Initiatives to Preserve and Utilize Cultural Heritage

 Kyoto embraces a very wide range of cultural properties, from temple and shrine buildings to sculptures, paintings, traditional craftwork and performing arts, festivals, ancient sites, and gardens, as well as animals and plants designated as “natural monuments”. In addition, the Kyoto City government positions all tangible and intangible items in Kyoto as “Kyoto Cultural Heritage”. They are indispensable for understanding the lives, history and culture of local people but which are difficult to evaluate as cultural properties under the current laws and ordinances, including daily-life cultural practices and items.

 To preserve and hand down these cultural heritage items, the Kyoto City government implements various initiatives to not only examine their value, deepen public understanding of them, but also to utilize them to create new cultural, social and economic value. The basic principle for those initiatives is handing down Kyoto Cultural Heritage to a millennium-distant future by ensuring that people enjoy Kyoto and its lifestyle.

※Kyoto City Regional Plan for the Protection and Utilization of Cultural Properties (Overview)

 Approximately 20% of National Treasures of Japan and about 15% of its important cultural properties are concentrated in Kyoto City. The city also embraces 14 components of a cultural site inscribed on UNESCO World Heritage List, including Nijo-jo Castle, and multiple items inscribed on or related to UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, such as the Yamahoko event in the Gion Festival and Kyoto cuisine. The Kyoto City government manages and preserves some of these cultural properties on its own and keeps them open to people from around the world. It also assists the owners of the other cultural properties in their preservation and utilization.

※Properties under the Kyoto City government’s management

Nijo-jo Castle（二条城）

Murin-an（無鄰菴）

Former Retreat of Tomomi Iwakura（岩倉具視幽棲旧宅）

Old Mitsui Family Shimogamo Villa (旧三井家下賀茂別邸）

 Kyoto is home to not only many items inscribed on the World Heritage List and nationally designated as Cultural Properties but also numerous tangible and intangible cultural properties that have no national designation or registration but are valuable historically and culturally. To preserve and hand down as many items of cultural heritage as possible, including these undesignated or unregistered ones, the Kyoto City government works actively with citizens, universities, businesses and other parties to discover, preserve and develop cultural heritage items, including historic buildings and gardens and daily-life cultural practices deeply rooted in people’s lives.

 The items of Kyoto Cultural Heritage are preserved not only by their owners but also with understanding and cooperation among many people inside and outside the city. The Kyoto City government supports private initiatives to hand down techniques for preserving cultural properties and grassroot activities aimed at utilizing cultural heritage items. It also creates opportunities for children to learn about and experience cultural heritage with the aim of handing down cultural heritage to the next generation. Moreover, since many items of cultural heritage are based on natural resources, such as wood, the Kyoto City government strives to secure natural resources through forest conservation and management and by other means.

Overview of Kyoto City

Kyoto as a City of History

Kyoto as a Cultural Capital of the World 

Kyoto as a Sustainable City

Kyoto as a Home to Universities and Innovations

Kyoto City General Planning Bureau General Policy Office Kyoto Revitalization Section

mail: [email protected]　

Tel:+81-75-222-3375 ※Only available in Japanese