Japan taking necessary measures to protect tourism hot spots from natural disaster

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Japan taking necessary steps to protect the tourist hot spots from being damaged in disasters.

Natural disasters including earthquakes and typhoons, which raged in succession in 2018, wreaked havoc on historical structures and historic sites in disaster-stricken areas. More than 800 state-designated assets suffered damage, including collapses.

Hit by Typhoon No. 21 in September, earthen walls of Nishi-Honganji temple in Kyoto collapsed. The roof of Kasuga Taisha shrine in the city of Nara also was partially damaged. In the September earthquake that hit Hokkaido, the stone wall at the site of Goryokaku fort in the city of Hakodate partially collapsed.

If buildings collapse due to such disasters as earthquakes, injuries to tourists and others may occur. After investigating the magnitude of risk in the event of an earthquake or strong winds, such safety measures as seismic reinforcement and tree felling must be expedited if necessary. The problem is that there are many cases in which necessary countermeasures have not been implemented.

A report compiled by the Board of Audit of Japan revealed a small part of the current situation. The report shows that specialized evaluation has not been conducted for about 90 percent of the 423 state-designated national important cultural properties whose earthquake resistance was judged as “uncertain” in a preliminary evaluation of their seismic capacity. All of these assets are visited by many people.

Seismic reinforcement has not been carried out for a year or more at buildings whose earthquake resistance was found to be “inadequate” in an expert evaluation held after a preliminary assessment.

The government calls for utilization of cultural properties for such purposes as promoting regional revitalization. To ensure these assets continue to be places visited by many people, adequate management and preservation by their owners and administrators are indispensable.

Although this requires considerable funds, efforts to ensure safety should not be neglected. It is imperative to come up with such innovative ideas as adopting crowdfunding to raise funds online without relying only on government subsidies.

One way of ensuring safety is to prohibit entry into structures whose seismic resistance is evaluated as problematic, as was done in the case of Matsumoto Castle, a national treasure in the city of Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. It is essential to work out countermeasures without leaving problems unsolved. The Cultural Affairs Agency must thoroughly disseminate the importance of this.

Needless to say, anti-disaster measures for cultural assets are taken not only to ensure the safety of visitors. Their initial purpose of preserving irreplaceable cultural assets so they can be passed on to future generations should not be forgotten.

A general rule in the restoration of cultural properties is to restore them to their original state. In the restoration of Kagawa Prefecture’s Marugame Castle site, whose stone wall collapsed partially due to heavy rain, each piece of stone is being replaced in its original position. This is because drawings recording such details as stone shapes were produced before the collapse of the wall.

It must be recognized that day-to-day efforts to ensure firm administration of cultural assets will eventually lead to them being used as tourism resources.

@Japan Times

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