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The organization known as the Agency for Cultural Affairs is made up of internal departments, facilities and institutes, and advisory councils (Chart I-1-14).

Chart l-1-14 Organization of the Agency for Cultural Affairs

The Cultural Affairs Department is in charge of such areas as the promotion of creative artistic activities, the promotion of art and culture in local areas, the improvement of the Japanese language, the improvement of the copyright system and the administration of the religious corporation system. The National Culture Festival. which was inaugurated in 1986 as anew type of people's cultural festival is one of the newly developed programs in the field of art and culture. In the area of Japanese language policy, a series of post-war policies were reexamined and relaxed, resulting in the1981 'compilation of the "Chinese Characters in Common Use Table (Joyo Kanji Table)", which replaced the previously used more complicated "Table of Chinese Characters Designated for Every Day Use (Toyo Kanji Table)". Continuing deliberations on various subjects relating to current Japanese language usage have been taking place since 1991. With regard to the copyright system, an overall revision of the Copyright Law was made in1970. Since that time, improvements have been made in response to diversified forms of copyright use, international trends and so forth.

With the preservation and utilization of cultural properties as a goal, the Cultural Properties Protection Department is engaged in the designation, maintenance, repair, restoration, restriction concerning modification, display and investigation of cultural properties. The rapid development on the part of various enterprises, changes in everyday life as well as other factors have called attention to the need for increasing the protection of cultural properties. To this effect, partial amendments were made to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties in 1975, mainly intended to reinforce the protection granted to buried cultural properties and to establish a system for the protection for folk - cultural properties and groups of historic buildings.

Facilities and institutes include national museums, art museums, research institutes and the Japan Art Academy, all of which play respective roles in the promotion of culture (Table l-1-1).

Table l-1-1 Outline of National Cultural Institutions, etc.

There are several councils which investigate and deliberate on the improvement of cultural policy in their respective fields. These include: the National Language Council, which deals with the improvement of the Japanese language ; the Copyright Council, which deals with important matters concerning the copyright system ; the Council on Religious Juridical Persons. which deals with authenticating religious corporations ; and the Council for the Protection of Cultural Properties, which deals important matters concerning the preservation and utilization of cultural properties.

In addition to these, the Advisory Committee for Promoting Cultural Policy, made up of learned scholars and other experienced individuals, was established in 1989. Against the backdrop of the recent increase of interest in culture, this committee attempts to grasp the present state of culture in this country. It also attempts to discuss and study from a new point of view on strengthening support for artistic activities, measures for the promotion of daily life culture and the development of culture in local regions, and the promotion of culture through international exchange.