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1897 (Meiji 30)
Japan (administered by the Home Ministry, Tokyo)
Forces
The State (Home Ministry)
Old temples and shrines (owners)
About 15 min read
In 1897 (Meiji 30), the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law (Law No. 49 of Meiji 30) was promulgated. Its purpose was to protect the buildings and treasures of old temples and shrines, and it consisted of 20 articles including supplementary provisions. It allowed the state to designate items of special historical evidence or artistic exemplarity as "specially protected buildings" or "National Treasures," and it is regarded as the first appearance of the category "National Treasure" in Japanese law. For the world of the Japanese sword, the first framework leading to today's system of National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties was created in this year.
After the Meiji Restoration, as society moved rapidly toward modernization, the handling of the old artworks held by temples and shrines and by old families became a problem. A forerunner, the "Koki Kyūbutsu Hozonkata" (a notice on preserving old implements and relics), had been issued in 1871 (Meiji 4). It encouraged preservation but remained a loose measure. Prefectural cultural-property materials report that during the separation of Shinto and Buddhism and the anti-Buddhist movement that followed, many traditional Buddhist images, ritual implements and old buildings were scattered, destroyed or sent abroad. Such experience fed the demand for a law to protect temple and shrine treasures systematically.
The Koki Kyūbutsu Hozonkata is regarded as Japan's first cultural-property regulation. Under this Grand Council notice, temples and shrines, chiefly in the Kinki region, are said to have been made to submit inventories of "old implements and relics," and on the basis of those inventories the Jinshin Survey was carried out between May and October 1872 (Meiji 5). It is regarded as Japan's first survey of cultural properties; Machida Hisanari and Ninagawa Noritane took part, and Takahashi Yuichi and Yokoyama Matsusaburō accompanied them as recorders. The idea that the state should grasp the treasures of temples and shrines and record them in inventories was first tried in practice here.
Even so, surveys and appeals for preservation had little power to stop sales and dispersal driven by the owners' circumstances. A legal framework that would protect treasures the state had identified, through both subsidy and restriction, came to be needed. The 1897 law can be seen as adding to the survey work of the early Meiji years an effective means in the form of subsidies for preservation. However, the present research could not find a reliable source showing how many swords were lost from temples and shrines in this period, so no assertion about the dispersal of swords is made here.
Kuki Ryūichi, who served as director-general of the Imperial Museum, is said to have worked for the passage of the law. After taking up the post of director of the Imperial Household Ministry's library, Kuki set up and chaired the Provisional Nationwide Treasure Survey, in which Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin also served as commissioners protecting and surveying cultural properties. In 1888 (Meiji 21), Kuki twice surveyed temples, shrines and artworks in the Kinki region accompanied by Fenollosa. When the Imperial Museums were established in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara in 1889, he became the first director-general and left the post in 1900. The experience of examining the treasures that lay in temples and shrines on site, and putting their value into words that could be tied to an institution, seems to have underpinned the 1897 legislation.
The term "National Treasure" was first used in a statute in 1897, and the first designations were made on 28 December of that year. The system of that era did not yet distinguish National Treasures from Important Cultural Properties as later systems did. All state-designated art and craft objects and buildings were called "National Treasures." The term from the Meiji era to the early Shōwa period therefore covered a wider range than the National Treasure of today. This is worth keeping in mind so as not to mistake the later treatment of old National Treasures as Important Cultural Properties for a "demotion."
The law can be summarized in three parts. First, the state designated, from among the buildings and treasures owned by old temples and shrines, those of particular historical evidence or artistic exemplarity as "specially protected buildings" or "National Treasures." Second, it provided subsidies of between 50,000 and 200,000 yen per year for their preservation. Third, it prohibited the sale of designated items and their removal abroad, and obliged owners to place them in the care of, and on exhibition at, museums.
Administration was initially under the Home Ministry and moved to the Ministry of Education in 1913 (Taishō 2). A partial amendment was made in 1919 (Taishō 8) by Law No. 44. The structure in which the state grants subsidies in exchange for limiting the owner's freedom to dispose of an item became the basic form of later cultural-property administration, and the idea of trading support for restriction still runs through the modern Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties.
The text calls the objects covered simply "treasures" and does not name swords explicitly. Even so, temples and shrines had long received tachi and tanto as votive offerings and preserved them as sacred treasures. Because a dedicated tachi was part of a shrine's treasures, it is natural to understand that swords could fall within the system. Indeed, the national database of designated cultural properties records Meiji-era designation years for swords owned by shrines.
Looking at later records, items designated before the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties took effect in 1950 are called "old National Treasures," and swords designated under the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law and the later National Treasures Preservation Law were treated as such. Reference works on sword grading note that swords designated under these laws before 1950 were called National Treasures. What matters here is that the state's evaluation of swords began to run on a separate axis, administrative designation, distinct from the grading used in the circles of dealers and connoisseurs.
When one meets terms such as "old National Treasure" or "designated under the Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law" in a sword's description, their meaning can be read from the mechanism of this law. First, because the law covered only items owned by temples and shrines, a sword made a national treasure under it can be understood to have been a tachi or tanto handed down at a temple or shrine. Second, because "National Treasure" at the time was a general term for state-designated items and not the top tier of designation, one has to look at the results of redesignation after 1950 to translate it into the present categories. In studying a sword, checking the year of designation and the law on which it rested is a first step toward knowing the route the sword has taken through the state's systems.
The law covered only items owned by temples and shrines. It was therefore pointed out that it could not adequately protect castles or the treasures of former daimyo houses. Many famous swords handed down in the storehouses of former daimyo families were private or family property and lay outside the law's scope. This gap called for new legislation.
The Ancient Temples and Shrines Preservation Law was repealed on 1 July 1929 (Shōwa 4) when the National Treasures Preservation Law took effect. Items already designated as specially protected buildings or National Treasures were carried over as National Treasures under the new law. The framework of national treasures created by this law was thus passed on continuously, though in a changed form.
From the standpoint of sword history, the significance of this law lies in three points. First, it established the method by which the state designates old treasures, grants subsidies and restricts disposal. Second, it wrote the idea of prohibiting sale and export abroad into law. Third, it became the starting point of the recognition that treasures including swords are both the private property of their owners and a shared historical resource of the nation. The first step in the long process by which swords came to be placed publicly as works of art and craft was taken here.