Lately, Japan’s Aikawa Folk Museum, a small structure of creamy clapboards and baked roof tiles, has become a household name among South Koreans. It is located on Sado Island, the subject of much controversy following Sado Island Gold Mines’ designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in late July. Beneath the island’s rugged, leafy topography are some 50 mines whose long history traverses Japan’s traditional era, industrialization, and imperialism.
Japan’s successful UNESCO application for the Sado mines is based solely on their legacy from the Edo period (1603-1867). In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu, having subjugated his rival warlords, kickstarted a shogunate, essentially a military dictatorship. Tokugawa shoguns – samurai dictators – were quite wary of foreign influences; they cocooned Japan by banning Christianity and severing travel relations with the West.
From Edo, current-day Tokyo, the Tokugawa family oversaw more than two-and-a-half centuries of peace and seclusion. Crimped interactions with the outside world during the Pax Tokugawa gave rise to Japan’s distinct early modern cultural and social landscape. The quintessentially orientalist perception and appeal of Japan derived much from practice and artifacts from this period: Kabuki actors sheathed in shiny silks floating their whitewashed faces and surreal voices, whose dreamy shows positively haunt spectators of old and today; woodblock prints portraying scenes of pleasure quarters and dozy domestic life.