Looking beyond Ise, we find that so-called “traditional” preservation practices achieve continuity in different ways. For example, historian Nakayama Rie has recently uncovered early modern methods of washing wooden architecture that produced faux-antiquated surfaces, granting new buildings the aesthetic and political power of the old. Following the restoration of the emperor in the late nineteenth century, the appearance of imperial continuity gained new political weight, leading to a boom in preservation projects. The results were full of discontinuities, however. Itō Chūta’s 1895 reconstruction of Heian Shrine for example was only 5/8 the size of the original due to costs. The search for continuity has also inspired novel preservation research methods in Japan, including Kon Wajirō’s assiduous study of traditional lifeways amidst modernization, and Fujimori Terunobu’s photographic hunt for surviving pre-WWII architecture. More recently, scholars such as Aoi Akihito have turned their attention to understanding the continuity of villages and their ecologies impacted by the 2011 triple disaster.

We welcome articles that examine preservation practices in Japan during any historical period through a critical lens, showing how the negotiation of continuity is shaped by political desires. The issue understands “Japan” in an expanded sense, including its former colonial territories, its fragmented pre-nineteenth-century regionalisms, and its relationship to Asian neighbors with whom the country has shared preservation techniques and competing political visions for centuries. We are particularly interested in the imperial and colonial contexts in which preservation practices have been experimented with and challenged. Additional possible topics include: the preservation of Buddhist architecture as connection to mainland Asia, indigenous practices of preservation, continuity of preservation techniques from wood to concrete, postwar preservation in a Cold War context, the role of organizations like JACAM and Docomomo Japan, the equally important role of grass-roots community preservation groups (machizukuri), preservation and re-use amidst population crisis, etc.