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This article examines the borders of memory inherent to a Japanese World Heritage site, and their significance for the 2020 opening of the Industrial Heritage Information Center in Tokyo. The Center was constructed to disseminate information regarding the widely dispersed “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution”, which was recognized as a “serial site” by UNESCO in 2015. As with the original nomination, the opening of this Centre resulted in stringent protests from South Korea, who sought to have UNESCO consider revoking its original listing of these 23 Industrial Sites as collectively constituting the heritage of the world. This Center materializes a “border of memory” between Japan and South Korea that is the outcome of the displacement and re-siting of the heritage associated with Japan's Meiji Industrial Sites.

Research material is derived from nomination documents, site visits, and newspaper reports in order to contextualize and analyse the disputes associated with this particular World Heritage nomination.

The paper points to how the borders of memory present at heritage sites may shift through contestation. Efforts to fix the meaning of heritage find themselves subverted by connections across such borders of memory.

The paper traces the process by which the geographically-dispersed “Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution” have been collectivized through UNESCO's recognition into a single “border of memory” between Japan and Korea, one which the Information Center subsequently succeeded in materializing and reproducing within Japan's national capital.

The purpose of this paper is to find the meaningful relationship between the economic impact of the natural disaster and economic condition.

The paper employed cross‐sectional analysis to investigate the relationship between economic condition namely, gross domestic product per capita (GDPpc); gross domestic product per capita squared (GDPpc²); government consumption ratio to GDP (gc); ratio of M2 over GDP(M2); years of schooling attainment (sc); land area and finally; population and the economic impact of natural disasters, whereby ten types of natural disasters were chosen. The degree to which the human and economic losses due to these ten natural disasters were measured by, the variables selected are, number of killed; total affected; and ratio of total damage to GDP. Three different points of time were regressed, namely, 1985, 1995, and 2005 covering 73 countries.

Results clearly indicate that there seems to be meaningful relationship between the economic impact of natural disasters and economic conditions.

The paper provides some evidence on the important role of economic condition in minimizing the impact of natural disasters.

The paper incorporates a comprehensive list of explanatory variables in accounting for natural disaster fatalities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate educational functions of the World Heritage Site by examining the case of cultural tourism in a Japanese Buddhist temple.

Japan accepted the World Heritage Convention in 1992. “Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara” were decided to be listed on the World Cultural Heritage in 1998. It was composed of buildings, monuments and related cultural landscape, including five Buddhist temples and one Shinto shrine. Among them, the Gango-ji, focused in this paper, is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan.

It has been keeping many cultural properties related to the folk religious practice and providing many activities for the local community. The material culture of folk-belief is now preserved in a building in the temple yard. And there is an exhibition room. The main hall and the exhibition room are the important facilities for social education, where the visitors can watch and touch the real materials. According to the staffs of the temple, the tourists had better stay in the main hall after 1 h study at the exhibition room.

Heritage is a process of the contemporary people engaging in the usage of past as resources. The buildings as the tangible heritage used by the present community are combined with the actions as the intangible heritage of the people who preserve the heritage. The temporal tourists are also permitted to enjoy the process as participants. They can learn many things through their experiences at the heritage site.

Water has been called the oil of the 21st century. Global water consumption is rising steeply and the lack of adequate supplies of quality water is a problem in many parts of the world. Water is one of the most abundant elements of earth, covering nearly 1,400 million cubic kilometers, nearly 70 percent of the planet's surface. However, only a very minor portion of this huge volume is actually usable. The rest forms oceans and polar ice caps. Availability of usable water is further limited by the fact that it cannot be easily exported over long distances.

The research reported in this ongoing study aims to investigate the notion of knowledge assets developed within digital communities in the course of their economic or leisure activities. Ideally, the resulting knowledge is universal, affordable and relevant; this inclusiveness is a hallmark of any information or knowledge society.

The authors first synthesize the related research literature covering the areas of knowledge‐based economies, knowledge societies and knowledge policies. A model using 13 dimensions is then developed, which the authors claim is critical for creating a knowledge community in the digital economy. The model is validated against critique from a Delphi panel of researchers in the area.

While creating a knowledge society encompasses dimensions pertaining to infrastructure, governance, talent and culture, intangible assets are key to sustaining such societies. Governance and culture are instances of such intangibles. Talent may seem to be tangible but the human capacity for learning and development, which leads to an innovative culture, is less so. In any case, time is the essential ingredient for a knowledge culture to come about.

Knowledge societies are not measurable constructs that can be described quantitatively and benchmarked with weighted summations of scores along prescribed dimensions. It would be a fallacy to treat the notion of a knowledge index as a socio‐economic measure of success.

. conclude with a practical view of how the dimensions may be best exploited in the course of a policy discussion on sustainable knowledge societies.

It is hoped that the research will provide a framework for policy makers and analysts to conduct qualitative discussions on creating and sustaining knowledge societies.