The protection of cultural landscapes in Japan

In its history, cultural properties protection developed without giving much space to the landscape as the entire legislation system has focused either on scenic beauties or on monuments. Without considering few exception, the cultural landscape started to be protected indirectly only since 1975 when the law for cultural properties protection was extended to groups of traditional buildings. In 2004 cultural landscape, after its acknowledgment by UNESCO at international level in 1992, has finally been introduced as one of the six categories of cultural properties in the law for cultural properties protection. Since then, big effort has been taken, at local as at national scale, in order to identify and protect the most representative cultural landscapes of the Country. Within the selection of important cultural landscapes some problems have arise: no priority is given to those sites which are disappearing faster than others, thus at greater risk.