Folklorist Barre Toelken studied the concept of “cultural heritage” and its connection to art. He challenged the notion that “folk art”—rooted in culture, traditions, and folklore—is separate from fine art or Art, instead arguing that all arts exist along a continuum (Toelken 2003, 196). He elaborated on the meaning of cultural heritage as it relates to ethnic identity and its expression through lullabies, dance, crafts, language, and food, as some examples. Scholars once believed that everyday cultural traditions were being lost or were only to be

found among the rural, the poor, and the often uneducated (Sims and Stephens 2011, 2).

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In Japan, the Folk Craft Movement of the

late 19th- and early 20th-centuries began

with a similar idea. Mingei, or traditional

folk crafts, were not valued or considered

art because they were functional. Yanagi

Muneyoshi the main leader of the

movement, sought traditional Japanese

items that embodied both the functional

and aesthetic, elevating the idea that

regular people could create beautiful,

functional, and inherently Japanese works

(Moeran 1981, 88). Kumihimo as an object is tangible cultural heritage, or material folklore, and as a process, it is an intangible one, or expressive culture.