ABSTRACT
Few people will be surprised by the suggestion that World Heritage is often political and politicized or by the contention that Japan’s relationship to World Heritage is similarly political. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization/World Heritage Committee imprimatur has enabled Japan to use preservation of cultural heritage to confront problems that have little connection to cultural heritage. Takeshita’s clear embrace of heritage preservation—among Japan’s foreign policy options—as an area to which Japan would henceforth devote attention and resources is significant in several ways. The decentralization of the process of compiling the tentative list coincided with evolving domestic policy in which cultural heritage, especially World Heritage, was viewed as a means to revitalize local economies. The Imperial Household Agency’s management of kofun has also been normalized in the course of promoting Mozu–Furuichi’s bid for World Heritage status.
