National patrimony is the store of
wealth
Wealth is the abundance of Value (economics), valuable financial assets or property, physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for financial transaction, transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the ...
or accumulated reserves of a national economy. In addition to monetary reserves and other financial holdings, national patrimony also encompasses a nation's non-monetary wealth or reserves, such as its national monuments, cuisine, and artistic heritage.
National patrimony is related to—but not synonymous with—the concepts of ''national essence'' and ''national heritage''. National patrimony more strongly reflects a nation's assets (physical, intellectual, monetary, etc.) than a spirit of cultural unity, although the assets themselves may indeed embody or contribute to such a unifying spirit.
China
In
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
, the term "national essence" is translated as ''guocui'' 國粹, and the journal ''Guocui xuebao'' 國粹學報 (''Journal of National Essence'') was established in 1905 with the aim of preserving and protecting
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
's artistic national patrimony. This journal originally was divided into seven sections, four of which are topical in nature and represent specific aspects of what might be considered China's "national essence" and, by extension, national patrimony:
* Politics (''zhengpian'' 政篇)
* History (''shipian'' 史篇)
* Teaching and learning (''xuepian'' 學篇, or more literally "approaches to study")
* Literature (''wenpian'' 文篇)
Two years after the journal's initial publication, two additional topical sections were added:
* Art (''Meishu'' 美術)
* Natural Science (''Bowu'' 博物, literally, "knowledge about things")
Japan[Kenneth Pyle, ''The New Generation in Meiji Japan'', 1885-1895 (Stanford, 1969), pp. 4, 52-71.]
In Japanese, the term "national essence" is translated as ''kokusui'', and the term ''kokusui hozon'' 國粹保存 is translated as "preserving the national essence."
In response to increasing Western influence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a growing sense
Japanese nationalism
is a form of nationalism that asserts the belief that the Japanese are a monolithic nation with a single immutable culture, and promotes the cultural unity of the Japanese. Over the last two centuries, it has encompassed a broad range of ideas a ...
led in 1889 to the establishment of three institutions aimed at protecting and preserving artistic aspects of the country's national patrimony:
* The Imperial Museum (''Teikoku Hakubutsukan'' 帝國博物館)
* The Tokyo School of Fine Arts (''Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō'' 東京美術學校), and
* The art journal ''Kokka'' 國華
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:National Patrimony
Cultural heritage
National treasures