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1. Nation-building
‘Ambitious Japan’, as it calls itself in English
on the new Shinkansen 700 trains, today appears as an insular,
industrial society stranded in a globalised postindustrial world,
trying to retain (mainly imagined) pre-industrial values. Whereas
many societies are in a process of changing from "World as a
theater" (everybody plays a role) to "World as a workshop" (everybody is involved in projects), the Japanese society sticks
to bolted-on masks.
‘Inventing Japan’ (Buruma 2003) after 1853 meant
the double and contradictory task of ’restoring’ the rule of
the Emperor, the Shinto religion and ‘national’ pride through
attempts of catching up with 'modernity' to become a leading
member of modern nations.
Three major
attempts to achieve this failed in 1921 (international recognition), 1945 (military might) and 1990 (economic dominance).
In the development of Japanese domestic tourism
this is reflected in the successful decade-long marketing campaigns
of “Discover Japan” in the 1970s and “Exotic Japan” in the 1980s.
‘Discover’, starting after the EXPO in Osaka,
appealed to young (mainly female) Japanese not to visit
meishos (noted places) but rather to find the spirit of
the ‘old’ Japan in encounters with it and therefore to find
themselves.
“Although this Japan was billed as native and
original, it was a Japan in many ways unknown to its young urban
travellers. .. Japan beckoned as something strangely familiar: the
native remote.” (Ivy 1995, 47)
The second campaign ‘Exotic’ took the nostalgic longing one step
further: Stylish and arty in appearance, it enticed to travel within
Japan not to rediscover ‘old’ Japan, but the nostalgia
for it, the lost feeling of the feeling of loss.
Furusato (old hometown) tourism is another important part
of domestic tourism of inventing the nation and
"reconstructing selected images of the Japanese
people’s traditional way of life." (Moon 1997, 185)
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