Traditional settlements historic experience of “non-detached” preservation (cases of Shirakawa village Ogimachi in Japan and Kryvorivnia village in Ukraine)

The article concerns of the comparative study of traditional settlements historic experience of “non-detached” preservation. “Non-detached” there is understood like a way to preserve the whole settlement on its original place, with its local traditions, community system, crafts and customs, and in the harmony with natural environment. The cases of the study are mountain Shirakawa village Ogimachi in Japan and Kryvorivnia village in Ukraine. The both settlements are generally showing very similar historical background of geographically isolated life in the harmony with high mountain nature that leads to the shaping of original local architecture style, cultural traditions and community features. Similarly, the initiative of revitalization in the both cases emitting from local communities. Nevertheless, the history of preservation and revitalization efforts of the two cases is quite different. While in Shirakawa village Ogimachi local community took revitalization efforts starting from the middle of 20th century, Kryvorivnia village was engaged in the process starting from the middle of 19th century just with some interruption due to the soviet times. Currently the both settlements achieved good results in their revitalization and local traditions preservation activity also keeping harmony with environment. Shirakawa village Ogimachi is mostly orientated on inner community life that is almost not intersected with flourishing local tourism. Contrary, Kryvorivnia allows tourists to participate freely in local community life, rituals and festivals. Thus each of the two cases examined finally found its original way of historical settlement culture sustainable preservation and revitalization.


Introduction
The preservation of traditional settlements in "non-detached" way is an interesting and quite rare experience that could be observed mainly in the territories geographically isolated that lead to the phenomenon of specific local "time delay".It some cases such traditional settlements deny the common way of transferring their old buildings to the "open air rural museums" instead choosing the way of "non-detached" settlement preserving as a core of local architecture, culture and traditional way of living.The current circumstances of world globalization any case have to be took in the consideration there leaving the village community to make a choice between their identity dissolving in the case of fully opening to the world or cultural stagnation in the case of fully closing from it.The original strategies of creative sustainable development and revitalization can help the situation allowing the local communities to find a "middle way" of balancing between these two crisis points.It is due to emphasize that the common receipt for such activities is not exist.Every traditional settlement is looking for its unique way to achieve the balance between the traditional and modern life, cultural stagnation and globalization dissolving often designating the settlement as UNESCO Cultural Heritage [1,2].
Here is analyzed and compared the unique revitalization experience of Shirakawa village Ogimachi in Gifu prefecture, Japan (UNESCO World Heritage) and Kryvorivnia Carpathian village in Ivano-Frankivsk district, Ukraine.The research was fulfilled basing of personal author field research of the both cases.The research of Shirakawa village Ogimachi case was supported by Grant of Hakuho Foundation Japanese Research Fellowship program 13th (2018-2019).The main methods of the research were "in situ" observation, fixation and interviews.

Shirakawa village Ogimachi case
Shirakawa village Ogimachi is one of a group of very interesting deep mountain traditional settlements historically formed on the border of Gifu and Toyama Prefectures.Shirakawa-go is located in a narrow valley of Shogawa river (figure 1).Up to the beginning of 20th century this geographically isolated area was really difficult to access.Due to this, here was formed a cluster of settlements with original architectural Gassho-style rural houses and specific social culture [3,4].

Historical overview of Shirakawa Ogimachi settlement
Local recordings suppose that the settlement existed here at least from 11th century At the beginning of 21th century the population of Shirakawa village Ogimachi consisted for about 600 people.There for about 60 Gassho-style farmhouses mostly built from early 19th century till early 20th century [4], two Buddhist temples and a Shinto shrine.
The large Gassho-style rural houses of the region are unique in Japan.The name "Gassho" is coming from the image of their high triangle thatched-roofs that are similar with two hands jointed for a pray.The houses are usually face to the north and sous to minimize wind force according to the predominant wind direction of the region (figure 2).
The construction of the houses is extremely strong and spacious allowing to bear local winds and high weight of the snow as well as sheltering big local families [5,6].Layout and compositional structure of the houses is perfectly adapted to the local craftsmanship and the way of life.Namely, due to the luck of agriculture grounds the main jobs of the villagers historically was silkworm farming as well as Japanese paper (washi) and nitre for gunpowder manufacture.Thus the houses have wide working spaces in a ground floor as well as multileveled roofing spaces used for silkworm nests and their food (mulberry tree leaves) storage.These spaces due to the original roof construction are properly ventilated and disinfected with open domestic fireplace smoke freely penetrating all roofing joints and creating perfect environment for silkworms breeding.
It have to be noted that from the beginning of 20th century the quantity of Gassho-style houses of the area significantly diminished.As for 1924 there were for about 300 such buildings in the region while by 1961 they were already only 190 [4].This situation arose due to the nearby construction of hydroelectric power plant on Shogawa river at the beginning of 1940th that led to waterlogging and abandoning of several small villages of the area.Some houses also were lost by fires or reselling [4,6].Finally facing with this problem the residents of Gassho-style dwellings of Shirakawa village Ogimachi started a movement to protect the houses of the settlement.They concealed the three principles of "Do not sell", "Do not rent", and "Do not destroy" in 1971 establishing the "Association to Protect the Natural Environment of Shirakawa-go, Ogimachi Village" starting in the village different preservation activities.These efforts lead to further selection of the area as a district for the protection of nationally important traditional buildings in 1976 [4].
Finally there shaped very interesting form of traditional rural settlement preserving directly at the place, without usually implemented in such cases museification or "open air rural museum" creation.The habitants of the village are living at theirs houses and at the same time serving as the caretakers for them.
In 1995, Shirakawa village Ogimachi together with neighboring settlements were registered as the UNESCO World Heritage Site as the "Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama" by following criterion [5]: Criterion (iv): The Historic Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama are outstanding examples of traditional human settlements that are perfectly adapted to their environment and their social and economic raison d'être.Criterion (v): It is of considerable significance that the social structure of these villages, of which their layouts are the material manifestation, has survived despite the drastic economic changes in Japan since 1950.As a result they preserve both the spiritual and the material evidence of their long history.
UNESCO World Heritage site is consisting of three locations as Shirakawa village Ogimachi in Gifu Prefecture and neighbor villages Ainokura and Suganuma in Toyama Prefecture together forming 68 hectares of preserving area surrounded with buffer zones [5].

Modern situation of Shirakawa village Ogimachi preservation and revitalization, community and touristic activities
The management and daily preservation activity of Gassho-style rural houses is the responsibility of the owners.More complicate restoration works are held by professionals.Special attention is 1254 (2023) 012077 IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1254/1/0120774 given to the use of traditional materials [4,5,7].
The thatched-roofs of the local houses require the replacement every 20-30 years.Nowdays it is extremely valuable proses (for about more than 10 million yen, or approximately 75000 dollars costs only to replace one side of the roof) must be done by villagers themselves [4].For this situation there exist traditional local community called yui, that accumulate the money from all households to allow roof replacements of 2-3 houses a year.It takes for about 200 or even more workers and up to 100 of them could climb on the roof at once.One side of the roof replacing usually takes 2 days of the work.The work is divided among all yui community participants depending of their age, sex and qualification.So, while young men are directly engaged in the process on the roof, senior people supervise the work, teenagers and women are preparing grass bundles on the ground or serve the meals to other participants.After the work is finished, the owners of the house prepare a feast called naorai for all who was engaged in the process.Old village records proving that the tradition of yui existed there at least from the end of 18th century [4].So it can be cleared that traditional dwelling maintaining techniques of Shirakawa Ogimachi settlement are carefully transferred to the new generation (figure 3).Accustomed to live in tight close community from the ancient times, the habitants of Shirakawa village Ogimachi are still preserve strong community relationship not only in the field of yui roof replacement activity but also in the traditions of daily social life as well as annual festivals, weddings, funerals and so.
Traditional manufacture of the settlement (silk-worms farming, paper and gun-powder production) is abandoned now.Instead, almost all habitants are engaged in tourism activities holding in their Gassho-style buildings architectural and folklore museums, cafes, souvenir shops or guesthouses They are still preserving natural way of life in accordance with the nature including local agriculture and cuisine based on self-cultivated cereals and vegetables, forest plants and mushrooms.The old settlement traditions are studied in local schools that itself also is a very interesting example of tradition preservation activity.
This extremely picturesque place quickly gained the attention of domestic and foreign tourists, but from 2008 when a new Tokai-Hokuriku Expressway was constructed nearby making smooth access to the area, the touristic overgrowth of the settlement became a problem.Most of the tourist are visiting there by guided buses or private cars for a day returning trip and thus not are so useful for local economic.Recently due to coronavirus disease the situation changed a little but with world recovering from the epidemic this problem intends to return.

Kryvorivnia case
Kryvorivnia village is located in the deep forestland Carpathian mountains of Ivano-Frankivsk district at the valley of Black Cheremosh river.This territory is historical place of Hutsul Ukrainian ethnic subgroup habitation preserving till now their original wooden building technics, crafts, traditions and local dialect.The village has typical for the area dissolved urban structure of small and sometimes quite separated with the mountain landscape clusters of rural houses.

The history of Kryvorivnia settlement
Kryvorivnia village is known from the historical records from 18th century but the real age of the settlement could be much more ancient.From the middle of 19th century and so on, Kryvorivnia became popular as a natural resort and finally get attention of the famous cultural personalities often being visited by Ukrainian writes, historians and artists of the time as Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Hrushevsky and others [7].In 1910-1911 Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky who lived there for a while, wrote his famous based on the local Hutsul people legends and traditions novel "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" ("Wild Horses of Fire").Later, in 1964, a famous Sergei Parajanov filmed this novel at the same place at Kryvorivnia [8].
During the dark times of the Second World War and further soviet occupation the cultural life of Kryvorivnia village significantly declined.Until the end of 20th century it remained just one of the calm and lovely sightseeing but not outstanding villages of Ukrainian Carpathians.

Kryvorivnia village tradition preservation, modern revitalization activity and community life
New period of Kryvorivnia village culture flourishing started at 1995 with a young priest Ivan Rybaruk obtaining parish at local wooden Virgin Mari's Nativity church.The cultural and revitalization efforts of the new priest were willingly supported by local community that quickly started to restore old traditions, religious and community life and indigenous folk festivals of Kryvorivnia.The most notable of such festivals are the cycle of winter religious celebrations of Orthodox Christmas, the same as spring Easter festival and summer "Sheeps sending to poloninas" festival attracting many domestic and foreign tourists and guests.
There are still flourishing the tradition of so called "kolyadka" an ancient folklore Christmas songs the same as local musical bands performing with violins and "trembitas" -extremely long Hutsul trumpets fabricated from the wood of the trees striked by the lightening.At the day of Baptism that is celebrated there at 19th of January, local community and the guests praying on the bank of Black Cheremosh River near erected in the water big decorated Cross made of the river ice."Sheeps sending to poloninas" festival took place in Kryvorivnia in June.In this day the villagers sanding their sheeps to the upper mountain pastures (so called poloninas) for all of the summer (figure 4).
A very special feature of Kryvorivnia culture is the tolerance to the other religions, nationalities and ways of living.Significant Orthodox services are sometimes held there together with Catholic and Greek Catholic priests.The people of any other religion also allowed to come and pray in the local Maria's Nativity Church that is the center of community life and revitalization activity (figure 5).
This wooden church is supposed to be built in nearby place in 17th century and then relocated to Kryvorivnia grounds in 1719.It is a good example of local Hutsul architecture style.The wooden log church has cross-shape layout and one central opened to the interior and lightened with windows massive octagonal dome-tower.In the soviet times it was registered as National Cultural Property, but as it was then usual, nobody of the officials cared about the situation on the place.As a result, by 1980th the top of the church decayed and the dome-tower and the walls were covered with metal leafs as a recent cheap but harmful for the wooden structure repairing method.At late 2010th, due to community efforts, local carpenters repaired Maria Nativity church recovering its original exterior covering the walls and tower with chopped wooden planks as it was there traditionally accustomed for rain penetrating preventing.
A huge amount of 200-100 years old rural dwellings are still in use in Kryvorivnia, but in this case we can speak not only about old architecture traditional maintenance skill preserving.It is notable that local building carpenters are still preserving and passing to the new generation their skill to build new traditional rural houses, chapels and churches.Building customs and dwelling evil defence pre-Christian traditions also are still in use.
Other traditional crafts, manufacturing and arts such as agriculture skills, sheep breeding, cheese making, carpets making, wood curving, egg painting (pysanka art), and so also are flourishing.In this case it is quite natural that Kryvorivnia obtained a great popularization as a place of mountain green-tourism, sightseeing, hiking and skiing, mostly attracting single travellers, small groups of friends and families who can easily settle in the villagers dwellings or small house-hotels closely communicating with local habitants and fully participating in their life activities.
There is also significant museum activity that permanently has a tendency to increase.On the moment at Kryvorivnia functioning 7 museums of different types.Such as of literature and art celebrities memorizing museums, ethnographic and historic museums, the museum of local dwelling of 19th century "Hrajda" -Hutsul type rural house with inner yard operating by the family of its owners, and "Didova apteka" ("My grand-father's pharmacy") museum created by local Zelenchuk family for the memory of their grand-father, famous local herb healer At recent 20 years Kryvorivnia also fully reobtained its historic significance as an "artistic hub" of Carpathians often being visited by writers, artists, actors, photographers, filmmakers and other representatives of culture.In this meaning, Kryvorivnia village could fully reobtain its historic function as artistic hub and "cultural capital" of the Carpathians.

Comparing the cases
The two cases of traditional settlement "non-detached" preservation and revitalization examined there have very similar initial geographic circumstances both being located in the deep mountain forest regions historically hard to assess and due to this almost fully preserving their original building skills, customs, way of living and social relationship.The both are steel deeply integrated to natural surroundings.Their revitalization activity is the result of local community efforts and the way of this activity is mostly inspired by local habitants decisions sowing the diversity of original revitalization methods.
In Kryvorivnia community we can observe stronger religious component than in Shirakawa Ogimachi case.Due to the personality of local priest, the religious community of Kryvorivnia consolidated around ancient wooden church finally becoming the driving force of local preservation, revitalization and cultural activity.At the same time, in Shirakawa Ogimachi case can be observed stronger cooperation of the local community with prefectural authorities and central government significantly helping in old Gassho-style houses and surrounding territory preservation process and integrating the efforts of the community with Japanese law and UNESCO World Heritage programs.
At figure 6 it is shown the difference between functional abilities of these traditional settlements and the situation with their different traditional activity components preserving.Summarizing the results of figure 6, we can state that functional diversity of Kryvorivnia settlement case is richer and having longer traditions of conscious local cultural activity than Shirakawa Ogimachi case.The approach to traditional building skills preservation also is different.Shirakawa Ogimachi is preserving bigger than Kryvorivnia amount of originally shaped ancient rural houses.While the local artisans of Shirakawa Ogimachi are concentrating their building skills mostly on the maintenance of the Gassho-style houses, living big reparation works to the restoration specialists, Kryvorivnia's artisans are able to repair, and even rebuild local architecture in the traditional way.There is also still flourishing the tradition of ancient building methods transferring to the next generations.Kryvorivnia building carpenters are not only erecting new diverse rural structures of traditional techniques on the territory of the settlement but also spreading their skills to the wide neighboring area.
The approach to touristic activity organization at Shirakawa Ogimachi and Kryvorivnia also are basically different.While Shirakawa Ogimachi community rather considering the tourists as a passive spectators allowed to observe local life, in Kryvorivnia the tourists and guests fell themselves fully involved in the process of local life including participation in religious services, festivals preparing activity, crafts and local cuisine dishes fabrication and so (figure 7).
The reasons of such difference are probably nestling in the history and culture of the both settlements as well as in the different mentality of their habitants.In Japanese history rural settlements were practically closed social systems with strong local community consolidation not allowing to the strangers to enter in or to the members of communities to go out.While the Ukrainian Carpathian settlements historically had quite open social structure where people settled around separately in small family groups with free coming in and out and consolidating only in the case of practical or defense needs (figure 8).
In general it can be stated that Kryvorivnia traditional settlement is much more that Shirakawa village Ogimachi integrated in the modern world and directed rather to the future development in the harmony with their traditions and surroundings than to stagnation like an artificially limited reserve of traditional life style.

Conclusions
The main problem for historical settlement with traditional way of living now is to consider the appropriate proportion between local traditions stagnation and modern life integration.At the cases examined it can be seen that for each historical settlement this question can   have deferent answers.The "non-detached" preservation of the settlement is possible now only in coexistence with surrounding nature that shape both possibility and necessity to practice continually traditional way of living, customs, building technics, crafts, agriculture and social relationship.From the one hand, the complete stagnation of the local traditions and the way of living in the ancient "status quo" usually leads to the settlement life conservation or museification existing separately from the real word.From the other hand, the excessive openness to the word could lead to the settlement identity dissolving.The decision of desirable proportion between this two crisis points are usually made by local communities and generally reflecting deep national mentality and historical background of the settlement.The same could be applicable also for the question of touristic activities separating or engaging on the local community life of the settlement.Revitalization methods of historical settlements with traditional way of life often are the original products that can lead the local communities to unique domestic heritage preservation and revitalization methods and sustainable development strategies creating.
[9].Recently there opened also a museum of repressed by soviets local talented female artist, ethnographer and writer Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit (1927-1998) whose significant heritage is now carefully classified and popularized by the local community [10].

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Shirakawa Ogimachi and Kryvorivnia cases functional abilities and traditional activity components preserving (by author).

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Local life and touristic activity interaction at Shirakawa Ogimachi and Kryvorivnia cases.