power, he moved the capital from Kyoto to Edo, and changed Edo to Tokyo, making it the capital. Since then, Tokyo has continued to grow to become the tokyo metropolitan government it is today.
The historical ruins of the ancient city of Edo, in today's Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, have been designated as "Special Historic Sites". After the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the bombing of World War II, there are not many original buildings left in Edo Castle. Today, if you want to see the cityscape of Japan in the Edo period, there are only two places to go, one is the Edo Museum in Tokyo, and the other is Kawagoe City, which is only 40 kilometers from the center of Tokyo.
Kawagoe City is located in the south-central part of Saitama Prefecture, with an area of 109.16 square kilometers and a population of more than 345,000, while the number of people who come to Kawagoe every year for tourism reaches more than 3 million in 2000, and in 2009, after nhk TV broadcast the TV series "Wings" with Kawagoe as the background, the tourist population soared to more than 6 million. Kawakoshi is a famous historical and cultural city, and in Japan, there are many cities called "Little Kyoto", but the only city called "Little Edo" is Kawagoe. It is the "back of Tokyo", and by coming here to the quaint historical district, visitors can "travel" to the Edo period and feel the customs and customs of the Tokugawa shogunate era.
Quaint historic district
Ancient Japanese people liked to build castles for military defense, and princes and magnates lived in castles. Ordinary people could not live in the castle, and scattered around the castle, forming a row of houses and streets, which is the so-called "castle town". The traditional streets and towns of Japan are called "Teramae-cho" in front of the temple, "Kabukicho" for drinking tea, drinking and listening to the singing of singers and prostitutes, "Suba-cho" in front of the inn, "Minato-cho" in front of the port, and Kawagoe "Castle Town".
Today's Kawagoe, the castle is no longer there, the Honmaru Goten ("Honmaru" means "castle center" in Japanese) is the only remaining old building in the castle, is the residence of the lord of the castle to keep Kawagoe, today's tour, you can vaguely imagine the generals and samurai living and deliberating inside from between the walls. Built in 1848, the main living room of the Honmaru Goten is still intact, and at present, only two large living rooms are still preserved in all of Japan, and the other is in Kochi Castle.
In addition to the Honmaru Goden, kita-in temples that bear witness to Kawagoe's close political ties with the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo are Kita-in Temple. Its full name is "Hoshinoyama Muzoju-ji Kita-in Temple", this temple originally had the North Courtyard, the Middle Courtyard and the South Courtyard, the Middle Courtyard and the South Courtyard were later destroyed by fire, only the North Courtyard remained, the Japanese "North" and "Kita" harmonic, the picture is auspicious, so it was renamed "Kita-in".
Kita-in was dedicated to the Great Monk of Tenkai, who had a deep relationship with the Tokugawa shogunate and was in close contact with several generations of shoguns, including Tokugawa Ieyasu, Tokugawa Hidetada, and Tokugawa Iemitsu, and was a "Yamanaka Prime Minister". The first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, entrusted Tenkai and others with funeral ceremonies and temple numbers when he was critically ill. When The Temple was rebuilt after the fire, at the behest of the shogunate, the room where the third shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, was born, was moved from Edo as a study, and the dressing room of Tokugawa Iemitsu's nursing mother, Kasuga Bureau (whose relationship with Tokugawa Iemitsu surpassed that of his birth mother, had a great effect on Iemitsu's succession, once held considerable power in the shogunate, and was a very important historical figure), was also moved from Edo as a guest hall. Later, a fire broke out in Edo, reducing the shogunate complex to ashes, and the two houses that had been moved earlier to Kita-in became the most important remnants of Edo Castle.
In addition to Kita-in Temple, Kawagoe also has many temples and shrines, such as Narita Yamakawa-etsu-in Temple, Renshin-ji Temple, and Toshogu Shrine, which commemorates Tokugawa Ieyasu. On the Saturday and Sunday of the third week of October every year, the annual Kawagoe "Autumn Festival" is held, and the scene is grand, and the exquisite puppets launch gorgeous and luxurious floats, marching majestically on the Tibetan Street, competing to play music with flutes and drums, dancing with the crowd, and the lively atmosphere in the evening is even more climaxed.
In addition to politics, Kawagoe also has close economic ties with Tokyo. During the Edo period, convenient land and water transportation brought a steady stream of Kawagoe's souvenirs to Edo, the most famous of which were sweet potatoes and eels. Many biscuits and desserts are made from sweet potatoes, and the fairy catfish baked with sliced sweet potatoes is called "ChuYan Yaki", which is divided into two kinds of sugar-free and sugar-free, which are local famous products. Ancient Edo was poor in protein resources, eel was very popular, and grilled eel and Japanese rice were a perfect match. Kawagoe's longest-established eel shop, called lchinoya, opened in 1832 and has been passed down for seven generations and is still thriving today.
Kawagoe has a street lined with confectionery shops, "Kokoya Yokodome", which gathers more than 20 shops selling traditional Japanese sweets, and after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, there were more than 70 shops here, all of which were supplied to Tokyo, which was the peak of the "Kogoya Yokoding".
In addition to "Kokoya Yokoding", the more famous street is "Ichiban Street", a commercial street featuring traditional "Tibetan architecture" and is listed in Japan's "National Important Traditional Building Complex Preservation Area". The so-called "Tibetan-made architecture" is a kind of warehouse-style shop building in Japan. The word "hidden" has the meaning of "storage" and the meaning of "hiding".
Traditional japanese architecture is mostly wooden structures, rarely using masonry, in order to "prevent earthquakes" and "moisture". Japan has many earthquakes, while wooden houses are more resistant to earthquakes. Japan's traditional wooden structure houses are almost all tenon and tenon structures, and there is no iron nail fixation, also because the tenon and tenon structures have strong seismic resistance, and it is easier to recover to the pre-earthquake state after the earthquake. Japan's climate is humid, so traditional wooden houses are rarely painted, mostly logs, because logs can better absorb moisture. Also in order to prevent moisture, the traditional Japanese house floor and the ground are often a certain distance away, not directly to the ground. For these reasons, traditional Japanese architecture is mostly a refined, plain, elegant style, and is rarely complicated and gorgeous. The tea ceremony is usually carried out in the simplest hut. The space spacing inside the house is also mostly separated by screens and the like, rather than building walls everywhere. The walls of traditional buildings are mostly wooden frames, wooden lattices and then pasted with mud and white ash, and less are made of masonry.
And "Tibetan architecture" is not only used as a warehouse, but also for people. It is often the solid houses that can afford to build Tibetan buildings, where they "store" grain, wine and various goods. Such buildings do not look tall today, mostly two or three floors, but they were already very majestic in ancient times. The peculiarity of Tibetan architecture is that the wooden pillars of such buildings are "hidden" in the earth and lime walls and are not exposed. Kawagoe's Tibetan-built buildings are made of wooden pillars and 30 cm thick limestone, and not a single wooden pillar is visible on the outside. This is also to prevent fires. When you visit Kawagoe, you can feel the cool wind blowing in front of you from time to time, and this is a windy area. Because of the strong wind, Kawagoe's buildings have been destroyed by fire many times, and only Tibetan-made buildings can survive the fire, so more residents are willing to build more expensive Tibetan-made buildings, and over time, the "Ichiban Street" of Tibetan-made buildings has been formed.
Walking on Yiban Street, you can see the Tibetan buildings on both sides of the street, and the eaves are not the same. When it was first built, the residents took into account the overall beauty of the complex, and the eaves of each building were deliberately staggered. The width of the street of each building is very narrow, that is, four or five meters, but the depth is very deep, tens of meters. The Kawagoe Museum of Tibetan Architecture, once the shop and residence of tobacconist Koyama Bunko, is now open to the public as a private museum.
In Ichiban Street, there is an antique "bell tower" that is a landmark building in Kawagoe. It was built during the Kanei period (1624-1643) by the then lord of the Kawagoe Domain, Sakai Tadakatsu, and was destroyed by fire several times, the last time it was rebuilt in 1894, the year after the Kawagoku Fire in 1893. Before rebuilding their homes, the residents of Kawagoe raised funds to build this bell tower, because the bell tower is a spiritual symbol of the Kawagoe people's invincibility and an eternal spiritual home. At that time, Japanese entrepreneur Eiichi Shibusawa sponsored the funds, and even the Meiji Emperor gave them funds. The bell tower is divided into three floors, 16 meters high, and rings four times a day at 6, 12, 15 and 18 o'clock. In the past, it was an artificial bell, but now it is an automatic bell, and when the bell rings, everyone in Kawagoe knows what time it is.
In addition to the traditional Tibetan-made buildings on Ichiban Street, western-style buildings after the Meiji Restoration, some can also be seen in Kawagoe, such as churches, banks, chambers of commerce, etc., which are also old houses. The Japanese "combination with the West", not only reflected in the architectural style and appearance, but also reflected in the architecture and daily living, often the living room, dining room and other external parts of the furnishings are Western-style, the use of sofas, chairs and other modern home; and the bedroom furnishings are the traditional Japanese style, or like tatami, gray sand walls, cedar board, paste paper lattice sliding doors. In Kawagoe, both traditional and Western-style architecture have been well preserved, and buildings from the Edo period to today are displayed on both sides of the street, constituting a three-dimensional architectural history.
How the Japanese protect
" Cultural Properties "
(Lee Mong-hyun, Honmaru Palace, Kawagoe City)
There is a law in Japan called the "Cultural Property Protection Law", in which the concept of "cultural property" is translated as Chinese which is a bit difficult. "Artifacts"? "Cultural heritage"? Similar but not exactly the same. In the minds of the Japanese, cultural heritage is also wealth, and they are carefully protected as wealth.
As early as the Meiji Restoration, Japan enacted the Koshaji Temple Protection Act, which began to protect Japan's cultural heritage. In 1949, due to a fire at the Golden Hall of Horyu-ji Temple, Japan enacted the Cultural Property Protection Act in 1950, which synthesized the previous "Koshaji Temple Protection Law", "National Treasure Protection Law", "Law on the Preservation of Important Works of Art", "Law on the Preservation of Natural Monuments of Historic Places", etc., and further expanded the relevant protection system. Since then, the Law on the Protection of Cultural Property has been revised many times to build a comprehensive and systematic system for the protection of cultural heritage.
In 1999, when the Act on the Protection of Cultural Property was amended for the third time, it was stipulated that the Japanese government should partially transfer the administrative authority related to cultural heritage to the prefectural or municipal governments, which greatly mobilized the enthusiasm and sense of responsibility of local governments to protect cultural heritage in their respective jurisdictions, which was a major breakthrough. As of April 2013, there are 104 important traditional building complex conservation areas in Japan, all of which are managed by the Traditional Building Complex Conservation Area Association of each municipality and village according to its own regulations, and the Kawagoe "Ichibanji Traditional Building Complex" is one of them.
There are three criteria for the selection of protected areas for important traditional building complexes: one is that all traditional buildings are well designed; the other is that traditional buildings and their distribution are intact; and third, traditional buildings and their surroundings have significant characteristics. One of three can be selected.
However, the protected areas of important traditional building complexes in Japan are not selected by the government, but by the residents of the protected areas. They vote on whether to apply for a protected area, and planning working groups composed of local governments, resident representatives and experts hold regular seminars. What can the government do? It can only be guided by investing money and providing preferential policies after the protected area has been identified, and cannot be imposed. The owner of a traditional building still lives in a protected building and does not become the caretaker of that building.
The rights to how these buildings protect the planning are also in the hands of the owners, and the government can only make suggestions for appropriate "repairs" or "landscaping". The so-called "repair" is to completely restore the traditional buildings to their original appearance, while the so-called "repair" is to transform the non-traditional buildings in the protected area to maintain a unified or more coordinated style with the traditional buildings as much as possible. But whether it is repaired or repaired depends entirely on the owner, and the government cannot force it. Once the building owner makes an application, the government provides half of the cost of the repairs, and the other half is borne by the owners themselves.
We may wonder, in this way, will there be one or two "nail households" in each street, that is, they are unwilling to repair or repair the scenery, resulting in the entire street can not form a unified traditional architectural style? Such a situation cannot be absolutely avoided, but most of the important traditional building complex protected areas have not had such nail households. Facts have proved that the local residents are the most passionate about the local traditional culture, and only by truly exerting their enthusiasm can the traditional culture be protected to the greatest extent.
Whether repairing or repairing the landscape, it is only the appearance of the house, not the interior. How the interior is arranged and how it is lived depends entirely on the owner himself. The government only cares about the appearance, not the inside. It is absolutely impossible to let the inhabitants of traditional buildings still maintain their ancient life and do not enjoy modern civilization, and it should not be the goal of protecting traditional buildings.
The repair or restoration of a street is not carried out at the same time, there is a longer process. At first, there were some residents who couldn't think straight, but when their neighbors received half of the repair money from the government to repair or renovate the landscaping, they couldn't sit still and always changed their minds. Japan is a people who pay great attention to face and reputation, and in communities where the idea of protection is absolutely dominant, it is difficult for nail households to insist on it out of consideration for the public opinion around them. Japan's solution to the nail household does not rely on the law, let alone on government pressure, but on moral public opinion.
In Japan, the "Town Association" is an interesting organization, somewhat similar to the Chinese neighborhood committee. In Japan, as long as you live in a certain place, you automatically become a member of the local town association, which is a compulsory community organization. There are more than 300,000 town associations in Japan. The town will help each other among residents to maintain community stability, organize resident activities, organize residents to support the construction of subway lines, oppose the demolition of historical buildings, and other activities, but also convey government notices, undertake household registration work, conduct public opinion surveys, and conduct censuses. The head of the town council is democratically elected for a term of two years, but there is no limit to re-election, so the general term is very long, mostly by people with higher local reputations. The person in charge has no government salary, and the source of income is the monthly fee paid by the residents, some of which is the income from forest land, lakes or other real estate.
The town plays an extremely important role in the protection of Japan's important traditional buildings. In Kawagoe, 11 towns in the old town have formed a federation to discuss how to protect history and culture. Under the active operation of the Town Association, the conservation of the traditional building block of Ichiban Street in Kawagoe is actually a national movement.
Kawagoe's ability to become a quaint tourist city is inseparable from the meticulous protection of the Kawagoe people for decades. Since the 1960s, old shop buildings have been greatly damaged due to the modernization of Japan. In 1965, experts first raised the question of the preservation of Kawagoe's historic buildings, and the neighborhood landscape preservation movement began. In the late 1970s, Kawagoe residents launched an opposition to the construction of high-rise apartments near Ichiban Street. In June 1998, the Cultural Property Conservation Division of the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan established the Ordinance on the Preservation of Traditional Building Groups in Kawagoe City. In December 1999, Kawagoe City's historic district centered on Ichiban Street was designated as a preservation area for the nationally important traditional building complex.
In 1986, the Kawagoe Yiban Street Commercial Street Revitalization Typical Undertaking Promotion Committee made the "Report on the Activation of The Typical Commercial Street of Kawagoe Yiban Street". In 1988, the Neighborhood Landscape Improvement Committee formulated the "Kawagoe Ichiban Street Block Construction Code". Two important documents were completed by civil society, and although they were not laws, they were also observed by the residents of Kawagoe City as if they were laws.
Activities such as the landscape improvement of Kawagoe Ichiban Street, the boycott of the construction of high-rise apartments near the block, the enhancement of the commercial vitality of the block, and the establishment of the "Street Corner Museum" were initiated and carried out from among the citizens. Non-governmental organizations such as the Tibetan Architecture Society, the Yiban Street Commercial Collaborative Group, the Neighborhood Landscape Improvement Committee, and the Old City Xia town regional federation have played a role that cannot be underestimated in publicizing and educating, formulating norms, financial credit, guiding and helping rectification projects, and organizing residents' activities.
When I was touring Kawagoe, the tour guide was an old man who was 60 years old and a volunteer of the Old Castle Shimomachi District Federation. The local tour guides are all from this association and are also retired elderly. He wore a red vest, had a very enthusiastic attitude, and the explanation was tireless, often talking for four or five minutes, and we interrupted him again and again. He always tells you, if you go any further, which other attractions are in front of you, what else is there, and do you want to take a look at it again? That love for hometown and pride in local historical and cultural traditions deeply infect every tourist.
It's time to enjoy the cherry blossoms
Don't bear the good spring light