The Sado Gold Mine World Heritage Site: Possibilities for Addressing Contested History (Lecture by Prof. Andrew GORDON)

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In 2024 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee listed the gold mines on Sado island as world heritage sites with significantly less controversy than in 2015, when the cluster of Meiji Era Industrial Revolution sites, mainly in Kyushu, were listed. At issue in both cases was the way these industrial heritage sites would describe the treatment of wartime foreign laborers, Koreans in particular, who were brought to Japan and forced to work against their will. The Sado case generated less controversy mainly because the Japanese side offered a fuller and more honest account. In this presentation I explore the reasons for this difference with particular attention to the role of local civil society actors.

Lecturer
Andrew GORDON (Ushioda Fellow, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo; Professor, Harvard University)

Moderator
Michael FACIUS (Associate Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo)

Historian of modern Japan. Former director of Harvard University’s Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and former chair of the Harvard History Department. Author of A Modern History of Japan (2019) and many other books.