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1929 (Shōwa 4)
Japan (administered by the Ministries of Education and Finance, Tokyo)
Forces
The State (Ministries of Education and Finance)
Owners (temples, shrines, old families, individuals)
About 16 min read
The National Treasures Preservation Law (Law No. 17 of Shōwa 4) was passed on 12 March 1929, promulgated on 28 March and put into force on 1 July. It had 25 articles, and the ministries concerned were Finance and Education. An enforcement ordinance (Imperial Ordinance No. 210 of 1929) and the organization of a National Treasures Preservation Board (Imperial Ordinance No. 211) were set up at about the same time. Its greatest feature was that it removed the requirement of its predecessor, the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law, that the items be owned by old temples and shrines, so that national treasures could be designated whether owned by the state, public bodies or private persons.
The 1897 Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law covered buildings and treasures owned by temples and shrines. Its inability to adequately protect castles and the treasures of former daimyo houses is cited as the reason for its abolition. Famous swords were not only those dedicated to temples and shrines; many were handed down as family treasures in daimyo and hatamoto houses throughout the Edo period, passing through presentations to and from the Tokugawa shogun. After the Meiji era, many such swords stayed in the storehouses of former domain lords as private property. As long as the law was limited to temples and shrines, their protection could only be left to the owners' judgment.
Under the National Treasures Preservation Law, the "specially protected buildings" of the earlier law were also called "National Treasures," unifying the concept. Items already designated as National Treasures or specially protected buildings under the earlier law were carried over as National Treasures. Because the system no longer depended on the owner's attributes, privately owned items could be designated. Details not covered in the sources consulted, such as individual provisions on export controls and a breakdown of the number of designations, are not treated here.
Under this law, swords held by individuals or old families could be designated as National Treasures. As a concrete example, the tachi signed "Bungo no Kuni Yukihira saku," known as "Kokin Denju Yukihira," is recorded in a reference on sword grading as having been designated a National Treasure in 1934 (Shōwa 9). That year falls within the period of the National Treasures Preservation Law, and the sword was later designated a new National Treasure under the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties on 9 June 1951 (Shōwa 26). It has therefore been a National Treasure continuously since 1934.
The present research could not confirm details such as the owner at the time of designation or the procedure for this tachi, so only the year of designation is given, as one example of a sword that received national-treasure status under this law.
As of 1950, the items that had become national treasures under the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law and the National Treasures Preservation Law numbered 5,824 art and craft objects and 1,059 buildings. Designations begun in 1897 had thus accumulated to this number in a little over half a century. Swords were among them: even among today's new National Treasures, swords are said to make up roughly half of the National Treasures in the craft category. A sword may be designated for its blade alone, as with tachi and tanto, or together with its mounts, and the weight that swords carry among national cultural properties rests on designations accumulated since the prewar years.
When one sees a note such as "designated a National Treasure in 1934," recognizing that this was a designation under the National Treasures Preservation Law gives a more three-dimensional view of the sword's history. Prewar national-treasure designations were made under a system separate from today's new National Treasure; at the time the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties took effect in 1950 they were first deemed Important Cultural Properties, and then went through a procedure of fresh designation as National Treasures. In the case of Kokin Denju Yukihira, it is understood to have been a National Treasure continuously from the designation in 1934 until the new National Treasure designation on 9 June 1951. The year of designation shows under which system the sword was evaluated, and offers a clue for tracing the history of its evaluation.
Under the National Treasures Preservation Law, the standard for designation was high and the scope was limited. Meanwhile the outflow of art overseas did not stop. The picture scroll "Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki," a representative work of the genre, was put up at a sale at the Tokyo Bijutsu Club in 1923 (Taishō 12) to divide the estate of the Sakai family, and an Osaka antiques dealer won it for 188,900 yen. It was bought in 1932 (Shōwa 7) by Tomita Kōjirō, head of the Asian department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and entered that museum's collection. Public anger at this loss grew, and the weakness of a legal framework that could not prevent the outflow of national-treasure-class art came to be recognized as a problem. Designated National Treasures could not be taken out of the country, but undesignated cultural properties had no such basis.
It is worth noting that the trigger was a sale connected with the division of a former daimyo family's estate. Old art in a family storehouse comes to market through the family's circumstances, and at that point there was no legal means of protecting items that had not been designated. This pattern is not limited to picture scrolls but also fits swords from the same kind of storehouse. The present research, however, could not confirm a source showing how many swords actually left the country through such sales. To fill this gap, the "Law concerning the Preservation of Important Art Objects" was enacted in 1933. The National Treasures Preservation Law and the important-art-object system thus formed a two-track structure.
The National Treasures Preservation Law was repealed on 29 August 1950 (Shōwa 25) when the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties took effect. The "National Treasures" of the old law were deemed to have been designated Important Cultural Properties under the new law, and from among them the especially outstanding were again designated National Treasures. For this reason, prewar designations are sometimes called "old National Treasures" and those under the new law "new National Treasures." That old National Treasures became Important Cultural Properties is explained not as a demotion but as a measure accompanying the switch of systems.
The direct trigger for the switch was the fire of 26 January 1949 in the Kondō (Golden Hall) of Hōryū-ji at Ikaruga, Nara Prefecture, which damaged the hall's murals. This led to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, enacted by legislator-initiated bill as a comprehensive law, promulgated on 30 May 1950 and enforced on 29 August. With its enforcement, the Law for the Preservation of Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty and Natural Monuments (1919), the National Treasures Preservation Law (1929) and the Law concerning the Preservation of Important Art Objects (1933) were repealed, and the previously separate systems were merged into one law.
For the history of the sword, this law was the turning point at which the protection of famous blades extended by statute beyond the treasures of temples and shrines to the holdings of old families and individuals. That the 1950 law could take over the "National Treasures" of the old law, even amid postwar confusion, owed much to the accumulation of designations made in the early Shōwa period. The framework built by the National Treasures Preservation Law is the direct foundation of today's two-tier system of National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties.
- 1871 (Meiji 4): The Koki Kyūbutsu Hozonkata is issued. - 1872 (Meiji 5): The Jinshin Survey is carried out. - 1897 (Meiji 30): The Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law is promulgated; the first designations are made on 28 December. - 1923 (Taishō 12): The Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki is put up at a sale. - 1929 (Shōwa 4): The National Treasures Preservation Law is promulgated and takes effect on 1 July. - 1932 (Shōwa 7): The Kibi Daijin Nittō Emaki is bought by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. - 1933 (Shōwa 8): The Law concerning the Preservation of Important Art Objects takes effect; the first 504 items are certified on 25 July. - 1934 (Shōwa 9): Kokin Denju Yukihira is designated a National Treasure. - 1949 (Shōwa 24): The Hōryū-ji Kondō fire (26 January). Certification of important art objects ends. - 1950 (Shōwa 25): The Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties is promulgated (30 May) and enforced (29 August). - 1951 (Shōwa 26): The first designations of new National Treasures are made on 9 June.