3. Identification a) History

The three nominated historic villages, all of which are farm villages located in a steep mountainous area, retain to a high degree the historic character of the village landscape -- epitomized by the Gassho-style houses -- as well as of the surrounding natural environment. In terms of architectural history the Gassho-style house is one of the most important farmhouse types in Japan, due to its rarity and uniqueness, as well as the fact that the surviving in situ examples remain not as isolated buildings but as clusters that comprise whole villages. Therefore these three villages in which Gassho-style houses remain as groups correspond to the definition of "groups of buildings" described in Article 1 of the World Heritage Convention. The architectural style and the characteristics of Gassho-style houses are described in the Outline of Gassho-style Houses which is provided as a supplement to the main text. i) Geography The area in which the three nominated villages are located, the Shirakawa-go / Gokayama area, is a remote valley in a rugged high-mountain region which has particularly heavy snowfall. Due to the difficulty of access, until the 1950s the relations between this area and the outside world were very limited, and this long isolation gave rise to the unique culture -- including the tradition of the Gassho-style -- which has been handed down to the present generation. Even today, with Japan's highly developed country-wide transportation network, the Shirakawa-go / Gokayama area is still somewhat difficult to approach, and for a time this was called "the last unexplored area of Japan". At the center of this area is the Sho River, which starts from the southern mountains and flows northward to the Japan Sea along a deep valley winding through a range of 1500-meter-high mountains. Because of the steepness of the mountain terrain, most of the villages in this area -- including the three nominated villages, Ogimachi, Ainokura and Suganuma -- are located in the narrow strip of land along the river valley floor. ii) History The principal mountain in this area is Mt. Hakusan, revered since ancient times as a sacred mountain. In the 8th century the Shirakawago / Gokayama area was opened up as a place for ascetic religious practice with mountain worship centered on Mt. Hakusan, for members of a religious order which combines ancient pre-Buddhist belief with Esoteric Buddhism. Subsequently, for a long time this area was under the influence of the Tendai Sect, one of the largest and most powerful Esoteric Buddhist sects in Japan. Also, because of the fact that this is a remote and isolated mountain area, the legend known as the Ochi-udo Densetsu, the "legend of defeated warriors who fled to remote areas", still remains as part of the folklore of this area, still believed by the people and handed down as part of the local history. The legend is the story of the Taira family, one of the two major warrior clans of the Heian Period, who at the end of the 12th century lost power to the rival Minamoto clan and who subsequently had to flee to various remote parts of the country --including, it is believed, Shirakawa-go. After the middle of the 13th century, the Jodo Shin Sect (the True Pure Land Sect), another major sect of Buddhism, spread into this area to replace the former Tendai Sect as the dominant religion, and temples and/or Buddhist buildings called dojo were constructed in each village. Still today, most of the people in this area have strong faith in the Jodo Shin Sect, and various religious ceremonies are regularly observed following traditional ways; this sect still serves as the foundation of the spiritual unity of the people in this society. The oldest known written documents confirming Shirakawa-go as the name of this area were from the mid-12th century. The village name of Ogimachi appears in late 15th century documents; the name Gokayama has been found in the beginning of the 16th century sources, that of Ainokura in mid-16th century sources, and that of Suganuma in early 17th century documents. Thus it was confirmed that each village was established sometime before those points in time. Shirakawa-go was part of the territory of the Takayama Clan at the beginning of the Edo Period, but from the late 17th century until the Meiji Revolution in 1868 it was under the direct control of the Edo Bakufu (military government). Gokayama was under the control of the Kanazawa Clan all through the Edo Period. Since the Meiji Period, of the 41 villages in Shirakawa-go in Gifu Prefecture, 23 villages (including Ogimachi) have belonged to the administrative district of Shirakawa-Mura. Of the 70 villages in the Gokayama area in Toyama Prefecture, 25 villages (including Ainokura) belong to Taira-Mura, and 19 villages (including Suganuma) belong to Kamitaira-Mura. Thus all three villages have become part of the modern administrative organization of the Mura system.