reason the Japanese are making a habitual practice of travel abroad is that it is cheaper than travel in Japan: it costs roughly the same to fly from Tokyo to Hong Kong as to take the train from Tokyo to Kyoto. It costs me more to travel for a few days to Iya Valley in Shikoku than to spend a week in Honolulu.
Traveling abroad, the Japanese cannot help noticing that they find quality in hotel design and service, in life in general, which they cannot find at home. The contrast is especially strong in Southeast Asia, where resort design and management are highly advanced, and where hotels have been built with natural materials and a sensitive regard for local culture.
Dr. Johnson said, «To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.» In the decline of domestic travel lies the paradox of modern Japan: After decades of economic growth providing a per capita income many times their neighbors', the Japanese are not able to enjoy their own country. They are not happy at home.
The number of foreign visitors to Japan, never large, has grown only sluggishly, from about 3.5 million in 1990 to 4.5 million in 1999. Japan ranks thirty-second in the world for foreign tourist arrivals, far behind Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia – and light-years behind China, Poland, or Mexico, each of which admits tens of millions of tourists every year. For all the literature about Japan's international role, it's sobering to realize that Japan has very nearly fallen off the tourist map. Every year more people visit Tunisia or Croatia than visit Japan. Another way to assess the amount of tourism is the number of foreign visitors against national population. In Japan, the ratio is only 3 percent, ranking eighty-second in the world. (The corresponding number for South Korea is more than double: 8 percent.)
The economic consequences of Japan's failed tourist industry are serious. In 1998, when 4.1 million foreign visitors came to Japan, the United States had 47 million visitors and France had 70 million. The United States earned $74 billion, France raised about $29.7, and Japan had only $4.1 billion. Looking at it from a balance-of- payments point of view, we see that U.S. citizens spent $51.2 billion in tourism abroad but earned $23 billion more than that. Japan, by contrast, spent $33 billion overseas but had a $29 billion tourism deficit.
It is commonly believed that among the many reasons tourism in Japan has lost its appeal to both foreigners and the Japanese people, the most important are the high yen and the cost of travel within Japan. But these arguments are not entirely persuasive. Well-heeled foreign travelers think nothing of spending thousands of dollars to stay in posh resorts in Phuket or Bali, but give Japan a wide berth. The real reason is that the rewards in scenic beauty and travel amenities are very slim. How ever much tourists enjoy a quiet Zen rock garden in Kyoto they confront a chaotic and trashy modern cityscape the minute they walk out of the garden. At the hotel, they will seek i n vain for anything to remind them that they are in Kyoto, and instead be oppressed by an environment of shiny polyester wallpaper and garish chandeliers. The visitor to a famous waterfall or stand of pine trees on a beach has to frame the view very closely to shut out the concrete embankments that are the universal mark of the modern Japanese landscape. No one will write an idyllic book about Japan like
With Japan's old-fashioned manufacturing and construction economy beginning to stagnate in the 1990s, it came as a jolt to the government to realize that perhaps services do matter to a modern economy, and a few officials began looking at the long-ignored issue of tourism. It quickly became clear that Kyoto, Nara, and Japan's once lovely rural villages were nearly beyond help, but there was hope: theme parks. Today, the Japanese flock to theme parks featuring reconstructed European cities, such as Huis Ten Bosch (Dutch) in Kyushu and Shima Spain in Mie, or a replica of Mount Rushmore (at one-third the scale) under construction in Tochigi Prefecture. These are spotless and completely artificial, like the enormous Seagaia complex in Miyazaki, which, though located on the coast, boasts a fully enclosed artificial beach. The number of adult tourists visiting these theme parks (close to 8 million touring Huis Ten Bosch and Shima Spain as early as 1994) wiU soon surpass the number visiting Kyoto. The designers of Huis Ten Bosch used natural materials such as rough bricks, incorporated sign control, buried power lines, and established design guidelines; with its lovingly tended lawns, it is much more appealing than a cluttered and unloved Kyoto. It would seem that Japan's premier tourist destinations will end up having nothing to do with its own culture, becoming watered-down copies of Western originals.
Obviously, these cannot have much appeal to Westerners, but the hope is that they will draw Asian tourists. «For Hong Kong's Wong Chun Chuen, [neither Mount Fuji nor Kyoto] compares with that hallowed sanctum of the Japanese soul, San-rio Puroland,» writes Tanikawa Miki. Sanrio Puroland is a mini-medieval Europe on the outskirts of Tokyo, built indoors with a nymphs' forest, floating riverboats, and cartoon characters such as Hello Kitty. Sanrio's 150,000 Asian visitors represented 10 percent of the total number of visitors in 1996, while at Huis Ten Bosch, Asian visitors numbered 330,000, about 8 percent of the total.
In January 1999, China ended its ban on visiting Japan, and many in the tourism industry see it as Japan's last great hope. «China has the potential to become our largest foreign market,» says Shimane Keiichi, the president of Japan Travel Bureau's subsidiary Asia Tourist Center. «China has a population of over 1.2 billion. If about 1 percent of Chinese a year come to Japan, we will get about 12 million visitors.» The long-term problem is that if tourism will depend on gimmicky theme parks, there is competition ahead when Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, and Taiwan jump on that bandwagon. It bodes ill that the Japanese site that most travelers from mainland China want to see is Tokyo Disneyland, for at the beginning of 1999 Disney announced that it was negotiating to build a new Disneyland in or near Hong Kong.
Since badly conceived development is defacing beyond recognition the attractions that were unique to Japan, it is time to build new attractions, and this suits the Construction State. The government has announced its plans for another wave of halls and monuments. The Japan National Tourist Organization (a wing of the Transport Ministry) says that its Welcome Plan 21 involves «
In the coming decades, we can look forward to the raising of hundreds of facilities designed specially for travelers under the banner of «international tourism.» Japan must build these monuments-that is a certainty, for the construction industry requires it. Typical of what the next wave will probably be is ASTY Tokushima, a monument that sits at the confluence of two rivers in the town of Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku. ASTY Tokushima features a multipurpose hall and the Tokushima Experience Hall, where, as the prefectural tourism bureau puts it, travelers can discover «passionate romantic Tokushima.» The passionate romantic experience includes the Yu-ing Theatre, where two robots perform traditional puppet-ballad drama, and a corner where visitors can gaze at photographs of Tokushima s scenery as it changes from season to season.
The end of the road for the domestic tourism industry is when it gives up on natural or historical attractions altogether and makes concrete itself an attraction. This is beginning to happen, for Japan Railways and local towns are sponsoring package tours of their dams and cement fortifications. Flyers advertising dam tours are often seen in subways and buses. «At Atsui Dam, everywhere you look, it's huge!» trumpets a publicity pamphlet from the Construction Ministry, urging travelers to join a bus tour and come and see cement being poured. «It's almost the last chance to see Atsui Dam while under construction,» the pamphlet says invitingly.
There is hardly the need to create fake tourist facilities or to rely on cement-pouring at dams for excitement when Japan has plenty of the real thing. Still, the modern malaise seems to have created an inability to distinguish between what is fake and what is real. Kyoto prides itself on being Japan's «cultural capital,» yet for the past fifty years it has put all its energies into destroying its old streets and houses. The Cultural Zone in the New Kyoto Station typifies the confusion; there a tearoom provides a light show of cherry blossoms instead of the real thing, and the restaurant features a copy of a Raphael fresco-«culture» with no particular connection to Kyoto at all.
Recent events in Kyoto show that a sizable minority of its citizens are angry about all this. In November 1998, one group miraculously succeeded in halting a very destructive project. The story began more than a year earlier, when the city office announced plans for its newest monument – right in the middle of Pontocho, one of the few historic city blocks left, a narrow street of bars and geisha houses running alongside the Kamo River, with the Sanjo Bridge to the north and Shijo Bridge to the south. The city proposed to demolish a segment in the middle of Pontocho and build a new bridge modeled on one that spans the Seine-not even one of the famous old bridges, with picturesque stone arches, but a modern structure of steel girders and tubular concrete pilings of no distinction. To add insult to injury, the city fathers actually proposed to call this copy the Pont des Arts, and enlisted the support of France's President Chirac, who in a classic case of foreign misunderstanding of Japan endorsed the project because it was French inspired. For many, this was the last straw. Professor Saino Hiroshi wrote:
Pontocho is part of our cultural heritage, representing Kyoto's cityscape based on a wood-based culture. It was built as an integral piece of the space along the river. [The new bridge] will conflict with traditional architecture such as Shimbashi [an old neighborhood on the other side of the river], and furthermore [Pontocho] has something rarely seen in other cities – traditional architecture extending continuously 600 meters down it – and one feels a sense of historical atmosphere. This will be split in two by a modern European-style bridge right in the middle of it, which will greatly decrease its cultural value.
This time the protests of Saino and others did not go unheard, as they had in 1964 with Kyoto Tower, in 1990 with Kyoto Hotel, and in 1994 with the design competition for the New Kyoto Station. The concerned citizens of Kyoto amazed everyone by gathering such overwhelming support for their anti-bridge petition that the project was discontinued.
For now. One must keep in mind that the Law of Concepts still applies: once a concept, always a concept. After all, the city has been planning this bridge for a long time, perhaps decades, so it canceled only the French
Yet some parts of Kyoto could in fact be saved. Hundreds of temples and shrines and thousands of wooden homes still stand. The bones of the old city are still there. With well-planned zoning and design guidelines, some parts of it could be revived. And this is also true of other cities and towns in Japan, which still boast numerous wooden houses in the traditional style. For the most part, these houses are in a shambles, their roofs leaking and their pillars leaning, or fixed up with slapdash improvements featuring tin and vinyl. A house or a neighborhood that is in reasonably good repair can be picked out from its unsightly surroundings only with difficulty, but it is still there. It is another case of «a wilted peony in a bamboo vase, unable to draw water up her stem.» The water – a proud and ancient culture – exists in abundance.
Or does it? The supply of beautiful old places is not inexhaustible, and the time may come in the not very distant future when Japan will have damaged its old cities beyond hope. Some fear this time is already here. The Japanese realize that something is amiss. Recently, a television drama featured the following wry segment:
A hotel manager is entertaining a foreign guest, taking him to the finest restaurants and hotels. Finally, the foreigner says, «Fine meals, fine hotels, entertainment parks. I can get that anywhere in the world. But where can I see the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji portrayed by the print artist Hokusai? What about the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, where the feudal lords used to stay on their trips to Tokyo, and which featured in so many prints and paintings?» Of course, the Thirty-six Views and the Fifty-three Stations have completely disappeared. The hotel manager thinks he must have misunderstood. What could the foreigner be talking about? So at the end of the segment he decides to take English lessons!
