• by IPS Correspondents (jogjakarta, indonesia)
• Tuesday, December 20, 1994
• Inter Press Service

JOGJAKARTA, Indonesia, Dic 20 (IPS) - To visit Jogjakarta in the central Indonesian island of Java is to step back into the royal past.

Jogjakarta moves at a more leisurely pace than other Indonesian cities and has managed to preserve its venerable court culture and traditional arts.

Indeed, despite centuries of Dutch colonial rule, then the Indonesian revolution that stripped the sultans of their political powers and now rapid modernisation, Jogjakarta, or "Yogya" as the city east of the Indonesian capital is often called, survives as the heart of a once vibrant courtly culture.

Other former rulers of central Java have lost their clout, but the Yogya princes are still held in respect because they supported Indonesia's independence struggle in the 1940s and have helped many of the 25,000 people living within the walled city with land grants.

The city's living culture throbs within the vast walled city that surrounds the ornate palace of sultans. Within these walls is one of Indonesia's most important royal courts or 'kraton' that has lasted for more than 200 years, the only one still with influence in Java.

Here, Sultan Hamengku Buwono X presides over a court of 1,500 retainers and hundreds of artisans who work within the old city.

"The palace is special," says Harry Danel, son of an architect and a batik designer and a distant relative of the Sultan. "It is a place where young artists come to pursue their work."

In recent years, there has been a renaissance of arts and crafts in Jogjakarta as many young Javanese return to their roots and work as batik designers, wayang shadow-puppeteers and gamelan musicians.

Puppet designer Danel, who works and lives close to the 250- year-old palace, says many young Javanese who failed to land jobs in Jakarta and Surabaya, the island's largest cities, have since come back and picked up the traditional arts again.

One of these arts is that of batik making, in which wax is used to put designs on cloth that are then dipped into vats of dye. According to Sutadi, director of the local Institute for Research and Development of Handicraft and Batik Industries, the first batiks were made solely for the sultan.

And while new designs abound in the coastal areas of Java, Yogka batik makers stick to the traditional motifs that they wear with pride. (MORE)

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© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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