Author: Gerster, Robin

Source: Tourism Review International, Volume 9, Number 3, 2006 , pp. 293-301(9)

Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation

Abstract:

The aim of this article is to explore how the contemporary Japanese sense of pervasive cultural loss is manifest in local tourist strategies and patterns. The two case studies it invokes for comparative purposes are the provincial cities of Takayama and Hiroshima. At first glance these appear to be virtually antithetical: insular, traditional, antiquarian Takayama (the quintessence of old Japan), and outgoing, progressive, modernist Hiroshima (the first city of the nuclear age). Yet an ironic similarity binds the two cities in the manner in which they are packaged and promoted for domestic as well as foreign tourist consumption. Both places illustrate a concrete deference to the past that articulates a profound sense of unease with the social and environmental conditions of contemporary Japan. The article concludes that the fetishization of Japanese heritage is a symptom of a wide-spread and deep-seated anxiety about modernity and its consequences. As tourist constructions, both Takayama and Hiroshima are viewed as the projection of a very Japanese nexus of nostalgia and nationalism.

Keywords: TOURISM; TRAVEL; NOSTALGIA; HERITAGE TOURISM; JAPANESE MODERNITY AND POSTMODERNITY; JAPAN

Document Type: Research article

Publication date: 2006-01-01

More about this publication?

• Tourism Review International is a peer-reviewed journal that advances excellence in all fields of tourism research, promotes high-level tourism knowledge, and nourishes cultural awareness in all sectors of the tourism industry by integrating industry and academic perspectives. Its international and interdisciplinary nature ensures that the needs of those interested in tourism are served by documenting industry practices, discussing tourism management and planning issues, providing a forum for primary research and critical examinations of previous research, and by chronicling changing tourism patterns and trends at the local, regional and global scale.

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