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, artisans39。 skills and orally conveyed knowledge of farming. It can even include festivals and spaces where people gather, such as the wondrous Drama elFan square in Marrakech. You might find its traces in a museumplants used by a traditional healer, for examplebut it is mostly the living, oral tradition of a people. It is not culture under glass! Japan’s living national treasures Scholars have long recognized the intangibility of culture. In the 18th and 19th 6 centuries philologists, folklorists and others tried to document the world39。s oral traditions. Yet the term intangible cultural heritage is relatively recent. In 1950, Japan initiated a living national treasures program to recognize the great skills of masters of the traditional arts. Similar programs began in Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States and France. Intangible heritage was seen as an asset or resource to be protected, appreciated, utilized and managedan idea traceable back to the Meiji period. In the West, meanwhile, jurists recognized the idea of intellectual property as an asset, defining copyright and patent as putting an idea into material form. But collective, cultural creation that was unwritten or unrecorded remained problematicit still does. In the 1970s, discussion of UNESCO39。S World Heritage List, which later came to include natural landscapes, stimulated broader thinking about the need to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. Meetings of experts ensued, remendations were developed and the technical discussions continued until they reached a pinnacle in May 2020, when UNESCO39。S DirectorGeneral Coacher Matsuura proclaimed the first 19 Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Why so long for this concept to make it into international consciousness? Well, for one, it has suffered the problem of vagueness long associated with the term culture. Heritage and intangible just pound the difficulty. Second, there39。s a terminology problemwhat to call it? It is hard to imagine the term intangible cultural heritage sliding off the tongue of any laureates. Vagueness and terminology aside, interest in the subject has grown with public awareness of globalization. On