Museums and Human-nature Relationships in Japan: A Case Study Analysis of Echigo-Tsumari Art Field

Echigo-Tsumari Art Field (ETAF) presents an expanded type of museum overlooked in the museological literature. Embarking from ETAF’s own assertions—that “all of satoyama is an art museum” and that “human beings are part of nature”—I conduct an autoethnography and content analysis on materials gathered during participation in the 2018 Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale. I demonstrate how ETAF enacts and interprets heritage in mediating between state and grassroots interests. ETAF’s practice of regionalism—its adoption of the satoyama concept of encultured nature, mapping and thematization—results in both normative and strategically diversified representations of collective identity. ETAF’s narrative draws from a selective history to depict historically marginalized agricultural lifeways, becoming an expressive metaphor for ongoing regional regeneration. When placed within salient socio-historical contexts, these findings illustrate how ETAF both departs from and leverages traditional top-down museological approaches towards social cohesion, pointing to the mediating potential of cultural institutions in declining communities.M.M.St.2021-11-27 00:00:0