Uniqueness Typicality, and Appraisal

This article examines the discourse attendant upon ‘old’ placesin contemporaryJapan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's ’vanishing’ tradition_yand how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertions about the typicality of'old’ places and their uniqueness. Finally_ythe article shows how alongside a debate about such communities as repositories oftradition, there is a discussion about their feudal legacy, social control and political conservatism.