1st Edition

Tourism Development in Japan Themes, Issues and Challenges

Edited By Richard Sharpley, Kumi Kato Copyright 2021
    296 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    296 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This significant and timely volume focuses on the unique trajectory of tourism development in Japan, which has been characterized by an historical emphasis on promoting both domestic and international tourism to Japanese tourists, followed by the more recent policy of competing aggressively in the international incoming tourist market.

    Initial chapters present an overview of past and present tourism, including policy and research perspectives. Thematic perspectives on tourism and specific contexts and places in which tourism occurs are then examined. Strains of Japanese tourism such as sport, surf, forest, mountain, urban, tea, pilgrimage and even whaling heritage tourism are among those analyzed. The book also explores tourism’s role in confronting difficult pasts and presents, and the challenges facing the development of tourism in contemporary Japan. A short postscript outlines some of the challenges and possible future directions tourism in Japan may take in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

    Written by a team of well-known editors and contributors, including academics from Japan, this volume will be of great interest to upper-students and researchers and academics in development studies, cultural studies, geography and tourism.

    1 Introduction: tourism in Japan – from the past to the present

    RICHARD SHARPLEY AND KUMI KATO

    2 Tourism research on Japan – overview of major trends: Japanese and English-language materials

    YUMIKO HORITA AND KUMI KATO

    3 Urban development and tourism in Japanese cities

    YUMIKO HORITA

    4 Transition of forest tourism policies in Japanese national forest management

    YUMI OURA

    5 A systematic review of sport tourism research in Japan

    EIJI ITO AND TOM HINCH

    6 Mobilizing stoke: a genealogy of surf tourism development in Miyazaki, Japan

    ADAM DOERING

    7 Japan’s mountain tourism at a crossroads: insights from the North Japan Alps

    ABHIK CHAKRABORTY

    8 International exchange in tea tourism: reconceptualizing Japanese green tourism for sustainable farming communities

    AMNAJ KHAOKHRUEAMUANG

    9 Pilgrimage tourism in regional communities: the case of Tanabe City and Kumano Kodo

    RICARDO NICOLAS PROGANO AND KUMI KATO

    10 Confronting difficult pasts: the case of ‘kamikaze’ tourism

    RICHARD SHARPLEY AND KUMI KATO

    11 Whaling heritage and tourism development – ‘sliced, diced and boiled down’

    SIMON WEARNE

    12 Debating sustainability in tourism development: resilience, traditional knowledge and community: a post-disaster perspective

    KUMI KATO

    13 International tourists in Japan: their increasing numbers and vulnerability to natural hazards

    HAYATO NAGAI, KAEDE SANO, BRENT W. RITCHIE AND TAKASHI YOSHINO

    14 The expansion of peer-to-peer accommodation rentals in Japan: issues and challenges

    TAKAHIRO IKEJI AND HAYATO NAGAI

    Postscript

    RICHARD SHARPLEY AND KUMI KATO

    Biography

    Richard Sharpley is Professor of Tourism and Development at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK, and Distinguished Professor in the Center for Tourism Research at Wakayama University, Japan.

    Kumi Kato is a professor at the Faculty of Tourism, Wakayama University, Japan. She currently chairs a committee for sustainable tourism at the Japan Tourism Agency.