The number of Japanese museums that feature sizable exhibitions of everyday scenes and objects has increased sharply in the 1970s and 1980s. At present, the Folklore Society of Japan, the national association of folklorists (minzokugakusha) who have traditionally claimed the study of everyday culture as one of their core territories, lists more than one hundred such institutions all over Japan. The listed museums range in scope from large, national institutions, to tiny regional ones. All of them serve important cultural, political, economic, and academic functions, both for Japan as a whole and for their respective regions. What Gottfried Korff and Martin Roth have said about historic museums in general holds true for them as well: The are “laboratories, playhouses, and identity factories”.

In defining what it means to be Japanese as well as how individual regional identities relate to “Japaneseness” as a whole, museums get to speak from a unique position of authority. Their authority however, is also subject to economic necessities, a complex legal framework that regulates them, and the need to balance the interests of their various groups of stakeholders.

Based on an analysis of exhibitions and interviews conducted in March and April 2019 at the National Museum of Japanese History in Sakura (Chiba Prefecture) and the Tôno Municipal Museum in Tôno (Iwate Prefecture), this presentation examines how museums of different sizes negotiate these issues and what strategies they employ in dealing with them.