KIPPO: Kyoto machiya listed as "crisis monuments"
The World Monuments Fund (WMF), a U.S.-based entity supporting the protection of the world's cultural heritage at risk of disappearing such as historical buildings, has placed machiya, traditional Japanese wooden townhouses in Kyoto, on its Watch List for 2010...Machiya are the second to be listed from Japan after the Tomonoura area in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture. Since 1996, the WMF has been listing every other year about 100 cultural monuments at risk from around the world, appealing for their protection...The prototype of machiya in Kyoto developed in the middle of the Edo period (1603-1867). A machiya is a dwelling-cum-workplace, featuring degoshi (protruding wooden latticework windows) and mushikomado (lattice-like wall slits upstairs for letting in air and light). Some 50,000 of them still remain in the city, but their number has been decreasing about 2% every year due to waves of urban redevelopment.
