Protecting Human and Natural History from Modernity: The Making of Japan's Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments Preservation Law

The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) demonstrated to the world Japan’s successful industrialization begun in the mid-nineteenth century.  Some saw this achievement as a double-edged sword accompanied by real and perceived environmental, cultural, and moral degeneration in the nation.  Demographic increase exacerbated such trends as reclamation of land for new roads and railways and city planning, in addition to industrial pollution.  Voices warning against physical consequences such as deforestation and destruction of historical sites increased during the first decade of the twentieth century.  Ideologically, industrialization, urbanization, and commercialism became increasingly linked by the illiberals to selfish materialism and individualism.  Alarm ensued as they imagined such moral decadence engulfing the public-minded statist nationalism much needed to continue strengthening the Japanese nation. 

By the second decade of the twentieth century, scholars and private individuals came together at the national level in an attempt to protect the fast-vanishing historic sites, places of scenic beauty, and natural monuments.  The enterprise sought to kill two birds with one stone: preserve the human and natural vestiges of the past crucial for academic research; and heighten national pride and public-mindedness of the masses by designating and celebrating National Sites and Monuments.  Preferring the German over the British and American models, Peer Marquis Tokugawa Yorimichi (1872-1925), historian Mikami Sanji (1865-1939), and botanist Miyoshi Manabu (1862-1939) lobbied for state-led preservation of Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments.  Specifically rejecting the existing Law for Preservation of Old Shrines and Temples as narrow-minded, the movement sought a comprehensive protection of human and natural history and its surrounding context.  To those involved, the Historic Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments Preservation Law of 1919 could not have been passed sooner.  The crisis of physical and moral corrosion only seemed to hasten with the Great War and its aftermath.