Tangible Cultural Properties (structures) | AGENCY FOR CULTURAL AFFAIRS (2024)

FAQs

What are examples of tangible cultural property? ›

Tangible cultural heritage refers to things that we can store or physically touch. Examples of tangible cultural heritage include traditional clothing, tools, buildings, artwork, monuments, and modes of transportation. Intangible cultural heritage refers to things that are not physical items but exist intellectually.

"Tangible Cultural Properties" collectively refer to cultural products with a tangible form that possess high historic, artistic, and academic value to Japan, such as structures, paintings, crafts, sculptures, calligraphic works, classical books, paleography, archaeological artifacts, and historic materials.

Common types of cultural property include archaeological artifacts, rare manuscripts, and objects used in ceremonies. These objects may be important for community identity and practices, recognized as part of a group's cultural heritage, and protected by law or tradition.

To protect Japan's cultural heritage, the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties contains a "designation system" (指定制度) under which selected important items are designated as Cultural Properties, which imposes restrictions on the alteration, repair, and export of such designated objects.

Tangible personal property is mainly a tax term which is used to describe personal property that can be felt or touched, and can be physically relocated. For example: cars, furniture, jewelry, household goods and appliances, business equipment.

Cultural heritage includes tangible culture (such as buildings, monuments, landscapes, archive materials, books, works of art, and artifacts), intangible culture (such as folklore, traditions, language, and knowledge), and natural heritage (including culturally significant landscapes, and biodiversity).

Examples of material culture include money, tools, weapons, utensils, machines, clothing, ornaments, art, buildings, and monuments. In other words, objects that one might see in a market, a museum, a home, or a business, as well as the structure or building itself, are part of material culture.

Cultural structures encompass several interconnected aspects of life. On the one hand, there are social institutions, which are the organizations and systems that help maintain the functioning of society. These institutions include government, education, religion, family, and economic systems.

Cultural property, also known as cultural patrimony, comprises the physical items that are part of the cultural heritage of a group or society, as opposed to less tangible cultural expressions.

What is the meaning of cultural property? ›

This definition reads: 'cultural property means property which, on religious or secular grounds, is specifically designated by each State as being of importance for archaeology, prehistory, history, literature, art or science. '

Cultural property law protects buildings, artifacts, and other items that are important to a people and their heritage. Cultural property refers to the collection of rare and personal property that is meaningful to a culture.

"Tangible Cultural Properties" collectively refer to cultural products with a tangible form that possess high historic, artistic, and academic value to Japan, such as structures, crafts, sculptures, calligraphic works, classical books, paleography, archaeological artifacts, and historic materials.

The 1954 Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict sets out clear obligations for the state who owns the cultural property to protect such, and for the parties to an armed conflict to refrain from directly targeting cultural property and avoid causing incidental damage.

“Tangible personal property” exists physically (i.e., you can touch it) and can be used or consumed. Clothing, vehicles, jewelry, and business equipment are examples of tangible personal property.

material culture, tools, weapons, utensils, machines, ornaments, art, buildings, monuments, written records, religious images, clothing, and any other ponderable objects produced or used by humans. If all the human beings in the world ceased to exist, nonmaterial aspects of culture would cease to exist along with them.