HERITAGE AND MUSEUM IN JAPAN AND FRANCE

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Recently in Japan, there is a tendency that increasing social significance has given to the existence of cultural properties (Bunkazai) and museums. Based on three-year-survey in Japan, Europe (especially France) and United States, this research project aims to inquire into the meaning of this tendency in a comparative point of view.Among various findings of our study, what should be noted primarily is the fact that the definition of the word "cultural properties" is totally different between Japan and France. The French word "patrimoine" implies a will to re-evaluate what has been abandoned and to conserve these objects as public properties. Therefore, it can be said that in France the institutional conservation of cultural property plays a central role in the sustenance of social order because by constantly re-evaluating the significance of heritages, the society itself (and its history) is also re-defined.In Japan, on the other hand, when the word "bunkazai" is used, it is not implied to re-evaluate and make public what has been abandoned. Tradition in Japan has been maintained not through the conservation of the objects but by re-presenting and realizing in a certain "form" what is supposed to have existed in the past. (This can be called "a logic of actualization" .) Thus the conservation of the objects as itself was not considered to be of much importance. What is more, the museum in general was given birth by the natural historical desire of occidental modernity and as Japan did not share this kind of desire, it took quite sometime before the museum as an institution was fully installed this country.