Many if not most large sovereign polities (ie "countries" etc.) have such programs, though not as extensive etc. as the Japanese one. I don't know that these are at all the way to preserve real traditions, though, but more, as I see happen in institution after institution, some (usually dogmatized, of course) institutional concept of them. A great example is "Western" academia/music establishment trying to study the blues; trying to define it and ending up saying things like "the blues is a 12 bar music in key X with repetitive themes.....(etc.)" which prompted Willie Dixon to say "That is a white, college definition of the blues....(and thus not at all valid or useful to actually understanding the blues which must be understood from the inside; the inside is a culture that doesn't have "bars" or "keys" in the "Western" sense, yet Euro/academic culture talks as if they have defined it and confined it with their foriegn terms, their nonunderstanding outside definition, which in practical reality is used to say this or that is not "real" blues.)" A bit unclear, perhaps, but my concern over this sort of institutionalization of knowledge, etc. Also, I say, as always, that weapon cutlery is a living art, and its supposed obsolescence is an "over-culture" (mis)perception, and is "news" to a great number of living working cutlers, living martial artists, and ordinary people who are sword owners.
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