Huang Goodman · Art Forgotten

Art Forgotten

Art from public museum collections. A mismatched real Japanese law, and some other factoids.

Every object, image and description comes from the museum's own catalogue record, and every object links to its original. Japanese records are machine-translated into English; the museum's Japanese is kept beside the translation because it is the authoritative form. Each law carries its official number and links to e-Gov 法令検索, the Japanese government's statute database.

Dish with Ginkgo Leaves
{Dish with Ginkgo Leaves · Maker unrecorded · late 1600s–early 1700s · Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0}

This dish is an example of the finest type of Japanese porcelain, Nabeshima-type Hizen ware. It has a complex, abstracted design of ginkgo leaves and “Chinese grasses” (karakusa) in underglaze blue that may be among the most interesting of the underglaze blue designs. The dish is the largest of the three standard-sized Nabeshima dishes for individual servings.

View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →
The law
古都における歴史的風土の保存に関する特別措置法
Act on Preservation of Historical Landscape in Ancient Capitals
昭和四十一年法律第一号 · Act No. 1 of 1966

It protects not the buildings but the setting that holds them. Article 2 defines historic landscape as land where structures and remains of historical significance form a single whole with the surrounding natural environment, which is the legal way of saying the hills, the approaches and the sightlines. The ancient capitals are Kyoto, Nara and Kamakura, plus any other municipality added by Cabinet Order. The Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism designates a preservation area; city planning then carves a Special Preservation District over its core, and inside that district an owner needs permission from the prefectural governor to build, to fell timber, or to change the shape of the ground.

The cool part. It legislates the view, and then it pays for it. Article 10 requires the prefecture to compensate an owner who suffers loss because permission was refused. Article 12 goes further: where refusal seriously impairs the use of the land, the owner can require the prefecture to buy it, at market value. So the state does not merely tell you what the horizon behind a temple may look like. It agrees to purchase the land rather than let the skyline change. Two more things worth knowing. The prefecture must physically sign the district boundary, and a landowner may not obstruct the sign without just cause. And the ministry holding the pen is Transport, not Culture.

Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →

Use it Take the ratio, not the picture. It sets a page better than a grid does.

Description source: museum curator text — not generated