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Consuming Rural Japan: The Marketing Of Tradition And Nostalgia In the Japanese Travel Industry
Abstract
The Japanese travel and tourism industries reflect contradictions between goals to internationalize and fears about vanishing Japanese cultural traditions. This article discusses the nostalgia underlying the popularity of domestic tourism to rural areas in search of reunion with Japanese identity. It explores furusato (home village) imagery in travel advertising and in movies depicting travel in terms of its appeal to contemporary feelings of "homelessness" among many urban Japanese. It also discusses the impact of nostalgia tourism on remote areas recently transformed into popular travel destinations. It explores the decontextualization of place in simulated experiences of rural areas such as local place fairs hosted by city department stores, and various other consumer offerings of pseudotravel experiences for busy urbanites.
... Widely used in the domestic tourism campaigns of the 1970s and 80s, the furusato holds a distinctive invented quality (Creighton 1997). The "new" inaka is constructed as the destination of a 'nostalgic voyage '(1997: 241), which often assumes the appearence of an escape. ...
... The process of elevation of the inaka and the furusato during the 1970s and 1980s, at the same time collapsed any possible regional differentiation among the vast Japanese countryside into a single idea, in a fashion similar to what Spivak (1988) laments about the subaltern world, where the diversified instances of subalternity, in the synthetic reification of the Gramscian discourse, are deprived of their own agentive vocalityanswering negatively to the title question ('Can the subaltern speak?'). Creighton (1997: 244) observes: 'References to specific places are eliminated. Instead, in an attempt to conflate the idea of one's own furusato with a desire for a more Japanese Japan and a search for Japanese identity, the captions to the scenes depicted in the travel posters read: "watakushi no furusato, watakushi no Nippon" (my furusato, my Japan) ' The poster described by Creighton is interestingly aligned with the post-disaster reconstruction motto Ganbatte Tōhoku, ganbatte Nippon (Hopson 2013), where in the mourning and recovery efforts, the vilified Northeast became indeed a vital organ of the nation-state, or even its doppelgänger. ...
... A self in ontological resonance with its environs brings us back to Watsuji's fūdo, but Ivy's juxtaposition suggests also another fracture, the one between to, meaning 'and', and the possessive no: have meaningful exchanges with them grew, according to many observers, with the experiences Japanese had at Expo '70' 53 (Ivy 1995: 44-45, my italic) As travel (tabi) became a more solitary activitya phenomenon resonating with the intergenerational fracture of family structures and of urban society at large (Chun 2006, Sakurai 2004)participation (sanka), bodily experience (taiken), and the encounter (deai) came to the fore as key aspects of tourism, especially domestic rural tourism. This change was characterized by a curious phenomenon; if in the former case, tourism destinations were Japanese sceneries famous on their own ('the cherry blossoms of Yoshino, the autumn leaves of Lake Towada, snow-clad Mount Fuji', Ivy 1995: 45), after Discover Japan the relevance of visited places shifted from a culturally shared aesthetic order, towards the synecdochical identification of a part for the whole: the furusato stood for the Nation and, conversely, the individual stood for the moral component of national identity (see also Creighton 1997, Moon 1997. ...
This thesis is an ethnographically informed analysis of the transformations undergone by
the practices of consumption, distribution, and discourse production of local seafood after the Great East Japan Disaster of 2011 in the municipality of Ishinomaki, Miyagi
Prefecture, Japan.
Drawing from data collected during a 12 month fieldwork in Miyagi
and Tōkyō, I individuate three classes of actors (locals, new-locals, non-locals) whose
activities contribute to the changes in the imagery about seafood and its producers; and
two movements: one centrifugal, along which food leaves Ishinomaki to reach Tōkyō, the
capital, and one centripetal, followed by visitors and tourists who come to Ishinomaki to
experience its food, among the other attractions.
In this thesis the study of disasters and their consequences on human society, and the
study of food as a fundamental instrument of signification and negotiation of locality,
converge to produce a novel interpretative frame through which I look at the
transformations of Ishinomaki as a dialogic process that embeds the 2011 disaster in the
wider historical perspective of the Japanese Northeast (Tōhoku) as a politically subaltern
region. Locals, new-locals and non-locals inscribe in this stratified horizon their values,
projects and hopes, creatively re-negotiating the meanings of locality, sociality, and civic
subjectivity through seafood such as oysters (kaki), scallops (hotate) and sea-squirts
(hoya). This intensive work of inscription, in turn, causes the lives and experiences of
individuals to ‘stick’ to the seafood as it circulates, generating a network from which
emerges images of young, enterprising fishermen and domestic immigrants, striving
against a conservative past in order to build new social spaces out of the tsunami debris.
... Despite these features of the social, economic, and political landscape in the region, Tōhoku has experienced annual net losses in migration since the 1970s, although return migration-sometimes referred to as the U-Turn pattern, a term coined by Kuroda Tashio in the 1970s-has also been a common feature of a demographic landscape with a significant non-metropolitan oriented proportion of migrants. 32 By the 1990s, the term "U-turn" had come to be widely associated in the Japanese media with turnaround migration where people who had moved to metropolitan areas for education or work eventually chose to return to their natal homes or simply move out to the countryside to escape the stress and crowding of large cities. This pattern is accompanied by the L-turn, in which someone who grew up in an urban area moves, perhaps with a U-turning spouse, to a region perceived as rural. ...
... For example, the town of Kanegasaki, where I lived during my dissertation work and to which I have returned annually ever since, had publicized itself as a shōgai kyōiku sengen no machi (生涯教育宣言の町) or (to paraphrase) a "town supporting the development of lifelong learning" and, to that end, had created a network of community centers throughout the town designed as spaces in which to engage in lifelong learning. These centers are, in actuality, simply the standard kōminkan (公民館) or community centers that one finds throughout municipalities in Japan, but Kanegasaki in the 1980s engaged in a rebranding effort through which the names of these facilities were changed to emphasize the idea and practice of lifelong learning as a way to try to build a distinctive identity REVIEW COPY -DO NOT COPY OR SHARE 32 Cosmopolitan Rurality in Japan for the town. 76 Political leaders also made use of the presence of a twoyear agricultural college in the western end of the town and a sistercity relationship with Amherst, Massachusetts as a way to emphasize the educational orientation of the community and tap into images of similarities to Amherst as a rural locus of higher education. ...
... 31 The Tōhoku envisioned by those leading pursuit of the ILC is not that of the often discussed (in anthropological literature on rural Japan) furusato ふるさと symbolically representing romanticized and nostalgic images of rustic rural scenery linked to Japan's imagined agrarian past, although it does have connections to the idea of furusato tsukuri ふ るさとづくり (hometown-making) that has been encouraged by the national government. 32 Rather, the ILC is constructed as a metaphor for a reconfigured social and physical space that is neither explicitly rustic nor cosmopolitan and that is conceptualized and situated as part of a globally linked frame of existential experience that is perhaps best described as what I will term for the remainder of this book as a cosmopolitan rurality. ...
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Japan has been experiencing an unprecedented decline in population that is expected to accelerate over the coming decades. Rural areas, in particular, have been at the cutting edge of this demographic transition as young people often out-migrate to urban areas to pursue education and career opportunities and to explore spaces and lifeways viewed as cosmopolitan and international. At the same time, some urbanites have decided to either return to the rural climes of their upbringing or move there for the first time to start small businesses. And rural communities have attempted to attract large projects, such as the International Linear Collider, that it is hoped will draw in new people, prevent younger people from out-migrating, and bolster local economies. A combination of individual and institutional entrepreneurial activities is changing the social and geographical landscape of rural Japan and reinventing that space as one that blends perceptions and experiences of the urban and rural, cosmopolitan and rustic.
While there has been considerable research on rural Japan and numerous studies that focus on entrepreneurs, only limited attention has been paid to the intersection of entrepreneurial activities in rural Japan and the ways in which entrepreneurs more generally are contributing to the re-formation of rural space and place. This ethnographic study develops the concept of cosmopolitan rurality as a social and geographical space that cannot be characterized as either urban or rural nor as specifically cosmopolitan or rustic. In the “rural” Japan of the early twenty-first, as in many other parts of the industrial world, we see the emergence of a new type of social context forming a hybrid space of neo-rurality that brings together people and ideas reflecting local, national, and global frames of experience. One of the key drivers behind this hybrid space is expressed in entrepreneurial activities by locals to generate an entrepreneurial ecosystem that it is hoped can attract new people and ideas while retaining ideational and geographical elements associated with traditional values and spaces.
Cosmopolitan Rurality, Depopulation, and Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in 21st-Century Japan is an important book for Asian studies, rural studies, anthropology, and the study of entrepreneurialism.
... This development is unparalleled in other rural areas of Japan. Moreover, rural Japan, known for its relatively closed and stable society (Creighton, 1997), lacks a tradition of migration. Thus, the transnational migration to Kutchan, characterised by significant language and cultural differences, has made a profound impact on the community (K. ...
... Furthermore, transnational mobility has also become an increasingly significant phenomenon in rural areas of Japan, reshaping the socioeconomic landscape of these regions (Patchell, 2014). These trans-cultural and trans-linguistic foreign migrants pose a significant challenge to Japanese rural society, which is a symbol of nurturance, familiarity, and tradition (Creighton, 1997). Of particular interest is the growing trend of transnational migration and investment in Kutchan, Hokkaido. ...
... While there is a history of self-help approaches being promoted by central government (Francks, 2006), rural Japan now abounds with non-governmental and quasi-governmental groups aimed at local revitalisation (Dilley et al., 2017). Promoted, supported and financed by local and national government, a core concern of many of these groups and organisationsfollowing global shifts in the practice of rural developmenthas been the promotion of the 'consumption of rural' (Woods, 2011, p. 92) in the form of tourism, leisure and local speciality goods and foods (Creighton, 1997). ...
... Since the 1970s there has been notable movement away from post-war modernist renderings of rural Japan as 'backwards, poor, illiterate, feudal, superstitious and irrational' (Moon, 2002, p. 240). Contrary to the original writings of Yanagita (1929), the rural has increasingly been constructed as a site of national identity, communal belonging, nostalgia and bountiful nature (Creighton, 1997;Schnell, 2007). This affectually laden representation of the rural is captured in the Japanese term furusato meaning 'hometown' or 'native place', although not in the literal sense. ...
Urbanisation has been a dominant trend in Japan over the last fifty years. However, in the context of rapidly ageing and depopulating rural areas, recent research has begun to examine the lives, motivations and difficulties of an apparently increasing number of counter-urban migrants in Japan. Despite this, the extent and policy drivers of counterurbanisation and, wider, rural in-migration remains underexamined. In this paper we examine shifts in the governance and representation of the rural, particularly in relation to rural mobilities, that have occurred in Japan in the last few decades. We subsequently draw on secondary migration data to shed light on rural mobility trends in Japan. In doing so, we highlight the way in which counterurbanisation in Japan represents a development strategy pursued by central government and underpinned by an idealisation of the countryside rather than a significant pattern on the ground. As such, we argue that Japan is characterised by two forms of counterurbanisation, an idealised form which renders counter-urban mobilities as a means to tackle rural pathologies, and a more limited material counterurbanisation observed on the ground. Finally, we suggest a need for convergence between these two forms.
... Besides triggering personal nostalgia and memories, nostalgia for cultural heritage (sites) is among the most established forms. Nostalgia can further be an important carrier of tourism in particular for rural settings, which promise that through physical mobility to a particular touristic spot, the tourist will also be able to traverse time and find the traditional and vintage-charm of how we used to live in the days of old Creighton, 1997). ...
... In a third way, Austrian tourism has highlighted the unaltered purity of Austrian nature (Katelieva et al., 2020), especially its impressive mountain sites in the Alps, its forests, and lakesides. This nativeness and purity of nature serve as a stark contrast to modern urbanism and in opposition to industrial anomie of our modern times Creighton, 1997). It is in tourism, where the commodification of nostalgia for the old days, for pure nature and pristine lifestyles intertwines with imaginaries regarding mindfulness, health and wellness, and digital disconnection as a condition to achieve either. ...
The ongoing normalization of digital connection has also increased the interest in digital disconnection research. The desire to disconnect is typically considered a critical reaction to the peculiar affordances and prerequisites of fully participating in digital society. While social and political potentials of disconnections as well as reasons to turn away from media are explored in various trajectories, we still know relatively little about the “what then” and “what else” of digital disconnection. In this article, we address this gap and investigate what stories are told and which imaginaries are invoked in order to commodify disconnection in an exemplary field of the growing disconnection industry, namely tourism. Drawing from interviews and analysis of online representations, we analyze how tourist marketers and accommodation providers in the Austrian province of Salzburg are communicating why people should use their vacation to disconnect and what they can expect to find once they are disconnected. Following our analysis, we identify three general themes of how disconnection is countered to living in deeply mediatized and highly connective times: (1) nature and authenticity, (2) (re-)connecting with the self, finding balance, and (3) connection to family/friends/local people. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our analysis and what the identified ambivalences of disconnection suggest for further advancing disconnection research in the future.
... For Koizumi, attracting inbound tourists also meant 'encouraging each region to rediscover and enhance its charms', thereby revitalising 'the beauty of Japan' and establishing itself as a culture-creating nation (MLIT, 2003, p. 37). This early stage of inbound tourism policy development repeats the familiar rhetoric of the Discover Japan (1970s) and Exotic Japan (1980s) domestic tourism campaigns that endeavoured to take advantage of Japan's national nostalgia for rural and regional heritage (Creighton, 1997;McMorran, 2008;Robertson, 1997), but this time designed for the international inbound market. ...
... In this way, inbound tourism programmes help shore up the idea of a cohesive, essentially unchanged, and homogenous society (Befu, 2001). Recent studies have shown how the increase of non-Japanese within Japanese media appeals to the nationalistic sentiments of a domestic audience, reinforcing an imagined homogenous Japanese selfidentity in an increasingly transnational Japan (see Creighton, 1997;Hambleton, 2011, Suzuki, 2015Yonekura, 2015). In similar ways the performative 'good tourist'enacted through the idealised Western cultural touristsestablishes new norms of conduct designed to appeal to and instruct a domestic audience on how to engage with increasing inbound tourism mobilities. ...
... Within the framework of international capitalism, a regional identity tied closely to a specific production mode, labor practices, associational forms, or indigenous goods becomes a valuable commodity which can be readily marketed to and purchased by tourists eager to consume tradition. (Terrio 1999, p. 129) Since the early twentieth century, intellectuals, civil servants and entrepreneurs have regularly publicized 'the regions' (chiiki) as a more 'authentic' Japan, in hopes that doing so might support regional economies through tourism and the consumption of regional products (Moeran 1990;Ikuta, Yukawa and Hamasaki 2007;Ivy 1995;Creighton 1997;Wigen 1996;Kikuchi 2004;Brandt 2007;Love 2010). Most recently, in the late 2000s, influential Tokyo-based designers and curators previously associated with product design, graphic design and branding began to promote the consumption of regional tourist experiences and products -light industry and foodstuffs as well as craft -as a vehicle for accessing Japanese cultural heritage (Nagaoka 2015). ...
... Like twentieth-century schemes to brand Japanese towns and regions through an appeal to nostalgia (Ivy 1995;Creighton 1997), D&Department positions both itself and its consumers outside (Tokyo shiten to chiiki no miryoku o kosa sasete iku: Nagaoka Kenmei D&DEPARTMENT (2012)). Hagiwara, by contrast, situates Colon Design's practice as a go-between: ...
Craft Economies provides a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary craft production, situating practices of amateur and professional making within a wider creative economy. Contributors address a diverse range of practices, sites and forms of making in a wide range of regional and national contexts, from floristry to ceramics and from crochet to coding. The volume considers the role of digital practices of making and the impact of the maker’s movement as part of larger trends around customisation, on-demand production, and the possibilities of 3D printing and digital manufacturing.
... Thus, authenticity refers to two distinct yet closely related issues: the origin of subjects/objects and the unimpeded expression of their identity (Lindholm, 2013). The centrality of the concept of authenticity in the Western world arose as a result of several factors that were vital to its modernisation, some of which have influenced the structure of modern Japanese society: the rise of a free labour market under capitalism, which separates one's work from one's identity; the notion of national subjects who are believed to share something essential with their compatriots; and the desire for a monolithic national ideology rooted in an imagined heritage (Creighton 1997;McMorran 2008). Furthermore, increased unpredictability in the context of liquid modernity (Baumann, 2007), combined with the rise of new technologies for self-presentation and communication, has fostered greater demand for authenticity (Thurnesll et al., 2023). ...
Far-right civil movements have emerged as a significant predicament in numerous regions worldwide. Despite abundant research on the tactics employed by far-right groups to instil ideologies, behaviours and sentiments in their followers, such as street demonstrations, investigations into the meaning-making of far-right actions in relation to the trajectories of the participants’ lives remain scarce. The present study uses the analytical tool proposed by Katz to explore how far-right activists obtain a sense of moral transcendence through their activism, including participating in the liminal moments of far-right rallies, revelling in unrestricted speech, discovering new abilities, acquiring knowledge and engaging in self-expression. We contend that these experiences engender in participants the sense that they are acquiring that which is absent from their lives and recovering their ‘true selves’. The study maintains that to comprehend the allure of the far right, it is essential to contextualise far-right actions within the participants’ lives, the societies that they inhabit, and the circumstances that surround them. In short, the sensation that one is rediscovering one’s ‘true self’ may encourage activists to pursue the more remote objective of reclaiming what they perceive as their nations’ lost ideals.
... These practices play a crucial role in promoting the sustainable development of traditional villages [53]. In addition, rural areas, occupations, lifestyles, and cultural assets they have influenced, such as food, architecture, landscapes, and living in harmony with nature, are now seen as crucial resources for the sustainable development of rural communities, comparable to Japan [58,59]. A significant portion of research on sustainable tourism focuses on sustainability indicators and measuring methods, encompassing social, economic, and environmental aspects [60][61][62]. ...
Rural tourism has been widely recognized as a means of promoting the revival of traditional villages and has been supported by numerous researchers. It has the potential to provide significant social and economic advantages, making it a popular strategy for rural development in both developed and developing countries. Nevertheless, a growing body of research has substantiated the significant disruptions that rural tourism has imposed on traditional villages. This study employed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) qualitative method to systematically analyze 92 papers from WOS and SCOPUS that investigate the impact of rural tourism on traditional villages. The papers were categorized into five groups: spatial, economic, sociocultural, and holistic. This categorization allowed for the identification of the purpose, theme, sub-topics, research methods, and data sources used in these papers, which in turn provided an overview of the characteristics and overall trends in research in this field. It compensates for the deficiencies of lesser reviews that just emphasize rural tourism as the primary catalyst for the sustainable development of traditional villages. Based on a thorough investigation, this paper asserts that the development of tourism in traditional villages should be differentiated from typical rural tourism sites that prioritize the preferences of tourists. The primary objective should be to prioritize the preservation of community values, with a strong emphasis on community participation. This should be done while considering the interests of various stakeholders and promoting a diverse range of livelihoods that are rooted in traditional practices. By doing so, the essence of authenticity in traditional villages can be reinforced, leading to a greater sense of connection and loyalty among tourists. The preservation of traditional village genes fosters a symbiotic relationship with rural tourism, resulting in a mutually beneficial cycle.
... While marketing scientists rarely study the speci cs of the different scripts' perception and usage, it is relatively widely explored in the related eld -advertisement research (Bhatia 2020;Creighton 1997;Jung 2001). Moreover, it is often covered in publications dedicated to the Linguistic Landscapes (Al-Naimat 2015; Backhaus 2006) and linguistics in general (Iwahara, Hatta, and Maehara 2003;Joyce and Masuda 2019). ...
The present study examines the role of the script used for the graphical representation of a brand name in creating brand meaning. The study results demonstrate that each script contributes to forming different aspects of the brand meaning in multi-script environments. However, the process of meaning transfer is also influenced by the context of the product category, which can impact some aspects of meaning related to norms and familiarity. Furthermore, the study indicates that if the brand meaning aligns with the product category schema, it positively impacts brand attitude. This study adds to the branding literature by introducing the script concept as a brand name characteristic and demonstrates its significant effect on brand meaning
... Conversely, Japanese curiosity toward Western cultures has been amply documented (Nishiyama, 2000). However, concerning the symbolic threat dimension, Duignan and Yoshida (2007) showed that Japanese employees highly value key elements of the Japanese management model and fear the westernization of their workplace (Creighton, 1997). This westernization of the workplace is perceived as incompatible with and even jeopardizing the Japanese form of capitalism (Koll, 2020). ...
Purpose
As Japan has been slowly opening up to foreign workers to supplement its shrinking workforce, local employees have had to deal with increased diversity at work, owing to the presence of foreign coworkers. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between foreign coworkers’ nationality (specifically Chinese, Korean and those from Western countries) and the perception of the benefits and threats of cultural diversity in the workplace by Japanese employees.
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of Japanese employees working in Japan, half of which working with foreigners, was used, focusing on those Japanese employees who reported working with foreign coworkers of a single nationality.
Findings
The authors found that Japanese workers’ perceived benefits of cultural diversity at work, but not perceived threats, are significantly impacted by the unique nationality of their foreign coworkers. Specifically, the effect of coworker nationality is most apparent for the two benefits of “understanding of diverse groups in society” and “social environment,” whereby cultural distance is significantly and positively related to these perceived benefits. And more benefits from cultural diversity at work are perceived by Japanese employees in the presence of Western or Chinese, rather than South Korean coworkers.
Practical implications
In the Japanese context, hiring employees from certain distant and heterogeneous cultures and nationalities could increase the positive perception of multiculturalism at work, therefore facilitating diversity management and fostering inclusion in the culture of the firm.
Originality/value
Very little research in Japan has examined perception biases among native employees based on the nationality of their foreign coworkers, which is critical as globally minded Japanese firms are trying to increase their level of internal internationalization.
... The involvement of citizens can combine green order with civic order and help form an alliance leading to sustainable rural development through the production of GI NTFPs (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006;Lafaye and Thévenot, 1993;Latour, 1998;Raynolds, 2002). Besides, citizens, as consumers, seemed rather attracted to the traditional characteristics of Joboji Urushi and tree-planting because they evoke the nostalgic feeling of recalling a pre-industrial Interpersonal World (Creighton, 1997;Takeda et al., 2016). The questions to be considered among public officials and producer associations for devising production and sales strategies through the registrations of GIs on NTFPs include: "What NTFP product qualities benefit producers, their communities, and the surrounding environment?" ...
This study examines how quality is defined, re-defined and dynamically formulated amongst stakeholders under political and global market pressures while registering geographical indications (GIs) for non-edible non-timber forestry products (NTFPs)—namely, Iwate Charcoal and Joboji Urushi—in Japan. To that end, Convention Theory is used as a framework for the two NTFPs as traditionally applied to manufacturing or edible products. This study investigates the following related factors: 1) the transition of convention types between NTFPs and its impact on registrations and 2) the impact of the convention types and values on the sales and sustainable use of forest resources. The study applies Convention Theory, inter alia Worlds of Production (and associated categories) coined by Storper and Salais (1997), because of its central focus on the formation of product qualities and the resulting consumption and materialistic relations. Historically, both products have been under pressure because of lower-priced imports and the substitution of the traditional energy source charcoal and material source urushi with petroleum products including oil and chemical lacuquer, respectively. Thus, the two GI registrations of NTFPs in this study were an attempt, among other options, to counter the influx of imports that results from economies of scale and technological development in scientific standardization. We observed changes in the conventions and analyzed dynamism with relevant concepts of “orders of worth,” propounded by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), behind the four categories of Possible Worlds of Production (Market, Industrial, Interpersonal, and Intellectual Resources) proposed by Storper and Salais (1997).
Our question is as follows, “Did the GI process related to quality strengthen the existing convention or did it rather cause confrontation between conventions?” The two NTFPs provide us with unique and contrasting pathways. Through the GI process, there were negotiations, not necessarily verbal discussions, but ceremony-like events, involving nonverbal communications and technical testing, at sites to assure members and reach agreements on quality. Moreover, there are certain challenges for NTFP GIs when compared with agricultural products; obviously, there is no taste element (as both are non-edible) and the associations with consumers are possibly weaker than those with foods are. Even among NTFP products, the methods of setting standards (to compete, or to differentiate themselves, as “dedicated” products from imports of “generic” products in the Industrial World) differed. Iwate Charcoal developed as an industrial commodity and set a stricter scientific standard. Alternatively, in establishing its standard, Joboji Urushi appealed to its historical embeddedness emphasizing differences in quality resulting from variations by individual producer, local environment, and season. Participation in negotiations of quality, thus, makes producers sensitive to the needs of certain customers, such as personalized products or relationships with producers. As both are forestry products, conservation efforts (identifying individual urushi trees and replanting and coppicing after harvesting for charcoal) are practiced, which loosely resonates with consumers’ sustainability discourses. Yet, rather than green and environmental discourses, subtle associations between a nostalgic sense of “homeland,” pride in artisanship and tradition are strong factors in the promotion of domestic urushi products vis-à-vis imported competition. The comparisons are more technical in the case of charcoal with a degree of carbonization. Noteworthy registrations of non-edible NTFPs are rare in Japan (and absent in the European system). However, the producers were able to learn from, and surmount, the challenges of GI product quality agreed upon, while they achieved a new sense of solidarity.
... npr. MacCannell 1976;Davis 1979;Lowenthal 1995;Urry 1990;Creighton 1997;Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998;Löfgren 1999;Palmer 1999;Wang 1999;Taylor 2001;Fairweather 2003). ...
Knjiga obravnava razsežnosti tradicije v sodobnosti, kot se kažejo v polurbaniziranem okolju na severovzhodnem obrobju Ljubljane – na Jančah z okolico. V njej avtorica analizira koncept tradicije, ki je eden od osrednjih v etnologiji in folkloristiki, in razčlenjuje njene konkretizacije na etnografskem terenu. Pri tem se osredinja predvsem na kmečko delo in njegove ritualne dimenzije, delno pa tudi na drugo dediščino, tradicijo kmečkega okolja. To domačini ne le pozitivno vrednotijo, pač pa tudi prikazujejo v idealnotipskih podobah, s čimer pripomorejo k ustvarjanju t. i. podeželske idile, mikavne za turiste. Kot vrednota je (p)ostala sredstvo zbujanja in ohranjanja pripadnosti določenim skupnostim in območju samemu, uporablja pa se tudi kot argument v splošnem in vzdržnem razvoju območja.
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The book deals with dimensions of tradition in modernity, as reflected in the half-urbanized environment on the northeastern outskirts of Ljubljana - at Janče with its surroundings. The author analyzes the concept of tradition, which is one of the core in ethnology and folklore studies, and presents its concretizations in the ethnographic field, especially its role in local festivals. She mainly focuses on peasant work and its ritual dimensions as well as on other types of heritage/tradition of rural environment. Heritage is not only positively valued by local inhabitants, but also represented in the idealistic form, thus creating rural idyll, attractive for tourists. Having a special value, it has become the means of invoking and preserving identifications with certain communities and the area itself, and is at the same time also used as an argument in general and sustainable development of the area.
... The connection of furusato with nostalgia, the dichotomy urban/modern and furusato/tradition is not limited to the 1970s. Creighton (1997) through the analysis of a 1991 advertising campaign for ANA (All Nippon Airways, or zennikkū) 52 , finds symbols of urban modernity and rural tradition, and a separation between the two. The advertisement displays two scenes of the same family that travel by zennikkū from Tōkyō (upper scene) to Kumamoto (lower scene), to get the daughter married. ...
This thesis is not a goal-oriented work that aims to confirm the author’s idea about a topic of Japanese studies or anthropology. It’s intended as a journey of discovery which, touching in a more or less detailed way different topics of the classes of the M.A. course in Anthropological studies, could serve as basis and reference for future works about Japanese culture. The work sets around the theme of the loss of authenticity and the travel to furusato (the countryside) to find a glimpse of the vanishing traditions. In the first part, the author tries to understand how traditions are idealized and located outside the geographical and temporal modernity. To do so, we will underline it the role of Japanese ethnography (minzokugaku) and literature in creating idealized traditions. The second part analyze the way in which nostalgia pushed Japanese to travel toward furusato. Emphasis will be given to some commercials in which furusato play the part of the antithesis of modernity and the retainer of the “good old Japan”. A digression about satoyama will also explain the importance of the creation of a network that includes the cooperation of traditional and scientific knowledge, as much as furusato and cities, in the discourses about sustainability and tradition transmission. Loss in tradition it is comparable in the loss of biodiversity and it helps to create the sense of nostalgia and the fear of the vanishing that led to the growth of the desire of travel toward furusato. I will use the town of Tōno as an example of a positive cooperation between the actors active in the furusato’s network (local hosts and their interaction of the outsider guests, local government and academic or literature works), into a project of revitalization of a town. While this town can’t be taken as a scalable project, it can represent a model in the way guests-hosts’ relations can enhance a (re)creation of traditions and lead to sustainability. In the last section, I will analyze different forms of travel, which go from Japanese tabi to content tourism, passing through pilgrimages or other forms of tourism. All these forms of travel present a different engagement of guests with hosts or the object of the travel experiences. On one side there will be a wish of discovery in which the guests’ idea of the hosts and the location is the thinner as possible. The traveler in this case sees interactions as a mean of discovery, and of knowledge. On the other extreme, the guests’ preventive idealization of the object of the tourism leave no space for discovery. This kind of travel is a confirmation of preventive ideas in which everything that is not considered important to this confirmation it is obscured (hosts included). In the author’s idea, these forms of tourism may be a metaphor of ethnographic approaches. Since this work is not goal oriented, there are not real conclusions: the aim of this work is to allow further researches starting from one of the different topics analyzed in the writing.
... The associated growth in outbound travellers from 3 million to 12 million by the end of the 1980s is often ascribed to these developments along with economic changes resulting from the currency adjustments of the Plaza Accord (1985), however, this period also saw significant social changes in Japan. Rights concerning equal opportunities (Nozawa, 1995), a widening role of the media in leisure and travel promotion (Creighton, 1997;Kim, 2007), and a greater societal acceptance of the pursuit of leisure as a lifestyle choice (Lang, 1994;Morris, 1991;Ziff-Levine, 1990) can be seen as significant developments. It thus seems highly appropriate to ascribe some of the change in demand for international travel to social phenomena as any prevailing economic realities. ...
... Many inhabitants realised that they had become too dependent on the whaling industry and searched for alternatives. The furusato or "nostalgia boom" in the early 1970s (Creighton 1997) seemed to offer a perfect solution. The new "Cobalt Road" was opened in 1971 and brought Ayukawa closer to Ishinomaki. ...
The tsunami following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake destroyed large parts of the village Ayukawa which is known as one of only four remaining “whaling towns”. The village had continued limited coastal whaling even after Japan had stopped commercial whaling in 1988. In this article, I argue that the remaining inhabitants have inextricably linked the reconstruction of Ayukawa after the tsunami with the coastal whaling operation, despite its marginal economic status. The belief of a shared history of sustainable use of whales has helped to prevent the disintegration of the town and dominated the reconstruction discourse. I argue that grass-roots initiatives like the Whale Festival or the sale of whale meat by locals have forged a common identity and reinvented Ayukawa as a “whaling town”. However, when critically examining the assertation of sustainable use of whales under the satoumi framework, the risk of relying on only one industry for the reconstruction becomes apparent. Possible problems like the dependency of the whaling industry on governmental subsidies, the health risk of eating raw whale meat and the sustainability of the whale stocks are downplayed. Furthermore, the recent announcement of the Japanese government to resume commercial whaling in 2019 has caused further concern about the town’s future. Many locals fear that their limited coastal whaling operation cannot compete with larger fishing companies in other cities should they engage in large-scale commercial whaling.
... This utilisation of tourism as a method of rural revitalisation is also reflected in the case of Japanese ski tourism; for example when Japan experienced a ski boom from the 1960s to the 1980s, guesthouses were built in rural areas to provide hospitality for domestic urban skiers and to revitalise rural communities (Patchell, 2014). This connection between tourism and rural contexts is evident in the 'furusato' (hometown) movement (Clammer, 1997;Funck & Cooper, 2013) which became an integral part of Japanese tourism marketing through the Discover Japan campaign (Creighton, 1997), linking ideas of returning 'home' with a connection to a more authentic rural Japan. By extension the campaign suggested the notion that Japanese identity could be accessed through travel to rural locations (Middeleer, 2016). ...
Tourism spaces are social constructs, and due to their liminal qualities are places in which individuals have enhanced psycho-social space to explore new ways of living and working. One such space is Niseko, a small agricultural community in northern Japan that has, since the early 2000s, transformed into a ski destination through the development of international tourism. Many Australians have settled in the Niseko area and established tourism-based businesses and holiday homes, transforming local streetscapes. Despite evident socioeconomic and environmental change, Niseko has received little academic attention, particularly in regard to advancing understanding of how Niseko is functioning both as a tourism destination and as a unique social and cultural space in Japan. This research aimed to explore the experiences of tourism business owners to offer insight into how Niseko as a social space may be influencing the lifestyles and identities of tourism business owners who live in Niseko, Japan.
This research is framed by a social constructivist perspective and takes an interpretive approach which valorises subjective and contextual research participant perspectives. The research was premised by the idea of stories being windows to understanding subjective human experience, and Giddens’ (1991) conceptualisation of self as a self-constructed narrative. Accordingly, the research design drew upon a narrative method of inquiry, specifically designed to illuminate the voices of participants to enhance understanding of experiences of living in a tourism space. Responding to the recognised scarcity of emotionally reflexive tourism research, two creative strategies were employed which resulted in the composition of seventeen micro-stories and seventeen interpretive poems, in response to the participant narratives. The creative interpretations of the data sought to unpack and illuminate the key experiences of the participants and thus served the dual purpose of illustrative data and a method of analysis. In addition to the creative strategies as forms of analysis, a thematic narrative analysis of the narrative and creative data was also undertaken.
The research findings revealed Niseko, Japan as functioning as a liminal tourism space which was being shaped by cosmopolitan tourism business owners who relocate there to pursue their ‘second life’ after experiences of living abroad. Five key conclusions were drawn from the findings of this research. These included (1), experiences of living abroad changes both the people and the places they inhabit, (2), liminal tourism spaces are locations in which
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individuals may explore different ways of living and working, (3), lifestyle choices can be understood as part of the narrative of self, (4), narrative methodological approaches have the capacity to generate new connections and knowledge, and, (5) creative research strategies can create, interpret and communicate research data in innovative ways which offer insight into the subjective and multilayered experiences of individuals who construct and shape their lives in tourism spaces.
This thesis builds on the emerging research area which explores the link between tourism and lifestyle migration and offers new insight into how participation in tourism businesses can facilitate lifestyle migration. It reveals how experiences of living overseas can influence individuals to establish alternative lifestyles in tourism spaces, underpinned by the desire to live in a way that is more congruent with their sense of self. This research contributes to understanding how highly mobile, cosmopolitan individuals in tourism spaces relate to place and are influenced by it.
... Local tourism is a prominent theme in the literature on local revitalization in Japan. Knight (1996) stressed a tension in rural tourism regarding different definitions of tourism within the industry itself, whereas Creighton (1997) and Moon (1997) both offered descriptions of the confused and contradictory nature of the marketing and consumption of rural Japan for urban Japanese. Rea (2000) noted that while resort furusato have been described as therapeutic remedies to the physical and mental burdens of Japan's economic miracle, urban Japanese are increasingly willing to seek such existential meaning outside of Japan, thereby undercutting domestic rural economies and highlighting a problematic disconnect between Japan's geographically separate populations. ...
This comprehensive edited collection provides key contributions in the field, mapping out fundamental topics and analysing current trends through an international lens. My chapter presents a history of the local newspaper in Japan. Edited by Agnes Gulyas and David Baines.
Offering a collection of invited contributions from scholars across the world, the volume is structured in seven parts, each exploring an aspect of local media and journalism that provides the framework to bring together and consolidate the latest research and theorisations from the field, and fresh understandings of local media from a comparative perspective and within a global context. This volume reaches across national, cultural, technological and socio-economic boundaries to bring new understandings to the dominant foci of research in the field and highlights interconnection and thematic links. Addressing the significant changes local media and journalism have undergone in the last decade, this volume explores the history, politics, ethics and contents of local media, as well as delving deeper into the business and practices that affect not only the journalists and media-makers involved, but consumers as well.
For students and researchers in the fields of journalism studies, journalism education, cultural studies and media and communications programmes, this is the comprehensive guide to local media and journalism.
... Furthermore, nostalgia is well documented as a dynamic force to relive people's lives symbolically (Wang, 1999) and find meaning in life . Additionally, previous researchers have explored the effects of nostalgia on hotel marketing (Li, Lu, Bogicevic, & Bujisic, 2019), sports tourism (Cho, Joo, & Chi, 2019), rural tourism (Christou, Farmaki, & Evangelou, 2018;Creighton, 1997), and cultural tourism (Frost, 2006;Kim, Kim, & King, 2019), to name a few. ...
Sustainable development has risen to hold a vital role in tourism research and practice, requiring a deep understanding of what factors could promote tourists' environmental behaviour. This research focuses on the sustainable development of tourism and aims to converge nostalgia, meaning in life, and the theory of planned behaviour to understand the factors influencing tourists' proenvironmental behaviour. A field study (n = 428) was conducted at a famous tourist destination in China. Structural equation modelling showed that nostalgia enhances tourists' proenvironmental behaviour through mediators including subjective attitude, perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, and meaning in life. This research illuminates the importance of nostalgia in the sustainable development of tourism, suggesting that tourism managers could use nostalgic elements to design effective programmes or policies in environmental practices.
... Furthermore, nostalgia is well documented as a dynamic force to relive people's lives symbolically (Wang, 1999) and find meaning in life . Additionally, previous researchers have explored the effects of nostalgia on hotel marketing (Li, Lu, Bogicevic, & Bujisic, 2019), sports tourism (Cho, Joo, & Chi, 2019), rural tourism (Christou, Farmaki, & Evangelou, 2018;Creighton, 1997), and cultural tourism (Frost, 2006;Kim, Kim, & King, 2019), to name a few. ...
... From the source obtained, Statista, Japan's e-commerce market is known as one of the largest in the world, and in 2015 the purchase of retail e-commerce was the only US $ 80 billion and 40% of Japanese tourists had booked travel using the internet. So when entering the market as big as this, it is good to do research first [5]. ...
... According to Case talking about leaving and journeying is associated with the nostalgic feelings and sense of loss, roots and belonging (Mallett, 2004;Casey, 2013). However in Japan, nostalgia has been exploited and commercialized by the travel industry, as a quest for traditional lifeway and "the nostalgic imagination implies the return to a pre-industrialized, and nonurban past" (Creighton, 1997;p. 239). ...
In highly industrialized and institutionalized societies aiming for maximum efficiency, individual activities have to be synchronized with urban daily rhythms produced by the city. The city imposes upon a person and as a spatial and institutional realm influences the level of attachment and consequently, it alters our sense of home. This is most obvious in contemporary cities, where daily life involves movement, and where the state of rest is often achieved out of the living place, on the move. Through the exploration of spatio-temporal sequences of 30 Tokyoites, this paper explores the sense of home and levels of attachment to the physical environment affected by the city realm. It reveals a dynamic sense of home where routes are more significant than roots and where the attachment is not restricted to a single locality. Rather, it is understood as the attachment to time-space relationships produced by the activities of people and institutions.
... The surrounding area, as well as the actual grounds of temples and shrines during festivals are often packed with temporary stalls selling children's games, sweets, grilled meat and drinks. Moreover, the events are often significant tourist attractions serving as a means to promote the products and cultural heritage of local communities (Ashkenazi, 1993;Creighton, 1997;Nelson, 1996a;M. K. Roemer, 2010). ...
The popular image of Japan and religion is something of a paradox. On the one hand, large cross-cultural surveys frequently present Japan as a country of non-believers, where only 10-15% of the population self-identify as religious and the vast majority rank religion as being of little importance to their lives. Yet, any visitor to Japan is likely to be struck by the sheer amount of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples that dot the Japanese landscape and the diverse array of festivals (matsuri) that are performed at these sites. In this paper, we argue that this apparent paradox is actually an illusion generated by the unwarranted and ethnocentric assumption that religion everywhere must resemble the Abrahamic faiths that are predominant in Western societies. We present and analyze data from an online survey of 1,000 Japanese participants and argue that the patterns demonstrated reveal that scholars who wish to explore religion from cross-culturally need to take account of orthopraxic traditions and distinguish between ‘theocentric’ and broader supernatural beliefs.
... Local lifestyle is described as "charming" (miryoku), "rich" (yutakana), and, significantly, "living together with nature" (shizen to tomo ni ikiru/kurasu). Such elements are perfectly aligned with the domestic tourism-oriented marketing of the countryside (Creighton 1997), depicting a world that is cleaner and more spontaneous than the "normal" urban context. For instance, Kawasaki, Satō's employer and head of PBI, answers very positively to my questions about volunteers' feedback: "Participants are usually very satisfied with the experience, because at the end of the week, they have learned something new, and made some human connection (ningen kankei). ...
This article is a qualitative, ethnographically informed exploration of the relations between the Miyagi Oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and the diverse social actors of northeastern Japan (Tohoku),
namely local sea farmers, domestic immigrants, and tourists, in the aftermath of the 2011 “triple disaster” (the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and related nuclear plant meltdown). I contend that the processes of post-disaster reconstruction have been significantly informed by the specific frames of human-oyster relations as they are developed in the sea farming bays of the municipality of Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture). Individuating four fields of interest (environmental purity, experientiality, emic timeframes, and authenticity), I analyze the ongoing transformations prompted by the disaster on discourses of locality and self-representation and the interactions among local producers and nonlocal actors (visitors, volunteers, entrepreneurs) with the cycle of life of the Crassostrea. Within the interactions between locals and non-locals, the discursive characteristics of oyster sea farming in Miyagi are negotiated, shared, and contested through instances of transformative resilience during the progressive shift from “classic” modes of production towards the economies of domestic tourism, and the overlapping of local, bottom-up initiatives with organized top-down structures.
... Contemporary Māori living in the city of Auckland suffer from strong nostalgia for their village life, and engage in reveries that mystify and idealise their past, an affective phenomenon that is also typical for migrants from first to third generations (Gagné 2013, 63-65). Recent development in the theory of home and nostalgia suggests that such reveries and memories of village life may be a form of contestation critiquing downward trending social conditions of particular groups in the face of rapid societal change (see also Bardenstein 2002;Battaglia 1995;Berdahl 2009;Creighton 1997;Duruz 1999;Hage 1997;Kugelmass 1990;Law 2005;McDermott 2002;Sugiman 2005). Thus both the longing for the 'home' of the past, and the pain of yearning to go back in time (and often space) point to current tensions in social relationships. ...
Social research since the 1980s demonstrates the resurgence of interest in whakapapa and growing recognition in the importance of whānau for the affirmation of being Māori in contemporary Aotearoa, New Zealand. Analysing memories of home, this paper integrates the latest development in the theory of home and nostalgia with empirical data from social psychology on the well-being of contemporary Māori Jews. The data is based on open-end, in-depth interviews with twenty-one Māori Jews between the ages of eighteen and sixty-seven years old, highlighting relationship with whakapapa through funerary practices and food. It demonstrates that contemporary Māori Jews express longing for home and intimacy as well as ambivalence, pain and grief as they critique home. In their lived relationships with whakapapa the Māori Jews in this study employ defiant memory to resist the intergenerational racial tension within their whānau. In this way, they constitute their infrastructure of intimacy and ameliorate their well-being.
... One factor is the role of central government, which was readier than ever to intervene to shore up consumer demand Ϫ even tweaking national leisure policy via widespread promotion of the five-day working week. Support came from the transport sector via marketing campaigns such as Japan National Railways' "Discover Japan" campaign, first run after the 1970 Osaka Expo (Creighton 1997). A plethora of furusato ('hometown or village') brands emerged to cater for the needs of this generation of urban migrants who had been inadvertently estranged from their spiritual hometowns. ...
This paper uses Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model to track the rise and fall of nature-based tourism (NBT) in Japan through six stages of nature park visitation from “Exploration” to the post-stagnation stages of either “Decline” or “Rejuvenation”. First, “Exploration” examines the marriage of indigenous travel culture with Westernized perceptions of landscape. NBT’s regional development role strengthened in the “Involvement” stage, when systemization of national parks and package tours paved the way for mass tourism. In the postwar era, urban demand for NBT soared; “Development” was increasingly centralized and bundled with land use policies, but by “Consolidation” visitation growth had cooled due to intensifying competition between resorts and from abroad. In the domestic market, inequalities intensified, but overall NBT visitation leveled off, causing “Stagnation”. Public2private consortiums galvanized communities into large-scale development projects epitomized by the Resort Law, but the financial and environmental consequences were disastrous, leading to “Decline”. In the post-bubble era, ecotourism showed potential for “Rejuvenation”, but to be effective it needs more integrative policy objectives, a consistent framework, longterm fiscal commitment, and capacity-building among rural communities. Therefore, this paper proposes a twin ecotourism strategy that promotes grandstand venues such as UNESCO sites while supporting grassroots satoyama/umi areas.
The main objective of this bibliometric review is to identify and analyze the development of the field of nostalgia tourism through a comprehensive analysis of the scientific literature. To this end, this article performs a bibliometric analysis in R Core Team 2022-Bibliometrix software, complemented by VOSviewer software and a systematic review of the Scopus and Science Direct database to provide information on the most researched topics, the most influential authors and publications, as well as the areas requiring further research. The findings and conclusions of this study make a valuable contribution to the nostalgia tourism literature by providing a relevant and comprehensive analysis of the current state. This analysis allows for a better understanding of the theoretical and conceptual framework of the articles published so far, which is important to consider in order to enrich the academic debate on nostalgia tourism and for future research.
With the progress of tourism commercialization, historical towns are becoming more accessible and vulnerable than ever before. Drawing on psychological essentialism theory, in this research, a theoretical framework for understanding the consequences of commercialization is developed and tested. Through one field survey and three experimental studies, we reveal that commercialization has a negative effect on tourist preference (attitude and visit intention) for historical towns and that this negative effect is mediated by perceived essence loss. Furthermore, our moderating analysis reveals that the detrimental effect of commercialization can vary by development mechanism (e.g., exogenous mode or endogenous mode) and individual characteristics (e.g., nostalgia-proneness).
V visoko industrializiranih in institucionaliziranih družbah, ki stremijo k čim večji učinkovitosti, morajo biti posameznikove dejavnosti usklajene z dnevnim ritmom mesta. Kot prostorsko in institucionalno okolje se mesto ljudem vsiljuje in vpliva na stopnjo njihove navezanosti na kraj, s tem pa posledično spreminja njihov občutek doma. To je najopaznejše v današnjih mestih, kjer je vsakdanje življenje zelo dinamično in se počitek pogosto odvija zunaj prebivališča (tj. na poti). S proučevanjem prostorsko- časovnih vidikov mobilnosti mladih Tokijčanov avtorja v članku analizirata, kako mesto vpliva na njihov občutek doma in stopnjo navezanosti na fizično okolje. Njune ugotovitve razkrivajo dinamičen občutek doma, pri čemer so poti pomembnejše od korenin, navezanost pa ni omejena samo na en kraj, ampak je razumljena bolj kot navezanost na časovno-prostorske odnose, ki jih ustvarjajo ljudje in ustanove s svojimi dejavnostmi.
Cette recherche vise à explorer les rituels qui accompagnent la consommation d’une boisson traditionnelle le but étant d’identifier les pistes et les résistances à l’innovation. L’étude porte sur une boisson à fort contenu culturel et dont l’acte de consommation s’accompagne de plusieurs rituels traditionnels : le thé à la menthe au Maroc. La recherche a été menée suivant une démarche interprétativiste des données recueillies auprès de deux groupes de consommateurs. L’analyse de contenu appuyée par le logiciel NVIVO a permis l’émergence de plusieurs représentations : emprunté à l’anthropologie alimentaire, le concept de commensalité est éclairant en matière de motivation à l’observance des rituels et, par ricochet, de barrière à l’innovation. Le plaisir gustatif et, dans une moindre mesure, l’identité culturelle sont également prégnants. Les freins à une consommation traditionnalisée sont la résultante d’une attitude plus rationnelle et permettent d’envisager de possibles pistes à l’innovation : ils s’articulent autour du risque sanitaire, du défaut de praticité ainsi que du blasement des goûts.
Agritourism is promoted as a tool for rural revitalization in Japan. Farm inns are an example of agritourism and are run often by female farmers. They usually start a small family business to find a sufficient and comfortable way to make a living, with some of them focusing very little on profit and growth; they are lifestyle entrepreneurs. This article, based on multiple interviews conducted over several years with four female farmers and farm-inn owners—two elders and their daughters/granddaughters—focuses on the succession of farm-inn businesses from the older generation to the younger generation. A comparison of these different generations’ life stories shows that farm inns provide both generations with new identities as rural women, but in quite differing ways.
The series Ca' Foscari Japanese Studies , strong in the tradition well-established at the Dipartimento di Studi sull’Asia e sull’Africa Mediterranea, aims to be an international benchmark for the studies on Japan. It collects publications of high scientific rigor aimed at documenting the most original and theoretically advanced developments in this field, ranging from classicism to modernity. Its highly multidisciplinary vocation results in a production structured in four thematic areas: Arts and Literature; History and Society; Religion and Thought; Linguistic and Language Education.
Agritourism has often been framed as a means to revitalize a declining rural economy by improving and diversifying household incomes, forestalling rural flight, and preserving agrarian cultures. We argue, however, that it can also have the propensity to create a different kind of rural revitalization, one that accentuates the production of spectacle, at times at the expense of food production. We draw from qualitative field research to examine the growing agritourism movement in the Philippines, a country with a struggling rural sector. We observe that agritourism sites in the Philippines negotiate space and work in multiple ways and highlight the tensions that farmers increasingly perceive on the ground. Some farmers persist in maintaining the production of food, while others shift more towards the staging of experience and spectacle to serve urbanite imaginations of the rural. We present various tendencies in the process of transitioning from farm to agritourism and argue that attention to the production of rural spectacle is important in understanding agrarian transitions at the farm and community level, and ultimately agritourism’s implications on rural revitalization.
This dissertation examines how Fukushima mothers who were pregnant or had school-aged children at the time of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident of March 11, 2011, navigated constrained choices and conflicting values in a world the Japanese government deemed permissibly toxic for them and their children. This would seem an extraordinary set of circumstances, and yet living through nuclear and other manmade disasters has become a regularly recurring part of being human the world over—in the global North and South, East and West; within former communist states, emerging and established liberal democracies, and global neoliberal orders. Concurrently, we all seek to live “normally” in, through, and within a permissibly toxic world—full of not only nuclear materialities, but also things like permissible food additives, ingestible and otherwise circulating carcinogens, air pollution, and climate change. How can we understand the material and social reconstitution of a world that contains radioactive materials, where things, people, places, and social relations have been exposed to radiation, contaminated by a kind of toxicity that is invisible to the human eye, but made visible and knowable through other means? How do these toxic and nuclear normalities and abnormalities articulate with the contingencies of everyday life, raising and caring for children, and living as families? How do people agentively live—or to use Bourdieu’s (1977) term, strategize—through nuclear contamination? How do people navigate trust in expertise and authorities, their environments, and their interpersonal relationships when knowledge about that toxicity is debated and disagreements abound? Living in Post-Fukushima Grey Zones offers ethnographic answers to these questions for different Fukushima families. My central analytic is what I call “everyday nuclearity.” Hecht (2012) argues that “nuclearity” refers to disagreements about what is radiologically acceptable and unacceptable, exceptional and banal in a given historical, technological, and political moment. Nuclearity “emerges from political and cultural configurations of technical and scientific things, from the social relations where knowledge is produced” (Hecht 2012, 15). I build on this insight to argue that in post-Fukushima accident grey zones, the “social relations where knowledge [about nuclear things] [was] produced” became the social relations of people’s homes, families, communities, and economic and non-economic forms of exchange, including everyday life, kinship, gifts, and produce. Everyday life already involves navigating contrasting perspectives on and practices of consumption, social and economic values, food, child rearing, outdoor play, and so much more. Everyday nuclearity refers to the navigation of disagreements between radiation-related considerations and the demands and practicalities of interpersonal relations, extant differences of opinions, and already varied practices of daily life. Everyday nuclearity acknowledges, on the one hand, that citizens are empowered to make decisions about safety and danger, banality and exceptionality of nuclear things. On the other, it underscores how the displacement of radiation-related decisions into everydayness and family life created strain within those already varied social relations. Living in Post-Fukushima Grey Zones tells the stories of Fukushima mothers learning to live and raise their children “normally” (futsū ni) in a nuclear grey zone despite criticism, misunderstanding, and conflict resulting from their decisions not to return to the status quo ante and how Japanese civil society sought to support them, their children, and their family choices.
Using the versatile concept of multilocality, the paper analyzes the close interrelation between the Japanese landscape, cultural heritage and the social construction of spatial meaning in the context of the satoyama (mountain near the village). Originally regarded as a peripheral subsistence area within the rural economy, the satoyama is considered today one of the main expressions of Japanese local culture, shaped by identity mechanisms and based on complex discursive constructions revolving around a native place-based and environmental rhetoric. At the same time, the satoyama landscape has become a transnational symbol promoted by the Japanese government, which is used in national and international environmental sustainability research programs. The sense of multilocality of the satoyama landscape is here interpreted in its double identity value that can be put to a wide variety of political and cultural constructions of place.
Tarō is one of many small fishing communities on the northeastern coast of Iwate Prefecture which was decimated by Japan’s catastrophic tsunami on 11 March 2011. Historically, in most parts of the world, including Japan, post-disaster sightseeing has often been portrayed as a form of Dark Tourism emphasizing death, loss and devastation. However, in Tarō, community-led tourism post-2011 has become the catalyst for a positive, fortifying, identity-building economic development strategy infused by hope for the future referred to locally as Bōsai (Disaster Prevention) Tourism. Using an ethnographic approach, this paper argues that, unlike many post-disaster tourism sites, Bōsai Tourism in Tarō builds around place-based practices and traditional community knowledge to provide a positive, satisfying touristic experience for visitors, and gives local residents unprecedented yet tangible social, economic, and political goals to strive for as they embrace the future, designed to transform local tragedy into a local triumph.
By taking as background a few examples from Japanese culture and society, as well as an ethnographic insight, this article reconsiders the way anthropology usually deals with and talks about issues regarding cultural differences in human relations. These issues, which start from the fact that different cultures articulate human relations in different ways, have as one of their main theoretical outcomes the analysis around the categories of “self” or “person.” However, within this move lies something akin to a “gestalt misconception” that reduces a shared moral understanding (human relations) to an analysis of conceptual categories and their cognitive, psychological, subjective (or other) processes. Alternatively, the article proposes a more dialogical approach informed by Gadamer’s idea of “dialog” and “fusion of horizons,” where one aims to learn from other cultures and not about them. As a result, some reflections of a philosophical, moral, and practical character are presented, leaving theoretical formulations about the “Japanese self” out of the equation. This article’s general purpose is not an exploration of “Japaneseness,” but rather a probe into the possibilities of Being.
Do apprenticeships enhance product quality? Whether guilds and apprenticeships have promoted technological change has been debated, but the issue remains unsettled because of the lack of data which allows us to empirically assess technological change by apprenticeships in the comparison with technological change by non-apprenticeships. By scrutinizing apprenticeships in the sake brewing industry and utilizing the national sake quality competition results and the master brewer list, this study examines to what extent the craftsmen trained through an apprenticeship enhanced or reduced product quality. The empirical results indicate that the training in apprenticeships actually decreases the probability of winning quality competitions, which indicates that apprenticeships do not improve product quality. Thus, we discuss why apprenticeships was a dominant form of training and learning, even if they had little bona fide utility for product quality. We show that brewers originally utilized apprenticeship-type practices adopted for migrant labor to reduce production costs. This study also shows that the breweries began to create a positive imagery associated with apprenticeships and sake quality from the 1980s even though apprenticeships actually reduce the probability of brewing high-quality sake.
The popular image of Japan and religion presents something of a paradox. On the one hand, large cross-cultural surveys frequently present Japan as a country of non-believers, where only 10–15% of the population selfidentify as religious and the vast majority rank religion as being of little importance to their lives. Yet, any visitor to Japan is likely to be struck by the sheer number of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples that dot the landscape, and the diverse array of festivals (matsuri) that are performed at these sites. In this article, we argue that the apparent paradox is actually an illusion generated by the unwarranted ethnocentric assumption that religion everywhere must resemble the features of the Abrahamic faiths that are predominant in Western societies. To make our case we first review recurrent theoretical and definitional debates concerning religion and examine how they relate to the Japanese context. Second, we explore patterns in contemporary data from an online survey of N = 1,000 Japanese that asked about religious beliefs and practices. We illustrate through the results obtained that to understand religion in Japan it is necessary to move beyond theocentric approaches and expectations that religious belief must be tied to religious identities or exclusive membership in a given tradition. To conclude, we argue that the patterns observed in Japan demonstrate that scholars who wish to explore religion cross-culturally need to take greater account of orthopraxic cultural contexts and distinguish between ‘theocentric’ doctrinal beliefs and broader supernatural beliefs.
This article analyses the experiential consumption of heritage that is staged for paying visitors to a historical themed park. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at a Japanese historical themed park re-creating the Edo period (1603–1867), it examines the re-enactment of Japanese history through an experience with embodied and social elements. This historical themed park presents an immersive environment re-enacting the ‘everyday’ culture of ‘ordinary’ commoners, where Japanese and foreign visitors imaginatively role-play and engage the past in different ways. Frontline service workers and actors, who perform historical characters called Edo People (Edo-jin), project a warm and lively atmosphere that incorporates popular conceptions of Edo/Japanese culture and customer service. The past is also transformed into experience-based attractions where consumers participate in cultural activities while communicating with each other and the staff. Consumer participation ultimately brings the past as heritage into the present as embodied experience.
This paper explores social identity through the rituals and exchange networks of alcohol among new Japanese immigrants (shin-issei) in a Japanese-style pub (izakaya) in Honolulu. Currently, over 18,000 shin-issei live on Oahu. Compared to the larger population of Japanese-Americans (approximately 300,000), these Japanese transnationals constitute a small, overlooked diaspora limited by cultural and economic barriers. The izakaya provides a place where identity is mediated through mutual alcohol consumption in close social groups, most notably through interaction via gift exchanges and commodity purchases. The form of alcohol rituals is distinct as it is a reconfiguration of embodied practices long cultivated in Japan, traceable to indigenous religious use and modernization near the end of the nineteenth century. In contemporary Honolulu alcohol becomes an object of relational transnational identities situated in an increasingly commodified sociocultural space.
Since the end of 1990s, the Japanese government has made a clear neoliberal shift in its strategy for regional governance. Within the ongoing framework of regional revitalisation (chihôsôsei), various local attempts to foster revitalisation (kasseika) are underway. Two seemingly irreconcilable views prevail in connection with volunteer-based localism: local participation and the mobilisation of civic action. However, the ways in which these seemingly distinct phenomena can socially coexist are relatively unexplored. Against this background, this article aims to offer a critical re-examination of regional revitalisation projects in Japan and it focuses on the correlation between local participation patterns and local power structures. Taking one community as its empirical case study, the central question posed is: ‘In reality, who are the motivated participants in the community-revitalisation project?’ What becomes apparent is, on the one hand, the locality’s power structure strongly limits the level of participation in the project; on the other hand, the locality’s inhabitants experience the ongoing situation as fundamentally fair and reasonable. On this basis, this article argues that the state’s governing discourse of neoliberalism is able to advance at the local level while simultaneously and unwittingly perpetuating the structure of social segregation.
This essay aims to reflect on the idea of landscape and our relationship with it by taking the Japanese notion of furusato (native place) in its ontological dimension. Grounded in Heidegger’s ‘phenomenology of Being’ and ‘ontology’, a phenomenological understanding of fieldwork experience in a Japanese rural community will be developed in order to rethink both the furusato and the ‘Being-landscape’ relation. As a consequence, we will be concerned not with how people speak about landscape, but with how the landscape speaks through people. What will be brought to light are the landscape’s moral and relational dimensions: namely, (i) the responsibility towards both our communities and future generations and (ii) a more-than-physical understanding of landscape that alerts us to our belonging to a common world comprised of relationships and tasks.
The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning provides a critical account and state of the art review of rural planning in the early years of the twenty-first century. Looking across different international experiences-from Europe, North America and Australasia to the transition and emerging economies, including BRIC and former communist states-it aims to develop new conceptual propositions and theoretical insights, supported by detailed case studies and reviews of available data. The Companion gives coverage to emerging topics in the field and seeks to position rural planning in the broader context of global challenges: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, food and energy security, and low carbon futures. It also looks at old, established questions in new ways: at social and spatial justice, place shaping, economic development, and environmental and landscape management. Planning in the twenty-first century must grapple not only with the challenges presented by cities and urban concentration, but also grasp the opportunities-and understand the risks-arising from rural change and restructuring. Rural areas are diverse and dynamic. This Companion attempts to capture and analyse at least some of this diversity, fostering a dialogue on likely and possible rural futures between a global community of rural planning researchers. Primarily intended for scholars and graduate students across a range of disciplines, such as planning, rural geography, rural sociology, agricultural studies, development studies, environmental studies and countryside management, this book will prove to be an invaluable and up-to-date resource.
http://ffk-journal.de/?journal=ffk-journal&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=79&path%5B%5D=74
The creation and staging of novel festivals is on the rise in cities thoughout Japan in the name of "tradition" to foster affective community relations among relative strangers. The Kodaira Citizens' Festival in suburban Tokyo is one such festival. The tenacious presence in Kodaira of a small "native" sector among a vast majority of "newcomers" has occasioned the construction of the Festival as a dynamic juxtaposition of the old and novel, "traditional" and modern. This construction prefigures the idealized future of Kodaira City. An analysis of the Kodaira Citizens' Festival contributes to an understanding of the affective, "traditional" dimensions of urbanization and city planning in Japan today.
Almost since its inception, anthropology has had a major concern with sociocultural traditionalism and innovation. This paper argues that the terms "tradition" and "change" have created a dichotomy that is counterproductive for understanding how sociocultural systems are utilized by real people to deal with real events. Rather, we should stress the dynamic of continuity wherein "old" and "new" are defined according to the situation at hand. The extent to which the two are synthesized and the components rearranged in the optative mode is illustrated by ethnographic material from the Pueblo villages of the American Southwest-often cited as classic examples of traditionalism in the face of acculturative pressure-combined with a focus on tourism, a contact situation with great potential for altering the lives of those in the host society. Four case studies show how the challenge of synthesis for continuity is met by the people of Santo Tomas and what implications their response has for anthropological theory.
This essay explores the division between ‘things Japanese’ and ‘things foreign’ in contemporary Japanese life through an analysis of modern retailing. Japanese department stores domesticate ‘foreign things’, including customs, holidays, goods, and people, by creating for these meaning consistent with the existing fabric of Japanese culture. Their role in gift-exchanges, in the adoption of foreign holidays and in establishing special advocacy centers for foreigners reinforces the distinction between ‘Japanese’ and ‘other’ that shapes and affirms Japanese identity (economy, national identity, symbolism, popular culture, gift-exchange, Japan).
In the postwar decades, a cultural construction of Japan as a “New Middle Class” society has gained a broad orienting force in the society. New typifications of work, family, and society have provided frames of reference for the redefinition and reorganization of everyday routines. This paper illustrates how the people of one region have come to terms with such typifications in the midst of state programs for the rationalization of its agriculture and national media efforts to sentimentalize its regional culture. Rationalization and nostalgia are shown to reveal fundamental ambivalences in and about the lifeways of contemporary japan.
Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish ‘national culture’; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history. © E. J. Hobsbawm, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Prys Morgan, David Cannadine, Bernard S. Cohn, Terence Ranger. 1983.
Utsukushiki Nippon no zanzo Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago. Kurita I. 1983. Revival of the Japanese Tradition
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The Search for a Real Japan Unwrapping Japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective Sengo sono seishin fukei. Asahi Shimbun 19 August. Millers R. A. 1982. Japan's Modern Myth: The Language and Beyond
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A Dialectic of Native and Newcomer: The Kodaira Citizen7s Festival in Suburban Tokyo The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia: Furusato Japan Native and Newcomer: Makirlg and Remaking a Japanese City
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Robertson, J. 1987. A Dialectic of Native and Newcomer: The Kodaira Citizen7s Festival in Suburban Tokyo. Anthropological Quarterly 60(3):124-36. 1988. The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia: Furusato Japan. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1(4):494-518. 1991. Native and Newcomer: Makirlg and Remaking a Japanese City. Berkeley. Smith M. E. 1982. The Process of Sociocultural Continuity. CuxTent Anthropology 23(2):127-42.
Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis. This content downloaded from 185.2.32.143 on Sun
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Tuan, Y. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis. This content downloaded from 185.2.32.143 on Sun, 22 Jun 2014 13:52:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions