Office building

Office building

The Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, bunkachō^?) is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT). It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. As of 2005, it is led by the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, Kawai Hayao. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2560x1920, 636 KB) Copyrighted by っ Also CC-by-2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (2560x1920, 636 KB) Copyrighted by っ Also CC-by-2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1920x2560, 728 KB) Copyrighted by っ Also CC-by-2. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1920x2560, 728 KB) Copyrighted by っ Also CC-by-2. ... Office building Office building The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology ), also known as MEXT, is one of the ministries of the Japanese government. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday. ...

The agency's budget for FY 1989 rose to ￥37.8 billion after five years of budget cuts, but still represented much less than 1 % of the general budget. The agency's Cultural Affairs Division disseminated information about the arts within Japan and internationally, and the Cultural Properties Protection Division protected the nation's cultural heritage. The Cultural Affairs Division is concerned with such areas as art and culture promotion, arts copyrights, and improvements in the national language. It also supports both national and local arts and cultural festivals, and it funds traveling cultural events in music, theater, dance, art exhibitions, and film-making. Special prizes are offered to encourage young artists and established practitioners, and some grants are given each year to enable them to train abroad. The agency funds national museums of modern art in Kyoto and Tokyo and the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, which exhibit both Japanese and international shows. The agency also supports the Japan Academy of Arts, which honors eminent persons of arts and letters, appointing them to membership and offering ￥3.5 million in prize money. Awards are made in the presence of the Emperor, who personally bestows the highest accolade, the Cultural Medal. In 1989 the fifth woman ever to be so distinguished was cited for Japanese-style painting, while for the first time two women—a writer and a costume designer—were nominated for the Order of Cultural Merit, another official honor carrying the same stipend. Japanese (,  ) is a language spoken by over 130 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. ... For the CPR ocean liner, see Empress of Japan. ...

The Cultural Properties Protection Division originally was established to oversee restorations after World War II. In 1989 it was responsible for more than 2,500 historic sites, including the ancient capitals of Asuka, Heijokyo, and Fujiwara, more than 275 scenic places, and nearly 1000 national monuments, and for such indigenous fauna as ibis and storks. As of 1989, some 1000 buildings, paintings, sculptures, and other art forms had been designated national treasures. In addition, about 11,500 items had the lesser designation of Important Cultural Properties, with buildings accounting for the largest share, closely followed by sculpture and craft objects. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The restored Suzakumon (gate) of Heijo Palace Heijo Palace (平城京) in Nara, was the Imperial Palace of Japan during the Nara Period (710-784 CE). ... Genera Threskiornis Pseudibis Thaumatibis Geronticus Nipponia Bostrychia Theristicus Cercibis Mesembrinibis Phimosus Eudocimus Plegadis Lophotibis Ibises are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae. ... Genera See text. ... The idea of national treasure, like national epics and national anthems, is part of the language of Romantic nationalism, which arose in the late 18th century and 19th centuries. ...

The government protects buried properties, of which some 300,000 had been identified. During the 1980s, many important prehistoric and historic sites were investigated by the archaeological institutes that the agency funded, resulting in about 2,000 excavations in 1989. The wealth of material unearthed shed new light on the controversial period of the formation of the Japanese state.

A 1975 amendment to the Cultural Properties Protection Act of 1897 enabled the Agency for Cultural Affairs to designate traditional areas and buildings in urban centers for preservation. From time to time, various endangered traditional artistic skills are added to the agency's preservation roster, such as the 1989 inclusion of a kind of ancient doll making.

One of the most important roles of the Cultural Properties Protection Division is to preserve the traditional arts and crafts and performing arts through their living exemplars. Individual artists and groups, such as a dance troupe or a pottery village, are designated as mukei bunkazai (intangible cultural assets) in recognition of their skill. Major exponents of the traditional arts have been designated as ningen kokuho (living national treasures). About seventy persons are so honored at any one time; in 1989 the six newly designated masters were a kyogen (comic) performer, a chanter of bunraku (puppet) theater, a performer of the nagauta shamisen (a special kind of stringed instrument), the head potter making Nabeshima decorated porcelain ware, the top pictorial lacquer-ware artist, and a metal-work expert. Each was provided a lifetime annual pension of ￥2 million and financial aid for training disciples. Living National Treasure is a title awarded in countries including Japan and Australia. ... Kyogen (Japanese: 狂言 Kyōgen, literally mad words or wild speech) is a form of traditional Japanese theater. ... Bunraku (Japanese: 文楽), also known as Ningyō jōruri (人形浄瑠璃), is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theater, founded in Osaka in 1684. ... Kitagawa Utamaro, Flowers of Edo: Young Womans Narrative Chanting to the Samisen, ca. ... Lacquer is a traditional varnish that developed in the Orient, especially in Japan. ...

A number of institutions come under the aegis of the Cultural Properties Protection Division: the national museums of Japanese and Asian art in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, the cultural properties research institutes at Tokyo and Nara, the national theaters, the Ethnological Museum, the National Museum of History and Folk Culture, and the National Storehouse for Fine Arts. During the 1980s, the National Noh Theater and the National Bunraku Theater were constructed by the government.

Reference

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain. The Country Studies are works published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress ( USA), freely available for use by researchers. ... The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789 by a constitutional convention, sets down the basic framework of American government in its seven articles. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

External links

• Agency for Cultural Affairs website