Themes on Cultural Preservation
October 5^th, 2002,
San Jose Japantown Community Congress

·        Cultural Preservation can be: Keeping the connection between past, present and future generations.

·        (Cultural Preservation) It can be manifested through architectural preservation of a community’s contribution to the built environment, i.e. via memorials, plaques commemorating historical events and historical traditions of a community and the progress made over generations.

·       Cultural Preservation can be: Maintaining and expanding the essence of ones race or heritage.

·       Cultural Preservation acknowledges the contributions, values, and beliefs of a people in a society.

·       Cultural Preservation records and protects these contributions through time and space.  It can be manifested through efforts at concentrating institutions which meet the social, cultural, educational, business and spiritual needs of a community, i.e. cultural centers and religious venues, museums, chambers of commerce, places of music and art, open spaces with particular floriculture and horticultural themes native to that community.

·        (Cultural Preservation) It can take the form of a central place or clearing house of information on the community.

·        (Cultural Preservation) It could be a place for intergenerational dynamics connecting in a common space for interaction.

·        (Cultural Preservation) It can be a magnet to connect social service volunteer activities, which perpetuate cultural preservation.

·        Cultural Preservation does not happen in a vacuum, it is a process, which seeks to be inclusive, and creates bridges with other cultures;
it requires the “marketing” of the community to make more tangible the recognition of diversity in a place.

San Jose Japantown ad hoc committee