Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property

What an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property is

An Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property is an intangible folk tradition that the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has designated as particularly important under Article 78 of the Act on Protection of Cultural Properties.

Folk cultural property is defined in Article 2 as manners and customs relating to food, clothing, housing, occupations, religious faith and annual observances, together with folk performing arts, folk techniques, and the clothes, implements, houses and other objects used in them, where these are indispensable for understanding how the life of the Japanese people has changed. Tangible items form one designation category and intangible practices another. A festival or a dance is intangible; the floats and costumes it uses are tangible.

As of 1 August 2026 there were 342 intangible designations and 229 tangible ones.

Designation is made by notice in the official gazette. Unlike tangible property, no certificate is issued to an owner, since there is no object to attach one to.

No individual holders are certified

For intangible cultural property in the wider sense, designation is accompanied by the certification of a holder or a holding group, and it is these certified individuals who are popularly called Living National Treasures. The folk category works differently: the Act provides no certification of holders at all. A village festival is carried by a community rather than by a named master, and the legislation reflects that.

Support takes another form instead. The Commissioner for Cultural Affairs may create records of a designated tradition, and the state may subsidise part of the cost borne by local authorities and others suited to preserving it. Assistance is aimed at the work of preservation rather than at individuals.

One further term is easily confused with designation. Intangible folk traditions that are neither designated nor registered may be selected for documentation, producing the category known as intangible folk cultural properties requiring the creation of records. There were 661 of these as of 1 April 2025, far more than the designated total. Selection secures a record; it does not confer designation, and the two should never be described in the same words.