What an Intangible Folk Cultural Property Requiring Documentation is
An Intangible Folk Cultural Property Requiring Documentation is a folk practice that the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs has selected so that a record of it can be made. The legal basis is Article 91 of the Act on Protection of Cultural Properties, which extends to folk traditions the selection mechanism of Article 77. The Agency for Cultural Affairs' own English rendering is longer: intangible folk cultural properties that need measures such as making records.
Only practices can be selected: the customs, folk performing arts and folk techniques that Article 2 counts as the intangible side of folk culture. A rice-planting dance, a summer ritual for welcoming and sending off ancestral spirits, a mechanical puppet play at a shrine festival: what is recorded is the event as a community carries it out, year after year.
As of 1 April 2025 there were 661 selections, against 337 Important Intangible Folk Cultural Properties at the same date. Selection is by far the more common form of national recognition for village festivals and folk performance.
Local authorities often use a short form meaning nationally selected intangible folk cultural property; it refers to the same status.
How selection differs from designation
Selection and designation differ both in who makes the decision and in what follows from it. An Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property is designated by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and announced in the official gazette under Article 78. Selection is an act of the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, and its purpose is documentation.
Once a tradition is selected, the Commissioner may make, keep and publish records of it, and the state may pay part of the cost when a local authority or another suitable body carries out the recording. In recent years the Agency has filmed and published reports on selected traditions judged most at risk of changing beyond recognition or dying out.
Nothing else is attached: no duty to report changes, no control over performance, no certification of individual holders. A community that keeps a selected festival takes on no legal obligation; the state simply makes sure a record will survive.
A tradition that was once selected can later be designated. Its history then contains two dates, and it matters which one a text is citing. In writing about such properties, the verb is selected, never designated, and the two statuses should not be grouped under a single heading of designation.
References
- e-Gov Law Search: Act on Protection of Cultural Properties (Act No. 214 of 1950)
- https://laws.e-gov.go.jp/law/325AC0100000214
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: Folk cultural properties (Japanese, with counts as of 1 April 2025)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/minzoku/
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: Folk Cultural Properties (English)
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/english/policy/cultural_properties/introduction/folk/
- Agency for Cultural Affairs: Overview of cultural property categories and the designation, selection and registration systems
- https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/shokai/gaiyo/
Last verified: 2026.10.04