Technique and aesthetics in gold leaf craft, and the regional identity of Kanazawa: A spatial discourse analysis of the Kanazawa Yasue Gold Leaf Museum in Japan

This paper presents the first case study to apply social semiotic analysis to the spatial text of a museum in Japan. Focusing on the Kanazawa Yasue Gold Leaf Museum building and its Permanent Exhibition Room, the study examines how this single-theme museum dedicated to gold leaf constructs meaning. Using the framework of Spatial Discourse Analysis, it analyzes meaning-making processes through three metafunctions: representational, interactional, and organizational. The analysis shows that the museum, through the multimodal orchestration of linguistic, visual, and spatial resources and their interaction with visitors’ movement and experience, produces a narrative that extends beyond a technical explanation of gold leaf. This narrative highlights the lifeways of gold-leaf craftspeople, the aesthetics that emerge from the interplay of technique and material, and a regional identity shaped by the integration of tradition and creativity. The study contributes a new empirical case to social semiotic research and offers fresh perspectives for understanding regional culture in Kanazawa and for advancing museological practice in Japan.