Constructing a Database of Cultural Property Restoration Records

1. Background

The protection of cultural property should receive the public attention. In Japan, the “Law for the Preservation of Ancient Temples and Shrines(古社寺保存法)” was established in 1897. This law stated that the government is responsible for the protection of cultural property. This policy has been passed down to the current “Law for the Protection of Cultural Property (文化財保護法)” (1950). Our objective is to create a comprehensive digital archive of records related to the “restoration” of cultural property since FY2022, as part of the “TAKUMI PROJECT (文化財の匠プロジェクト) ¹ ,” which is currently being funded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.

To this day, the restoration of cultural property records has not been thoroughly organized and preserved. The actual records have been scattered among the Agency for Cultural Affairs, national museums, conservators, and owners of cultural property; actually, many of these records are at risk of discard. We assume that the official records of the nationally designated cultural property ² , which are funded by government subsidies, are retained for a certain period. After their retention period expires, these documents are discarded; therefore, the available information is not complete.

2. Method

Considering the above background, we initially collected official publications and documents related to cultural property to determine the amount of property that had been restored. To gain some perspective, we limited our investigation to the nationally designated cultural property (about 12,000 works of arts and crafts). For example, the “Annual Report of the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property（『文化財保護委員会年報』)” (later becoming the “Agency for Cultural Affairs Annual Report（『文化庁年報』）” is a government report on the administration of cultural property protection. This report provides a useful list of restorations performed each fiscal year. However, even these official annual reports refer to different periods (in this case, from FY1960 to FY1986). By collecting this partial information, the entire picture can be eventually reconstructed.

We extracted metadata of cultural property restoration from different official publications and documents ( ∼ 7,900 records) by November 2023. Furthermore, with the cooperation of the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Kyoto National Museum, we extracted metadata of cultural property restoration from ∼ 3,600 records, which were previously undisclosed. Using these metadata (extracted from a total of 11,500 records), we initially constructed a “Restoration Record Database (RRDB).” The RRDB was constructed randomly because the amount of data collected from each record varied significantly. In addition, some data collected from multiple documents were duplicates. As a result, restorations that originally spanned multiple years were performed for each separate year. Based on RRDB, a “Restoration Project Database (RPDB)” was separately constructed by integrating duplicate or consecutive-year information and reorganizing it as a single restoration (Figure1).

Figure1. Relationship between each database

Conversely, some restoration records were the same as the original documents. These included restoration design documents, reports, and photographs collected before and after restoration. Since the final objective was to create a digital archive that allows users to search and refer to such documents, metadata extracted from these documents were used to construct a “Restoration Record Material Database (RRMDB),” with a view to linking it with RPDB.

3. Conclusions and Prospects

To this day, we have organized most of the past restoration records. From now on, we intend to search for and digitize the scattered actual documents related to cultural property restoration. We also need to consider a versatile management model for the future restoration records to be included in the digital archive.