The life of the Bauls of Bangladesh revolves around body-centric ascetic practice termed sadhana. Bauls believe in the co-existence of every element of the endless Brahmanda, meaning universe in the human body. Thus, they make caring for the body their highest priority over anything else. They have created extensive verse about body-centric sadhana codes that they transmit through song. The verses or songs include descriptions of control over the consumption of daily necessaries, mainly food. And, they believe in the doctrine মানুষ যা খায়, সে তাই (a human is what he or she consumes). They also judge food as medicine, as the need to live a hale and hearty.

Hills resembling a dragon tail, composed of arenaceous soft mud stretching for several miles, scarce but fresh and lush vegetation, springs with ice-cold water spouting from the heart of the earth, waves of the salty lake gently crashing against the shore, magnificent white clouds soaring up in the sky and the numerous pilgrims, lined up one by one, treading right upon the “dragon tail” and making their pilgrimage through the sacred site Manjyly-Ata.

The first thing I learned when I began my field work in the Province of Ifugao was that my time was not my own. Time belonged to the gods and spirits that would unexpectedly appear in dreams and give omens compelling the people to seek their mumbaki (ritual specialist) for guidance.

Textile printing is the process of printing flowers, ornaments on cotton or silk fabric (chitgarlik) by hand using carved wooden stamps. This applied art has existed in Central Asia since ancient times and stems from the region’s cultural and commercial interaction. The art of textile block printing traveled along the Silk Road and flourished in the villages and towns of Central Asia.

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

As part of the Cultural Partnership Initiative of 2016, ICHCAP invited ICH professionals from Malaysia, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Tonga. Each participant researched ICH topics of interest that relate to comparative studies, sustainable development, traditional medicine, and safeguarding organizations.

The subject of this study is to find out the protection and sustenance ways of Shaman heritage among the Turks of Turkey. As it is known, Turks of Turkey are shaman community in terms of ancient religions and world-views such as Kazakhs, Uighurs, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Altai, Republic of Tuva, Sakha and other Turkish tribes constituting the Turkish World. Majority of the Turks of Turkey migrated from the middle of today’s Mongolia to the shores of Aegean Sea and Balkan Peninsula in the last 1500 years. Another factor complicating this 1500-year migration is the fact that Turks accepted Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity and some groups accepted Judaism. Normally while it was expected that they pursued various religions and dispersed in this tens of thousands kilometer square, these Oghuz tribes weren’t assimilated and they assimilated many communities whose administration they undertook within the scope of their control.

Karate is commonly regarded as a traditional Japanese martial art, which was developed on the island of Okinawa. Okinawa belonged to the Ryūkyū Kingdom (1429–1879)—an independent state that held diplomatic, cultural, and economic relations with Japan, China, Korea, and other Asian countries. The Ryūkyū Kingdom had a highly transactional culture with a history of cultural exchange in East and Southeast Asia. Karate, generally known as / (hand) or / (China-hand), blended the indigenous fighting systems of Okinawa with influences from Chinese and most likely other Asian martial arts, worldviews, and folk spiritualities into a cultural practice that became rooted in Okinawan society. Today, karate is a weaponless martial art in which punches and kicks are utilized. Due to its history and social as well as cultural relevance, the prefectural government of Okinawa has, since the 1990s, been actively seeking to inscribe Okinawa karate on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Humanity. However, karate will also make its debut as an exhibition sport at the rescheduled Olympic Games due to be held in Tokyo in 2021. According to the World Karate Federation (WKF), about 100 million people practice karate around the world (WKF, 2014). With a transcendence that goes far beyond its sportive side, karate, as a cultural icon both of modernity and “tradition,” has become a Japanese cultural export incorporated into the global sporting culture.

Vernacular martial arts (VMA) occupy a special niche within the diverse phenomena classified as martial arts. Cross-culturally, “Martial arts can be defined as systematic bodies of knowledge, belief, and practice that are associated with methods of attack and defense against … adversaries” (Green and Svinth, 2010, p. 331). On close examination, we learn that the behaviors we attempt to gather under this umbrella term are quite diverse, ranging from life-and-death struggles through rule-governed sporting contests to expressive forms, from globalized combat sports to localized martial culture. The systems that fall on the latter end of this spectrum I have applied the VMA label to, and among the various martial expressions these are the ones that most clearly qualify as intangible cultural heritage (ICH). The following distinctions are useful for the current discussion.

Key matters on modern significance of intangible heritage and its safeguarding Intangible heritage is living cultural heritage which can express human’s wisdom and sensibility intactly by this time. Even though some of them already disappeared, are about to disappear and would disappear not before long, there still remain many of them in our thoughts and experiences. Such heritage is the infinite future resources and traces of the past that human can enjoy in this digital era. The traditional cultures can play a more important role for us in feeling human’s emotions and humanity in the digital era because they contain old human’s memories, and can be an economic means as well. These intangible heritages, in essence, may have the same function even though their forms are different. In particular, we can see that certain cultures spread to neighboring regions, which led to the creation of a new form of culture in a community that accepted them. This process is important as an asset for sharing humanity and at the same time becomes a meaningful source for each community to have its cultural identity as an expression of diversity of human thought.\nTherefore, how to preserve the shared or coexisting intangible heritage among cultural communities is a key topic in the international society today. Meantime, there have been some cases in which even though they are the same kind of heritage, certain heritages in some areas were inscribed on the list of World Heritage but others were pushed aside, in spite of their equally excellent values. In today’s fast-changing society, if culture is neglected even a little bit, it will disappear. Then, if it disappears, total amount of culture in that society will eventually shrink, which means that the future values will be lost. What is called culture inevitably comes to vanish without those who use it, no matter how creative it is. In order to preserve traditional heritage that may disappear at any time, it is an essential process to persuade the society, develop modern utility and seek for strategic methods, deeply thinking of its future value of such heritage.

Intangible heritage is living cultural heritage which can express human’s wisdom and sensibility intactly by this time. Even though some of them already disappeared, are about to disappear and would disappear not before long, there still remain many of them in our thoughts and experiences. \n\nSuch heritage is the infinite future resources and traces of the past that human can enjoy in this digital era. The traditional cultures can play a more important role for us in feeling human’s emotions and humanity in the digital era because they contain old human’s memories, and can be an economic means as well. These intangible heritages, in essence, may have the same function even though their forms are different. In particular, we can see that certain cultures spread to neighboring regions, which led to the creation of a new form of culture in a community that accepted them. This process is important as an asset for sharing humanity and at the same time becomes a meaningful source for each community to have its cultural identity as an expression of diversity of human thought. \n\nTherefore, how to preserve the shared or coexisting intangible heritage among cultural communities is a key topic in the international society today. Meantime, there have been some cases in which even though they are the same kind of heritage, certain heritages in some areas were inscribed on the list of World Heritage but others were pushed aside, in spite of their equally excellent values. In today’s fast-changing society, if culture is neglected even a little bit, it will disappear. Then, if it disappears, total amount of culture in that society will eventually shrink, which means that the future values will be lost. What is called culture inevitably comes to vanish without those who use it, no matter how creative it is. In order to preserve traditional heritage that may disappear at any time, it is an essential process to persuade the society, develop modern utility and seek for strategic methods, deeply thinking of its future value of\nsuch heritage. To preserve the intangible heritage, it is necessary to build the favorable environment in which communities with such technological culture can keep working on new creative works. For this, each society has to make continuous efforts in cooperation with communities not to wither this\nheritage away. These efforts are important not only in terms of the transmission of tradition but also as cultural resource to form sustainability for a society in the digital era. Here, we should pay keen attentions to preventing such intangible heritage from being fossilized, remaining fixed cultural system and eventually being eliminated. Intangible heritage should exist as one culture, but its way of expression should adapt to the senses and demands of a new generation by constantly making creative transformation. By doing so, the original form can be also preserved as a part of diversity. In other words, the practical benefit based on tradition is a prerequisite for the transmission through generations.

Water management has long been the most necessary agricultural activity for Korean farmers, who typically make their living through rice cultivation. This is why if rain is scarce \nor water management is wrong, it can ruin farming for the year and farmers will struggle to provide for themselves and their families. Whether the practices are traditional or modern, \nagriculture is fundamentally dependent on nature. Therefore, people prayed for rain to the gods who they believed were in the sky or the sea to prevent drought in rites that were common in Korea. While they still rely on nature, farmers have always sought to increase their resilience in the face of natural disasters by continuously innovating with irrigation solutions suitable for the local environment. This chapter introduces two types of irrigation \nfacilities that are typical examples of the water-management system in rice-farming areas from the perspective of traditional knowledge.