Abstract

Walter Edwards
Contested Access:
The Imperial Tombs in the Postwar Period

Over the postwar period Japanese scholars have pressured the Imperial Household Agency for greater access to sites under its control as tombs associated with the imperial line, arguing they are cultural properties vital to understanding ancient Japanese history.  The agency has responded by making information about the sites more generally available, and by permitting limited numbers of scholars to inspect excavations it conducts prior to repairing the tombs.  But it maintains that since the sites are above all graves where rites are performed for ancestors of the imperial household, their treatment is not a scientific but a religious matter.

Volume 26, Number 2 (Summer 2000)
© 2000 Society for Japanese Studies