February 28, 2013
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2013 February 27 - March 5 [ENVIRONMENT]
Concrete paving work at World Heritage site arouses public anger |
The work project is to pave a 45,000-square-meter area on the site with concrete, where Chodo-in (government offices) were located in ancient times. The Nara prefectural government in September 2012 suddenly announced the paving work project and started it immediately.
The Cultural Affairs Agency gave permission to the work on condition of making repairs to the balancing pond within the premises in case of a flood and conducting excavations before beginning the work. The excavation, however, has not yet been carried out.
A citizens’ group with the aim of preserving buried cultural properties along with grasslands and wetlands conducted a petition campaign to halt the paving project, collecting more than 33,000 signatures in and outside Japan.
At present, the authorities plan to restore a corridor surrounding Daigokuden (the First Imperial Audience Hall). The corridor will become a huge one, seven meters in height and one kilometer in length. The central government is going to pour a total of 80 billion yen in taxpayers’ money into the project, with the planned construction of an exhibition pavilion.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee pointed out that a lot of guesswork will be needed to reconstruct the remains lost for such a long time, and requested the Japanese government to demonstrate the validity of the reconstruction plan.
The restoration policy was designed in the 1970s. Former Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Okuno Seisuke, who had a big influence on the Cultural Affairs Agency as ex-Education Minister, said, “If young people see the restored palace and think of the endeavors made by their ancestors, they will come to have a sense of patriotism.”
Questions are now being raised about the responsibility of the national and local governments to inherit and conserve this irreplaceable, historic legacy.
Related past article:
> Don’t concrete over world heritage in Nara: JCP [November 14, 2012]
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