ABSTRACT
By the time the city’s proposal to destroy the old civic center had reached the newspaper, the actual decision to do so had probably already been agreed upon by the senior city councilors and the city’s department heads. But as events unfolded a new element came into play. So the successes of Takefu no bunka wo kangaeru kai forming in an effort to stop the plan and instead to offer a fully formed design to refurbish the Kōkaidō Hall (KKD) as a local history museum are remarkable enough. The city council had approved a plan very much like the one submitted by Takefu Renaissance (TR), a citizen group recently renamed. Work on the fureai rekishi kan got underway, but within four months seemed to have stopped. TR made inquiries but the replies were irregular, so the group searched for answers elsewhere. Eventually a chronology emerged over the course of 1994, culminating in a town hall meeting at which the irregularities of mayor Koizumi were made clear. The experiences of the members of TR with the local government and news media, along with my own study and observations form the basis of this book. What began as an account of local history presentations and meanings among residents around the valley and in Takefu-city, Fukui prefecture developed a much wider scope to look at the settings of citizen activities in public affairs, alongside the dominant players of journalists, academics and people speaking from the role of public official. The book began by describing the economic and social circumstances of the area, and continued with a look at the subject of local history around Takefu, including the historical features, the venues and people interested in the past. The story of the K33;kaidō Hall, including plans for its use as museum, fits within this physical and topical context. In the second part of the book the drama of the unfolding Saeki Yūzō Bijutsukan (SYBJK) affair is told. It is in the actions of TR and the reactions by Takefu’s elected leaders and the staff at city hall that the shape and quality of the
public area in the society becomes clear. The bigger questions can now be considered about civil society as it is practiced nowadays in Japan, and comparatively, elsewhere in the world, based on these experiences and reflections.
