Word Count 3200
When a westerner thinks of Japan the video above is what would likely come into their mind. The standard trope of Japan merging perfectly the past with the high tech future is used. The first half of the video shows images of ancient Japan, with the temples, shrines, and castles. The second half shows all the different high technology that is in Japan with the robots, computers, and video games. What makes the video interesting is that this is what Japanese people think westerners want to see in order for them to entice them to come to Japan. This is quite different from some the images that presented to other Japanese themselves to promote domestic tourism.
This commercial is completely different the one above, yet both are promoting travel to Japan. There seems to be very noticalbe difference in the way images are presented to the west and to the native. While the add directed toward a western audience has a calmness and mysteriousness about it. The Japanese advertisement can be said to be much more direct and to the point without the fluff of mystery and antiquity that was in the western advertisement. The native Japanese seem to prefer tourist information in a way that is more direct in nature. For the Japanese relying on the western trope of Japan merging the past with the present is not necessary. This is because a native Japanese person is living in a world that shows this type of thing everyday. So to show that in an advertisement directed at Japanese people would be redundant. So the approach that is more widely used is to show the most fantastical images possible in a way that stink in a person's memory and entice them to see where these images are coming from.
To get some backgound on why these sorts of images are being used. I want to show the history of tourism in Japan both domestic and foriegn. The information for this section comes from Akira Soshiroda who wrote the essay "Inbound tourism policies from 1859 to 2003."
According to the 2003 White Paper on Tourism, 5.24 million foreign tourists visited Japan in 2002, a figure equal to only 30% of its 16.52 million outbound tourists, placing the country in 35th place for international arrivals, below not only Western countries but also Asian ones such as China, Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea. This situation is explained by the fact that the government and the industry have paid more attention to domestic and outbound tourism than inbound tourism for the last 30 years. A full-fledged campaign to turn this situation around began in 2003, the year in which the “Inbound Tourism Initiative” of Japan was launched, with the aim of attracting 10 million foreign tourists to Japan in 2010. However, it is often ignored that Japan used to implement enthusiastic international tourism policies for the purpose of promoting foreign arrivals until a little less than 30 years ago, although various social aspects have changed since then.
From the last days of the Edo Era to the beginning of the Meiji Era (1859–1885), Japan was in turmoil. From 1885, the year the ministry system was established, to 1899, when the mixed residence system, allowing foreigners to live outside the designated settlements, was established, Japan was characterized by social calm and evolution into a modern nation (Oshika 1987). Since the end of the Edo era in 1859, foreigner arrivals were restricted to avoid conflicts with the Japanese. Private sector entities such as hotels and guides serviced foreign tourists.
In 1893, the “Welcome Society” was founded by the financial world and began providing services to foreign tourists (Takagi 1966). Since 1893, the government strenuously aimed at, and eventually achieved, the revision of the Harris Treaty, considered to be an unequal agreement. Consequently, inbound policies were adopted as a means to show the face of a civilized country. The relaxation and ultimate abolition of limitations on foreign tourists gave the Japanese the bargaining power they needed for the revision of the unequal Harris Treaty, and following this accomplishment, the mixed residence system was established in 1899. Thus, the period between 1893 and 1912 can be regarded as an era during which international tourism policies became a part of diplomatic policies, as the government aimed to use them to raise the international status of Japan. Though these periods (from the end of the Edo era to the WWI), Japan did not enforce inbound policies as independent and systematic. However, the government and some politicians made private sector investments for servicing foreign tourists.
In 1912, the Japan Tourist Bureau was founded as a mixed joint-stock company and began serving foreign tourists (JTBF 1982). In 1916, the Economic Survey Meeting, a consultative organ of the Okuma cabinet, drafted an inbound promotion plan for the purpose of acquiring foreign currencies, and suggested it to the government (TIC, 1952a and TIC, 1959). In 1930, the International Tourism Office under the Ministry of Railways mainly served foreign tourists. From 1930 to 1941, the government was aiming for comprehensive policies for the acquisition of foreign currencies, and inbound policies were implemented in earnest for this purpose. Because the Japanese economy could not recover from the depression at the beginning of the Showa era, an International Tourist Office outside the Ministry of Railways was established as the main organization for the promotion of inbound policies in the Japanese government for the first time, and a consultative organ called the International Tourist Committee was also founded. The inbound plan and project were approved and implemented during this period of turmoil due to both the China and the Manchuria incidents (ITO 1931). Furthermore, as the government started to implement increasingly militaristic policies vis-à-vis China following the establishment of the International Tourist Office, avoidance of international isolation was added to the aim of foreign currency acquisition, indicating that it was conscious of the effect of inbound tourism on promoting friendship and understanding. Thus, during this period, inbound policies were established as systematic and independent. However, fascism then came to rise and the policies of this period were discontinued, due to WWII, before they could yield results.
Following the end of the war, a tourism administration was launched early on, with the establishment of an office in charge of tourism in 1945, a tourism section in 1946, and a Department of Tourism in 1949 (Cabinet Secretariat Section, 1980 Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980 The 100-Year History of Tourism Administration and 30-Year History of Tourism Policy Committee (in Japanese), pp. 5–29, 49–73. Tokyo: Gyosei.Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980). A Tourist Industry Council was formally created as a consultative organ under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister’s Office in 1949, and an All Japan Tourism Association was also established the preceding year (Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980). Thus, policies were newly established to make the most of the tourism resources that survived the devastation of the war, based on the viewpoint that “Japan lost the war, but its mountains and rivers still remain”, despite an occupation where only the development of domestic resources was allowed (TIC 1948). Although the council worked eagerly and drafted numerous proposals, projects made little headway due to the shortage of funds and materials, and to the requisition of hotels and railroad vehicles by General Headquarters
In 1955, the National Tourist Association and the Japanese Tourist Association were founded, and, in 1956, the “five-year tourist industry promotion plan”, passed during a Cabinet meeting, was launched. The policies of the time were formulated and implemented based on this plan (Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980). The Tourism Office, which was upgraded in organizational terms from a department to a bureau under the Ministry of Transport, and the Tourist Industry Council, led and executed the basic policies for preparing and bidding for the Tokyo Olympic Games, and the positioning of inbound aims remained unchanged during this time.
From 1955, Japan’s economy grew at a rapid pace. In 1963, the “Basic Tourism Law” was established, and in 1964, the Japan National Tourist Organization was founded (Cabinet Secretariat Section, 1980 Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980 The 100-Year History of Tourism Administration and 30-Year History of Tourism Policy Committee (in Japanese), pp. 5–29, 49–73. Tokyo: Gyosei.Cabinet Secretariat Section 1980). Inbound policies were actively implemented in anticipation of the Osaka International Expo and the Sapporo Olympic Games, while the substance of the policies remained unchanged (SCHRHC 1964). Japan entered a period of accelerated economic growth after the Expo of 1970 and almost caught up with advanced countries. This shift reduced the significance of acquiring foreign currencies through policies and brought about an explosive growth of international/domestic tourism due in large part to greater disposable income. Outbound departures began exceeding inbound and the focus on the latter policies gradually reduced (PMO 1971). These went on to lose much of their relevance due to the rising economic power of the country between around 1970 and 1985, a period during which the implementation and meaning of policies became out of step and inbound ones grew largely irrelevant.
In the 90s, the bubble economy collapsed and Japan fell into an economic recession, particularly in the last years of the decade. During this period, the government began vigorously promoting inbound tourism, establishing “Welcome Plan 21”, a program to double the number of foreign arrivals, in 1996, and the following year, the “Law to Promote Inbound International Tourism by Diversifying Destinations in Japan”, or the so-called “Inbound Tourism Promotion Law” (PMO, 1997 and PMO, 1998 PMO 1998 White Paper on Tourism (in Japanese). Tokyo: Prime Minister’s Office.PMO, 1998). In 1994, a law to promote tourism by encouraging international conventions and their smooth operation, namely the “Convention Promotion Law”, was passed (PMO 1995). The “inbound tourist promotion law and convention promotion law” differ from past inbound strategies in that they focus on regional revitalization.
This is the state of tourism as it stands today in Japan when dealing with the west.
I will now go into domestic tourism in Japan. To give one an idea on how it operates. The information used for this section comes from Peter Siegenthale who wrote the essay "Japanese Domestic Tourism and the Search for National Identity."
Japanese domestic tourism, recreational travel by Japanese within the home
islands, is a huge industry and one of the primary recreational activities
undertaken by Japanese in all walks of life. As of the early 1980s, it was
estimated that Japanese each year took nearly 150 million leisure trips within
the country but outside of their home regions, just under 1 .5 trips for every
Japanese citizen of all ages and nearly thirty times the number of overseas
trips taken. More than 40 percent of those trips were taken by women and
"a large percentage" by people aged 20 to 39 years. Nearly 35 percent of
those tourists traveled in large (bus-sized) groups, 35 percent in small groups,
less than 30 percent in family groups, and the remainder (less than 5 percent
of the total) alone. With a population of only 150,000 people, Nara at that
time received an average of 4 million visitors per year; Kyoto, a city of 1
million, received between 50 and 60 million visitors per year (Graburn, To
Pray, Pay, and Play 3).
There is a fundamental part of Japanese tourism that is very important and it involves gift giving.
By requiring the tourist to carry with him or herself both the structures of the
home (in the guise of the group tour) and the obligations of the individual to
the group (in the form of senbetsu and omiyage), "takes place within an
accepted, approved and known cultural structure" and therefore is essentially
always a "reaffirmation of Japaneseness" (Graburn 60), rather than an
escape into an Other (see, for example, Frow 129) . Domestic tourism, he
concludes, is most clearly seen as an effort on the part of Japanese to "seek
nostalgic confirmation of their cultural landscape" This idea of a "reaffirmation of Japaneseness" is very similar to the ideas talked about by Tanizaki who always wanted Japanese people to get back to their roots as a culture.
Central to the analysis of tourism is the observation that Japanese
domestic tourists are primarily engaged in a search for "nostalgic confirmation
of their cultural landscape" (To Pray, Pay, and Play 63) . Since
the 1970s, one of the most important symbols in that nostalgic search for
the national identity has been the furusato, literally the "old village" but
more closely translated as "home" or "native place."
From the point of view of the inhabitants ofrural areas, the termfurusato
refers to the "sentimentalization" of rural culture . As the years put distance
between the villages themselves and the image of the mura as the spiritual
heart of an imperialist Japan, "the quaintness of farmhouses, the integrity of
farm work, and the bonds of the village community . . . are celebrated rather
than castigated" (Kelly, "Rationalization and Nostalgia" 606). The countryside is caught between competing discourses of
modernization and sentimentalization.To perhaps all but the people who live within the villages labeled with
the term, the concept of furusato carries with it an unshakable aura of nostalgia
Symbolic of a "pristine native culture" the "primordial landscape of a nostalgic imagination. Furusato embodies also the sense
of change, in point of fact a process of change for the worse: "This `pure'
culture is presumed to have existed in pastoral tranquility until vitiated and
transmogrified by outside forces - such as westernization, industrialization,
urbanization, and today, internationalization."
The nostalgia of the furusato, however, is not a simple one. the concern for furusato is really a "nostalgia for nostalgia"
(Robertson, "Fursato Japan" 495), since the person experiencing the loss
has most likely never really experienced what he or she is mourning. Members
of the younger generations were likely born and raised in urban areas,
but even for the older generations, the villages from which they came to the
urban areas are utterly changed. "With the rapid urbanization of the countryside
since the postwar period," Robertson argues, "the Japanese `can't
go home again' . . . . There is no particular place to `go home' to; consequently,
there is no particular place to feel nostalgic toward."
A number of observers have remarked on the fictiveness of the relationship
between the domestic tourist, generally, living in an urban area, and the
imagined furusato . Robertson describes the practice of selling "honorary"
memberships in rural villages as the creation of an "imagined community."
The honorary villagers, "who pay an . . . annual residency fee of about $50,"
are included in village events and activities, including "picking mushrooms
and flowering ferns, slopping hogs, and planting rice seedlings," but remain
distanced from the concerns of the rural residents in that they do not have "to
actually depend on agriculture for a living" (Robertson, "Furusato Japan" 509).
Knight locates the same practice in terms of the marketing strategies of the
tourism industry. Describing furusato as "an idiom through which those unrelated
to the village can be metaphorically incorporated into it" (Knight 207), he
sets the selling of memberships in "the context of the commercial competition
between villages for the patronage of urban consumers" (Knight 208). The
rural areas are caught in a paradox, he notes, in that they "have learnt the importance
of marketing themselves as accommodating furusato for the urban
population . . . but have also learnt that they must have a diacritical identity
that distinguishes them from other furusato."
An example of this playing out of different furusato can be seen with the 1988 initiative of the Takeshita government, which gave a one-time grant of 100 million yen to
every village and town to use as they thought would best serve the interests
oftheir community (McCormack 101-4; see also Takamatsu). The responses
to the initiative covered an impossibly wide range, from construction of the
longest stone stairway in the country, to the purchase of a 63-kilo lump of
gold, to restoration of a village's natural environment to attract fireflies .
Many of the projects shared an intention to "capitaliz[e] on their exotic,
almost foreign quality in relation to urban Japan" (McCormack 103), attempting
to recreate themselves as versions of the ultimate furusato -manipulations
of the constellation of signs that makes up the concept of the
furusato - and at the same time distanced from the "vain and extravagant
world" of the bubble economy that provided the financing for the projects
themselves. This is where domestic tourism stands as of today in Japan. The main idea is for Japanese people to get back to their roots and get away from the urban culture which most people live in.
Going by this history of tourism in Japan one is able to explian the images that are directed at westerners and native Japanese. Japan for much of its history was hostile towards foreigners in their country and so the images that are presented today try to dispell that by showing nothing but welcoming images and calm atmosphere. As explained before to show these images to a native Japanese would be redundant. So the images shown to native Japanese are of the most spectacular and exciting things which is used to grab their attention. This brings in the different furusato that towns have. While the furusato can be used to attract foreign tourist, it is mostly intended for native Japanese domestic tourists.
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