Heritage refers to places, objects, and practices that a society chooses to preserve and pass on because they're considered meaningful. This includes buildings, landscapes, traditions, and stories. The key word is chooses—heritage isn't simply "the past." It's what we decide matters enough to remember.

Why it matters here: Hashima Island became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015. Understanding that this was a choice—not an automatic recognition—helps explain why the decision remains contested.

War memorials, UNESCO World Heritage sites, national museums, traditional crafts designated as "intangible cultural heritage."

A heritage site becomes "contested" when different groups hold conflicting memories or interpretations of what happened there. Often this involves painful histories—colonial violence, wartime atrocities, or systematic injustice—where victims and perpetrators, or their descendants, remember the same place very differently.

Why it matters here: Hashima is celebrated in Japan as a symbol of industrial achievement. For Koreans and Chinese, it's a site where their people were forced to work under brutal conditions. Both are true. The contest is over which story gets told.

Confederate monuments in the US, colonial-era statues, sites of atrocity like Auschwitz, disputed territories with multiple national claims.

Coined by heritage scholar Laurajane Smith, AHD describes the set of assumptions and practices that determine what counts as "real" heritage. It's the professional common sense of museums, UNESCO, and government agencies—the unspoken rules about what's worthy of preservation and how it should be interpreted. AHD tends to privilege experts over communities, grand narratives over difficult ones, and aesthetic value over political complexity.

Why it matters here: AHD helps explain why celebrating Japan's industrial revolution felt natural to heritage professionals, while acknowledging forced labour felt like "controversy" or "politics." The framework itself makes some stories easier to tell.

Think about how school curricula decide what counts as "history"—certain events become mandatory knowledge while others are omitted. AHD works similarly for heritage.

Work performed under compulsion, without genuine consent. During World War II, Japan mobilised Korean and Chinese workers to labour in mines, factories, and construction projects across the empire. The conditions ranged from deceptive recruitment to outright conscription, and workers faced harsh treatment, inadequate food, dangerous conditions, and restricted movement.

Why it matters here: Japan acknowledged in 2015 that workers were "brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions" at sites including Hashima. Yet how to interpret and memorialise this history remains disputed. Even the terminology—"forced labour" versus "wartime mobilisation"—carries political weight.

The distinction from chattel slavery matters legally and historically, but the element of compulsion—the absence of meaningful choice—is what makes this a difficult heritage issue requiring acknowledgment.

Obstruction that works through procedures and delays rather than explicit refusal. Instead of saying "no," soft gatekeeping says "not yet," "we need more review," "there are concerns about balance," or simply fails to respond. The effect is the same as censorship—certain stories don't get told—but there's no clear moment of prohibition to point to.

Why it matters here: The HashimaXR project wasn't censored. It was delayed, conditioned, reviewed, and ultimately made unviable through accumulated procedural obstacles. Understanding soft gatekeeping helps explain how institutional obstruction works without explicit refusal.

Being "managed out" of a decision at work; a proposal that's never rejected but never approved; requests for revision that never end; partnerships that stall without formal withdrawal.