Zoo and Aquarium as the Museum－the educational significance
Yuji Kurihara
Director of Administration, Tokyo National Museum
Under Japanese law, zoos and aquariums are types of museums and positioned as social education facilities. Recently, zoos and aquariums have been asked to contribute to the conservation and education of biodiversity and species, in other words, to actively engage in roles that include a global responsibility and far exceed the scale of a mere autonomous body, and as a matter of fact, their positioning as environmental education facilities is becoming increasingly more significant.
Historically, at the time the Museum Act was enacted in 1951, Mr. Gentaro Tanahashi, a leading researcher of museum studies, and Mr. Tadamichi Koga, director of Ueno Zoological Gardens, strongly insisted: “The essence of zoos and aquariums is to collect and rear land and aquatic animals, and they are similar to museums and art museums except for the fact that they keep and exhibit living land and aquatic animals, and thus they can be deemed as a kind of living natural science museum.” This led to zoos and aquariums being included in the Museum Act. In reality, however, most of the zoos and aquariums that were established in the post-war era were located in scenic sightseeing areas, and vast green parks, amusement parks or the like were built together, and it cannot be denied that they had a rather distinctive feature of being sightseeing facilities for entertainment and leisure.
The 1975 Belgrade Charter finally triggered a global expansion in the promotion of environmental education. In Japan, the Charter also created high expectations for zoos and aquariums that handled wild animals and natural environments, and zoos and aquariums began to change their status. From the 1990s onward, against an economic backdrop where zoos and aquariums found that they could no longer operate as private businesses due to the necessity for huge investments and operating costs, only public zoos and aquariums and some portions of large-scale private facilities adapted to social demands, deployed veterinarians, qualified keepers and aquarists, curators and other experts to improve the level of quality, and made efforts to reinforce conservation of species and environmental education, study and research projects, as well as with an eye toward recreation.
In recent years, however, local autonomous bodies have also faced financial difficulties, and required streamlining and rationalization of operations. Many public museums have therefore been forced to downsize, cease or integrate their operations, or to use a designated manager system. Zoos and aquariums are no exception, and a new vision of the future for zoos and aquariums is being explored. This must be embodied in the symposium sessions that were started this past year and have been held in various parts of Japan by the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums under the theme: “Toward Realization of Museums of Life – Do we allow zoos and aquariums in Japan disappear?”
Under these circumstances, when we think anew about the expected social roles and significance of zoos and aquariums, we must recognize once again that zoos and aquariums are social education facilities. This is because in recent years, there has been a boom in “behavior exhibits” at zoos and “landscape immersion” has been introduced to recreate habitats in zoos, etc., which are the result of efforts to display land and aquatic animals that are active or at rest and to convey information by serving as their interpreters, and is also the very proof of people’s acceptance of the educational function of zoos and aquariums. Such a function involves expectations for conveying more information to visitors through cooperation among history museums, art museums and other humanities museums, and for giving a deeper impression and better understanding. In my humble opinion, such efforts so far implemented by zoos and aquariums in Asia are unfortunately yet insufficient, and I hope zoo education will be improved through discussions at AZEC.
