Thinking through Tourism in Japan

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Japan today appears as an insular, industrial society stranded in a globalized post-industrial world, trying to retain (mainly invented) pre-industrial values under the conditions of high Hofstedian index readings for both group orientation and uncertainty avoidance. Insight into tourism in Japan can be gained through an understanding of a unique development: ‘ambitious Japan’. Analysing Japan's tourism development by looking at the three basic steps of ‘discovery’, ‘acquisition’ and ‘invention’ (which can be found in the physical and mental development of tourism in history on a global scale, but also in the development of destinations and tourist sites on a regional and local scale), the special path of the Japanese development can be demonstrated. Domestic tourism was marketed under the title ‘Discover Japan’ in the 1970s, supporting furosato (hometown) tourism, sightseeing of reconstructed Meiji buildings and relaxation in resorts. The acquisition of spatial and cultural resources remains quite limited in Japan. Tourism has not succeeded in opening up the inside of sacred places like Shinto shrines to the tourist gaze or saving vistas of landscape gardens, leap-frogging instead to ‘invention’ with indoor-beaches, theme and high-tech parks, etc. Given the limited economic power of tourism and the need for ‘Inventing Japan’ (Buruma, 2003) as a major task of the whole Japanese society, this comes as no surprise. Sustainable tourism in Japan is strongly connected to development or rather the threat of de-development of rural areas. Local participation and community involvement is strongly supported as a way to overcome this problem with the help of ‘agrotourism’. As the ‘old’ tourism of big groups on a one-time short-term visit, to which the hardware still is geared, is moving to cheaper overseas destinations, ‘new’ family/friends-based tourism is seen as a sustainable form, with some redeveloped places like Yufuin (Kyushu) praised as best practice examples. Ecotourism, visits to National Parks etc. take place either overseas or only in eventisized form, given the preference for manipulated nature over the search for authenticity in pristine forests.