Published in Newsweek Japan 29/9/2015
The actual people who live in Japan are not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, they are extremely commonplace and have nothing curious or extraordinary about them. In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country; there are no such people.
So said Irish playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde, writing in reaction to the fashion for Japonisme in the closing years of the nineteenth century. But Wilde was fighting a losing battle. The charming, weird, erotic, unlike-anywhere-else “Japan” peddled by Lafcadio Hearn and other writers proved too compelling to be debunked by sceptics.
And that sense of otherness remains largely intact today, as is proven by a cursory glance at the Japan coverage of the foreign media, with its obsessive interest in oddities such as maid cafes, square melons and square dogs.
The sense of distance works in both directions, but it is about to be extinguished by the coming of mass tourism to Japan. Foreigners will discover for themselves that most Japanese people are “extremely commonplace and have nothing curious” about them. Japanese people will discover the same about foreigners. Indeed irritation is sure to surface when favourite sushi places are filled with loud-mouthed tourists making jokes and arguing about the bill.
For both sides there will be a period of disillusionment which is probably necessary and certainly inevitable.
DESTINATION JAPAN
Since the beginning of the century, the number of inbound visitors to Japan has risen from 5 million to 14 million. Meanwhile the number of outbound Japanese tourists has remained stable at 14 million also. Both these numbers are still small relative to the Japanese population of 120 million. For example, neighbouring South Korea has roughly 2.5X as many inbound and outbound travellers as Japan as a proportion of population. In Britain’s case, inbound tourists are equivalent to over 60% of the total population and for outbound tourists the number is close to 100%. Everyone is either about to leave or has just arrived.
Opportunities for direct interaction between foreigners and Japanese and first-hand observation of each others’ daily lives have remained relatively limited. Only with the tourist boom of the last few years have Japanese people come to experience what is a common phenomenon across the developed world – the necessity of dealing with people from other cultures on a daily basis. And in all likelihood this is just the beginning.
The key drivers of growth in tourism are the rise in living standards in the countries the visitors are coming from and the ease of travel –which has been spurred by the emergence of low cost carriers and the relaxation of visa and exit restrictions. It is almost certain that tourism will grow at a higher rate than global GDP and that an increasing proportion of travelers will be Asian.
Over the long-term, it is quite feasible for visitor arrivals to Japan to double and treble from here, if the right infrastructure is put in place.
ASIANS TAKING SELFIES
Modern tourism began in the seventeenth century with the Grand Tour, a lengthy circuit of France and Italy made by young British aristocrats keen to examine the roots of European civilization while sampling the exotic pleasures of the local culture. In the mid-nineteenth century clergyman Thomas Cook made foreign travel available to wealthy middle-class people and made a profitable business out of the arrangement of group tours.
For the next hundred years tourism remained the preserve of a small number of wealthy and usually well-educated Westerners. According to the World Tourism Association, global tourist numbers in 1960 amounted to just 69 million. Since then, though, growth has been explosive. Last year the global total was 1.1 billion – more than one seventh of the entire human population, with outbound travelers from mainland China alone reaching 113 million.
The image of a typical tourist has changed from a middle-aged American with an expensive camera resting on his belly to a group of young Chinese using selfie sticks.
WI-FI ON MOUNT FUJI
For a long time Japan was screened off from mass tourism due to the barriers of cost, geography and language. That meant visitors to Japan remained mostly white, wealthy and well-educated for much longer than elsewhere. In many cases they were also intrigued by Japanese culture – why else bear the cost and inconvenience of the journey? – and were eager to visit temples, view kabuki performances and so on. But such people were not representative, even in their own countries. The hordes of young Europeans who flock to resorts on the Spanish coast are not there for high culture, but for the sunshine, the beach and the all-night partying.
Mass tourism means opening up to ordinary people who may not be interested in the cultural treasures featured in the government’s advertising campaign. They might prefer to go shopping or drinking. They might misbehave themselves – by shampooing their hair in an onsen hot spring bath or taking a dip in the Imperial Palace moat, as one boorish Briton did a few years ago.
Yet, the economic scale of the phenomenon is too large to ignore. The WTA claims that global tourism receipts (including transport) make up 30% of world exports of services and 6% of world exports of goods and services combined – which puts it on a level with autos and foods as an export category. High-value-added niches such as medical, sporting and educational tourism are growing rapidly. In today’s world no country can afford to turn its back on such a potential bonanza.
From the Japanese perspective becoming “a normal nation” in the sphere of tourism has both advantages and disadvantages, just as in security policy and other areas – but returning to a bygone era is not an option. Putting wi-fi on the summit of Mount Fuji is the symbolic start of a long process of de-mystification that will generate a lot of money by eliminating Japan’s specificity and making it more like everywhere else.
Oscar Wilde, who never visited Japan, would be neither surprised nor sad. As he declared in The Decay of Lying If you desire to see a Japanese effect, you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home, and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then… sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere.
In other words, the most enduring images of Japan – and France, Brazil and Thailand – are the ones we create inside our own heads.