Boysun district, in southern Uzbekistan, has a beautiful natural landscape and is surrounded by a mountain range. The local environment and geographic isolation created favorable conditions for unique local intangible cultural heritage forms and expressions to form and be preserved over time. The same conditions also led to the existence of various types of labor activities, such as agriculture, cattle breeding, and handicrafts.

Knowledge is the foundation of indigenous cultures. As an expression of a given culture, it establishes relationships among an indigenous community with respect to its ancestral territory. The concept of knowledge or traditional knowledge is closely related to intangible cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage shapes the spirit of a culture, and central to its promotion and protection, is the revitalization and safeguarding of knowledge and cultural systems.

The Yakan is one of the major ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines. Among the Yakan of Basilan in Mindanao, Philippines, instrumental music is given much importance. For instance, the kwintangan, an instrument of five to seven bossed gongs laid in a row, are used for courtship and celebrations.

ICH is an integral part of the indigenous population of Fiji known as the iTaukei. Borne of a rich oral tradition that spanned migration from Southeast Asia into the Pacific from 3,500 B.C., the iTaukei people of Fiji share many similarities with their island neighbors of Melanesia and Polynesia. ICH has manifested itself in many elements—from oral traditions, social practices, knowledge of nature, traditional craftsmanship, and performing arts. These elements exist in a rich interplay of reciprocal social systems in which the pinnacle is the chief, the physical embodiment of the ancestral spirits. Practice of the various elements legitimizes and enforces the status quo in traditional iTaukei life.

In mid-April every year, Sri Lankans celebrate the Sinhala and Hindu New Year with distinctive rituals that fuse Hindu and Buddhist elements. With the introduction of Buddhism in the third century BCE, traditional Hindu New Year rituals were reinterpreted. While historians and sociologists believe these rituals were closely related to sun worship because they coincided with ancient myths about the sun moving from one celestial house to another—the major rituals today embody a sense of cultural heredity and tradition.

In 2013, the UNESCO Office in Bangkok, in collaboration with the Islamabad, Hanoi, Apia, and Tashkent offices, undertook a project to experiment how intangible cultural heritage (ICH) could be used as part of a pedagogical approach to raise awareness about sustainable development. Activities, implemented thanks to the generous support of the Japanese government, were framed around the themes of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). The pilot project produced guidelines and sample lesson plans for teachers to guide them into developing educational materials grounded in local knowledge and practices. Seventeen schools in four countries—Pakistan, Palau, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam— participated in the pilot. The emphasis was not on teaching pure cultural content, but rather on using ICH as a vehicle to enrich the teaching of existing school subjects.

In Turkmenistan, the national inventory of intangible cultural property comprises five domains: oral expression, beliefs, performing arts, craftsmanship, and traditional knowledge. Epics belong in the division of oral expression. More than ten elements have been identified in this field, including epics such as Gorogly, Shasenem and Garip, Zokhre and Takhir, Khuyrlukga and Khemra, Sayatly Khemra, Asly Kerem, Arzy-Gambar, Khatamnama, Warka-Gulsha, Kasym oglan Melike-Dilaram, Nejep oglan, and Tulum Hoja. The epic Gorogly holds an especially important position among Turkmen epics.

The Turkmenistan intangible cultural property comprises five domains that are summarised below:\n\n1. Oral expressions - oral folklore\n2. Traditions, customs and people’s beliefs\n3. Traditional performing arts\n4. Traditional craftsmanship\n5. Traditional knowledge\n\nEpics are included in the ‘oral traditions’ section. By now more than 10 elements have been identified in this field, including such epics as Gorogly, Shasenem and Garip, Zokhre and Takhir, Khuyrlukga and Khemra, Sayatly Khemra, Asly Kerem, Arzy-Gambar, hatamnama, Warka-Gulsha, Kasym oglan, Melike-Dilaram, Nejep oglan and Tulum Hoja. Gorogly occupies a special position among the abovementioned range of epics.

In 2003, the Bose Levu Vakaturaga (Great Council of Chiefs) and the vanua (confederacies) of Fiji raised concerns about the need to safeguard the traditional knowledge systems of the iTaukei as well as the cultural expressions of the people. However, to implement legal safeguarding mechanisms, villagers needed to establish some kind of an inventory to see what rituals, ceremonies, dances, customary practices, etc. existed in their territories. Thus there was a need to develop a system by which the vanua and different tribes could freely participate and thus ensure that their stories and traditional knowledge could be documented. In other words, to satisfy their various needs in relation to intangible heritage safeguarding, the Cultural Mapping Initiative was established.

Thundukuna is a special mat woven from reeds indigenous to the marshlands of Maldives. The reed is locally known as hau. Mat weaving from hau dates back some two hundred years, and this long history is mostly associated with the southernmost atolls.

Tugging rituals and games can be found all around the world, constitut-ing a panhuman cultural phenomenon. Especially in Asia, tugging rituals and games are related to rice farming, with most instances located within the farming cultures of Northeast and Southeast Asia. The practice of tug-ging rituals and games is universal and widespread, held to pray for rain or a good harvest or to foretell whether the year’s harvest will be good or bad. While many sim-ilarities exist among each tugging event based on the climate or environment, there is also a distinctness, individuality, and creativity specific to each region, making tugging rituals and games worth preserving as a common element of the intangible cultural heritage of AsiaDue to rapid urbanization and industrialization, however, today the tugging rituals and games of each country are in danger of their transmission being suspended, and there is even a lack of awareness of how important it is to safeguard tugging rituals and games as a part of intangible cultural heritage that is closely linked with agri-cultural rituals. In addition, while there have been previous case studies on tugging rituals and games of Asia, they are mostly limited to specific regions or rarely provide in-depth research, making it difficult to consider the connections between each region.

he upheaval and extinction faced by traditional culture is a core issue in today’s world. It has brought us to the realization that we are living in an important transition period where the future of humanity will be determined. In particular, the advent of digital platforms has provided a communication channel to link people together; the importance of these platforms seems poised to become much greater. In this era, in which means of communication are facing remarkable qualitative changes, oral tradition is under considerable threat. In past eras where humankind created languages and memories to resolve all kinds of issues and share information, speech was a way to achieve totality. Through speech, people delivered their thoughts and opinions, created new things, and embraced differences to become one. As such, spoken language became an absolute means and solution to maximize the immense capacity of humankind. People discovered interests and meanings through conversations; they combined work and enjoyment by singing; they wore masks and gave movement-based performances accompanied by amusing anecdotes. By reciting and dedicating bonpuri, a ritual song to pray to deities and receive oracles, their creations became content passed down through oral culture.