A journey in the Japanese heartscape

Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione “Riccardo Massa” Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Scienze Antropologiche ed Etnologiche A journey in the Japanese heartscape Relatore: Prof. Luigi Urru Co-relatore: Prof. Silvia Barberani Tesi di Laurea Magistrale di: Roberto Fracchia Matricola 746302 Anno Accademico 2019 - 2020 I Contents CONTENTS I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS III MAP OF JAPAN V ABSTRACT VI INTRODUCTION 1 0.1 – Travelers’ moon is never the same. 1 0.2 - Travel in anthropology 2 0.3 - Mapping my path 4 RECREATION OF THE VANISHING: CREATING THE GAP BETWEEN TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN JAPAN 9 1.1 - A first definition of tabi 9 1.2 - An example of the dynamicity of travel: transportation 11 1.3 - The vanishing Japan: modernization, secularization and education 14 1.4 - Minzokugaku’s reaction to the vanishing Japan 17 1.5 – Locating the vanishing “authentic” Japan 21 1.6 – Furusato as the traditional landscape 23 1.7 – Construction of the image of the furusato 27 1.8 - Creating the traditional furusato through literature: defining modernity and tradition 31 A TABI IN FURUSATO: JAPANESE REDISCOVERY OF THE SELF IN THE IMAGE OF FURUSATO 40 II 2.1 – Furusato as the cure for individualism? “Discover Japan” to rediscover the self 40 2.2 – Nostalgia as the spark of reinvention 42 2.3 – Marketing nostalgia to sell furusato: examples of commercials evoke the “good old Japan” 45 2.4 – Multiple layers of furusato: from type to archetype 52 2.5 – Furusato and its network: encounter among modernity, sustainability and the biodiversity 54 2.6 – Encounter between traditional and scientific knowledge: satoyama as a means to educate to traditions in modern Japan 60 2.7 – Furusato’s enlarged network: problems and advantages of the network’s encounters 66 2.8 – Tōno: a positive case of the encounters in a furusato’s network 69 TABI TO TOURISM AS A METAPHOR OR ETHNOGRAPHY: DIFFERENT KINDS OF EXPERIENCES AND DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE RELATIONS OF GUESTS WITH HOSTS 74 3.1 – Walk, observe, listen: Miyamoto as a model 74 3.2 – Tabi: an aimless path to discovery 78 3.3 – Pilgrimages: in search of the insight toward the destination 85 3.4 - Tourism: a mosaic of possibilities with leisure as the core 92 3.4.1– Japanese tourists in Palau: how the hosts accommodate the guests 100 3.4.2 - Ecotourism: a form of sustainability or a way to hide the crisis in the green? 104 3.4.3 - Cultural Tourism: guests’ idealization of cultures and the hosts’ representations of them 108 3.4.4 - Content tourism: experience the location before experience it 113 3.5 - Fantasy tourism to digital narcissisms: the breaking of the relations between the guests and the hosts or the locations 119 ARRIVAL AT THE BRIDGE... YET NOT A CONCLUSION 126 4.1 - The arrival in the midst of a bridge... 126 4.2 – What I got from this tabi 128 BIBLIOGRAPHY 132 III Acknowledgments The Japanese proper names in the text are written according to the Japanese surname format followed by first name. Foreign words (Japanese included) are written in italics, excluded in direct quotations from other authors. In this case it was preferred not to make changes. Unless otherwise indicated by note or bibliography, the translations, and therefore any errors, are the author’s. In the note the original text will always be reported in order to allow the reader a comparison. Due to problems of various kinds, this work could not benefit from a period of fieldwork in Japan. The author’s travel experiences are based on three trips of a few days each to the Kansai region (Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe) during a period of residence of the author in Taiwan. A lot of information, not from books, comes from personal contacts with Japanese friends and acquaintances. A warm and special thanks goes to Nakajima Rei, Minato Yuria, Takami Satoshi, Katori Natsue, Fujita Hiromi San, for the various information and curiosities about Japan. In a direct way or not, their friendship and conversations over the years have proved to be fundamental for this work and have allowed me to know and love Japan more deeply. My thanks also go to Deguchi H. Sensei and Ishikawa H. Sensei for their lessons and to Francesco “Frank” Baldessari for his invaluable friendship and various suggestions. Thanks to the various institutions and people who kindly provide me information about Japan and Japanese culture for complete this work. Here in Italy I must first of all thank the professors of the course in anthropological and ethnological sciences of the University of Milano-Bicocca, in particular Prof. Urru and Prof. Barberani for allowing me to make this tabi, but in general all the teachers for their invaluable teachings. They made me fall in love with this fascinating subject. A heartfelt thanks goes to the most important friends starting with Marinella Iafanti who was forced to read the thesis in advance to give me some suggestions. My most sincere friendship to Dr. Simone Cipriano and Artur for the many interesting conversations, in front of whisky and beer. Thanks to Zeynep for the daily wonderful support, especially in moments of high stress. To Elly Wang for the precious suggestions and her first review on this work. And again to Irene, Federica, Paola and Cri for making these two years of course much more pleasant, each of you in a special way. Thanks to the Traditional Shito-Ryu Karate “Hatano-Juku” group, because it made me know a wonderful world and fantastic people. Thanks to my family in general for all the support. Finally, my biggest thanks can only be to my mom. All the support given to me during these years cannot be listed here, but it is the basis of my life. Everything I am now I owe to you, and the most precious thing in the world, besides being your son, is knowing that I am like you. IV Japanese Era All the years are according the Gregorian Calendar A.D. Asuka Period 538-710 Nara Period 710 -794 Heian Period 794 – 1185 Kamakura Period 1185–1333 Nanboku-Chō Period 1334 – 1392 Muromachi Period 1392 – 1573 Azuchi-Momoyama Period 1573 – 1603 Edo Period (Tokugawa Period) 1603 - 1868 Meiji Period 1868 – 1912 Taishō 1912 – 1926 Shōwa 1926 - 1989 Heisei 1989 - 2019 Reiwa 2019 – Present (as 2020) By convention, from the beginning of the Meiji Period (1868) begins Modern Japan. There are some unofficial nengo (periods) ranging from 660 B.C. to 645 A.D. or 701 A.D. in the Post-Taika chronology V Map of Japan Map of Japan – Honshū, Kyūshū and Shikoku Map of Japan – Hokkaidō The maps are taken from https://maps.gsi.go.jp. Map of Japan – Okinawa VI Abstract This thesis is not a goal-oriented work that aims to confirm the author’s idea about a topic of Japanese studies or anthropology. It’s intended as a journey of discovery which, touching in a more or less detailed way different topics of the classes of the M.A. course in Anthropological studies, could serve as basis and reference for future works about Japanese culture. The work sets around the theme of the loss of authenticity and the travel to furusato (the countryside) to find a glimpse of the vanishing traditions. In the first part, the author tries to understand how traditions are idealized and located outside the geographical and temporal modernity. To do so, we will underline it the role of Japanese ethnography (minzokugaku) and literature in creating idealized traditions. The second part analyze the way in which nostalgia pushed Japanese to travel toward furusato. Emphasis will be given to some commercials in which furusato play the part of the antithesis of modernity and the retainer of the “good old Japan”. A digression about satoyama will also explain the importance of the creation of a network that includes the cooperation of traditional and scientific knowledge, as much as furusato and cities, in the discourses about sustainability and tradition transmission. Loss in tradition it is comparable in the loss of biodiversity and it helps to create the sense of nostalgia and the fear of the vanishing that led to the growth of the desire of travel toward furusato. I will use the town of Tōno as an example of a positive cooperation between the actors active in the furusato’s network (local hosts and their interaction of the outsider guests, local government and academic or literature works), into a project of revitalization of a town. While this town can’t be taken as a scalable project, it can represent a model in the way guests-hosts’ relations can enhance a (re)creation of traditions and lead to sustainability. In the last section, I will analyze different forms of travel, which go from Japanese tabi to content tourism, passing through pilgrimages or other forms of tourism. All these forms of travel present a different engagement of guests with hosts or the object of the travel experiences. On one side there will be a wish of discovery in which the guests’ idea of the hosts and the location is the thinner as possible. The traveler in this case sees interactions as a mean of discovery, and of knowledge. On the other extreme, the guests’ preventive idealization of the object of the tourism leave no space for discovery. This kind of travel is a confirmation of preventive ideas in which everything that is not considered important to this confirmation it is obscured (hosts included). In the author’s idea, these forms of tourism may be a metaphor of ethnographic approaches. Since this work is not goal oriented, there are not real conclusions: the aim of this work is to allow further researches starting from one of the different topics analyzed in the writing. 1 Introduction 0.1 – Travelers’ moon is never the same. <<飽かずのみ都にて見し影よりも旅こそ月はあはれなりけれ>> <<The moonlight in the sky of a tabi, it appears deeper than the one which I watch without getting tired of it, in the Capital>>. I wanted to start with this poetry of Saigyō, because it contains a fundamental truth that I could witness as well during one of my travel in Japan. At the moment that we leave our “place”, we have occasion to see our daily lives under a new point of view, a better one. I could feel an affinity with Saigyō’s words, because I found myself repeating often to people I know, that after a day of hiking in mount Rokkō (六甲山 Rokkō-san) in Hyōgo Prefecture somehow, I felt that in Japan the sun shines differently. This simple sentence becomes the easiest way for me to explain why I have such a deep affection for Japan. I’m perfectly aware, as Saigyō was, that both the moon and the sun do not change their ways to shine or appearance—even if in some places in the world, sun may strike stronger than in other. It is our perspectives on them that change. I cannot help but think this feeling of amazement, the joy of the discovery that things may appear different from what we recall about them, it is at the core of my wish of pursue anthropological studies. And probably not just mine. What is then, the reason we travel? This question may be at the heart of this work. There is not a single reason, each individual has one or more, and all are different. We travel for work, we travel for fun, we travel for survival, we travel for sex, and for many other reasons. The places we travel to, how we travel, when we travel are all different and subjective choices. Hence there is not an only correct answer. The only constant of travel is that we will end up having contact with other objects, which are culture and places, and other people. And this reveals also something about ourselves. Starting from how we decide to interact with that alterity. Travel’s experience challenges our identities. The amazement is not limited to a distant geographical place. The Other that makes us rebuild or confirm our identities it has not to be the “savages” of Oceania or Amazonia, or the Buddhist monk of Tibet. Can be someone of our daily lives, someone that belongs to our “World”. Tourism in far places does not include for sure the encounter with an authentic “Other”. To assist to some rituals, festivals or customs of the local, do not grant the tourists the culture shock that the first explorers that arrived in Polynesia may have. These customs are often theatrical plays of actions that the tourists expect and are expected to expect. Somehow, tourism can be like going to watch a movie in a movie theater: the movies are made of thinking about what audiences want to see, and the 2 audiences go to watch the movies they think they may like, or they are suggested they will like. With tourism may be the same, just with a different background scenery and a different travel experience. Also, this kind of encounter may have influence over our identities. In the case all the expectations we had a priori are satisfied and we learn nothing new, we are back to our life without a change but only confirming who we are. And then we have much to say. We shift from being the audience—or witnesses—of a show, to be the principal actors of another show, a performance made of pictures, narrations and souvenirs. We may come back as the object of our travel, with our many “I did” and “I was”. Or us with less egotism, as individuals with another status, as experts of a culture that we barely glimpsed at. Like for Malinowski, the pictures we take help us testify our presence there, and our presence there is everything we need to states that “they like to” and “they do not do”, “they are like” and “they shouldn’t”. We become silent observers of a world that, in our perspective, is not influenced by our “being present”, because for us, what we see is how they live even when we are not present, and we are just lucky enough—or good enough tourists — to see the authenticity of it. It is the object of the subject’s view, that through the lens of a camera, become the subject of a picture that sees << [...] the photograph as witness offering descriptive testimony [...]>> (Price & Wells, 2015:32) of a reality “objectively appraisable” (ibid.) In the end, what could be more objective of a photographic objective? The tourists as photograph become witnesses, as narrators they become experts, and as “the ones that went there” they become the alterity mediators in their group. A tourist, however, is never just a part of the audience. Every time in which the conversation will fall on the area visited by the tourists, they will confirm or contradict the narrations made by others. Sometimes publicly, sometimes silently, but they will never limit themselves to create an imaginary based on other people’s words. They cannot do it anymore. The tourists can, and they will, recall in the mind the images of their experiences. The tourists know in their hearts that is their opinion to be correct. They experienced, they were there, they witnessed, and so they cannot be wrong. <<I was there too!>> will say in response to the other party in the conversation. <<Yes, but you didn’t understand what you saw! >> will think the tourists, but for the sake of a good relationship, will just say << I was there some years earlier/later. Things must have changed>>. 0.2 - Travel in anthropology Tourism and travel are powerful anthropological medium. According to Yamashita << [...] what cultural anthropology today should illuminate is the realm which lies between the global and the local. The anthropology of tourism presents us with a challenge to do just this.>> (2003:148). 3 Tourism, he suggests, is global in the phenomenon of movement, but also linked to cultural localization. It is a phenomenon strictly connected with the production of culture. It is through tourism, travels, migrations that people can enter in contact with the alterity, with a new vision of the self, with the representation of their own symbols. Not that movement will bring inevitably this result. It requires the willing of interact with this alterity. Nevertheless, it is the only way to reach this result. At the end of the day, even when we can do anthropology from our homes or from our armchairs, it is in the travel that anthropology started and is where it lives today. Fieldwork is considered by many as the peculiarity of anthropology. However, as Clifford (1996) suggests, fieldwork << [...]’takes place’ in worldly, contingent relations of travel, not in controlled sites of research>>. Travel and tourism are modern fieldworks and the fieldworks of modernity. As the new local became global, virtual world overlaps with reality both the space and the time are distorted, in which it would be possible to find a proper “exotic” site? Miyamoto Tsuneichi, challenging the paradigms of his time and also himself, did what anthropologists of his time should have done, and traveled in Japan. He didn’t just stop in a place trying to find unreal universal features of a unique Japan. He chose the entire country, his country, as his own fieldwork, and tabi — walking without thinking to know, but interacting and researching— as his research methodology. He faced alterity with the willing of keep learning. However, nowadays, walking in each single city, town, or wood of Japan wouldn’t be enough. Nowadays, a part of Japan is a virtual reality made of factious worlds created online and communities and networks, that do not have a physical shared space, but one made of 1s and 0s. These communities however, are not as frail as one could think. Members speak over the phone about personal problems, help each other in times of needs, have fights and discussions. They just bring the drama of social life in a new arena. This virtual arena is part of Japan’s reality – and not only Japan’s -- and definitely cuts the boundaries of the field. Anthropologists today must be able to interpret the word travel in a more dynamic way, to avoid becoming tourists. It is not sufficient anymore to arrive on the site, enter the house of the chief and observe the life on the field. The anthropologists need to know that the computer in the chiefs’ houses, allow them to extend their network beyond the limit of the forest. If the culture, the community, the traditions are not more restricted into a location, in order to understand them, the anthropologist must be able to travel with them. The arrival on the fieldwork is no more than one step of the travel. This work is a tabi. It is not goal-oriented, not because I do not know how to create an index, but for my choice. It’s because I think that’s the way anthropology should be. It’s like embarking on a train, with one ticket for “nowhere” as Okada (1975) write he would like to do. Such a ticket, will leave me the freedom of disembark everywhere I feel, give a look at the landscape, and maybe take a picture of a panorama, and embark on the train again, but a different one, because the one that led me there it is already gone. And this time the path may be different. However, when I will arrive at 4 the last station of the track, I know it will be not the end of the path. I will be back taking another train on another track, just to start all over again. But the new start will be different. This path, the work I wrote here, will allow me to take different turns in the future, to investigate any of the landscapes that this time I could only glimpse at. While I was writing it—this introduction is the last part I write—I had only an idea of the path, roughly like the name written on the first car of a train that indicates if it goes in a direction or the other. During the path, I stopped every time I happened to be in the station of a place I found worth seeing. These stations were places I thought it may be connected with my interests or a connection with a concept I was trying to understand. Each station required researches and in books I found many suggestions about the next station where I should stop. Many suggestions arrived indirectly also from my professors of the anthropology course in MilanoBicocca’s University. Not suggestions about the thesis itself, but the various teaching, even when not directly related to my primary interests, were somehow always important. In fact, in this work there are connections with every single course I took in the last two years, and I can point to the influence of each single teacher in the different parts of the work. The fact that not one of the classes I took has Japan as subject, it suggests to me also that all that emerges about this country in this work is the fruit of my readings, the researches I made, my travels in Japan and the words of many Japanese friends. Without a fieldwork these are the only available sources. I realized that the important thing about this thesis is not what I wrote, but the knowledge I acquired. As a student, I find this result to be the best possible one. Also because now, I know the location of the stations from which I could start any of my future researches about Japan. 0.3 - Mapping my path I faced this work as a tabi. This means I didn’t prepare an index with titles before I start to write. Instead, choosing titles that may reflect the paragraph contents was a long operation. However, it is correct to give readers a map to follow about what my path was. Being tabi an aimless journey of discovery, it is easy to get lost on it. It happened also to me. This led me to find something interesting and new. While I prepared many of the sources I thought I may need for writing this work in advance, a significant amount of books and paper become necessary—or even just interesting—while I was developing the work. I experienced, researched, learned things that before I didn’t know or even thought about. For this reason, before offering a map, I would like to invite the readers to do not stick to it. I would like that each reader, as I do with many of the books I found most interesting, could feel free to close this work at any point, to follow a track that starts from one of the things written here. To know that a reader closed my work after few pages to follow a different path that still originated 5 from the one I was following, will be more rewarding to know that this same work, even when it’s fully read, just ends itself. It would mean that a part of my tabi was meaningful also for someone else. The maps given below are to be understood as a brief description of the train stations seen on a railroad map. Not a touristic guidebook, but merely a hint of what it is possible to glimpse there, even without disembarking and carefully visit the city or take a different track. In the first chapter, I started from a definition of tabi and the differences it has with other words, such ryokō or kankō. I understand the way to interpret these terms are dynamics because travel is a kind of experience that changes in time, following cultural and social changes. Weather forecasts or trains are an example of it (1.2). Thinking about my “thought system, history of ideas” classes, I individualized how trains can be idealized as a cooperative choice, and how this idea can be suggested, marketed, or imposed, over a group. The 1970s campaign “A travel to discover Japan” was a marketing campaign to push Japanese people in using trains to travel in the places where trains represented the best choice in that historical moment: furusato. The campaign used what, in 1995, Marilyn Ivy will individuate in the word “vanishing”, and a leverage on nostalgia, to define vaguely what was the real Japan, and what Japan was losing. In particular, I individuate topics that often are discussed into anthropological courses or cultural pedagogy: modernization, secularization and education (1.3). Of course, these are not merely three causes of a broader problem. Finding some causes led me to consider the reactions such the one of Minzokugaku (1.4) and in understanding how this problem articulated. Locating the “vanishing” (1.5) and the tradition in furusato (1.6), helped me to individualize what could be this vague object in reality: I came to understand it as a constructed object (1.7) which use different media such literature (1.8) to become a mental prototype, something of iper-realistic. Literature is not the only media of course, but it’s a convenient one. It’s easily accessible, it’s used to create emotional feedbacks, and it’s persistent in time. The second part starts with a credit to one of the classes that influenced me more during my course, “medical anthropology”. During this class, for the first time I realized that conditions such anxiety, stress, fear for the future—condition of the “new individualism”—are to be considered as a sickness of the modernity in Japan (2.1). In this, Miyanaga’s (1993) work, a book I casually enter in contact while I was trying to better understand what’s Japanese view on individualism, was an important source. I wondered if the tabi toward a furusato, promoted as a rediscover of the (Japanese) self, could have been a real cure for this disease, or mostly a placebo to the feeling of homelessness and nostalgia (2.2). There is another thing I learned during the “medical anthropology” classes: diseases are not only conditions of the individuals but also social problems that penetrate in different aspects of the individuals’ social lives. The more the disease and the fear of it spread, the easier to market the cure. Underlining the good side of the cure, the “alternative” to the disease, makes it easy to sell it. I hence used Japanese commercials that used nostalgia as a tool to promote a product to sell 6 (2.3), from travel to liquors, creating an image of a prototypical furusato based on an archetype of it (2.4). In this section an enormous influence came from the encounter with Anna Tsing’s (2015) work that I read for my “political anthropology” class. Thanks to this work I understand how furusato is a network in which notions such encounter, disturbance and sustainability (2.5) are fundamental for its survival. Furusato in fact cannot be isolated from the modernity of the cities and the encounter with the guests. Satoyama, with its preservation of the traditional knowledge and wise use of the scientific one, is a perfect arena to analyze this network (2.6), with its good and bad encounters between actors (2.7). The town of Tōno represents in my idea, a good example of how this arena works (2.8). This work, as said, is a tabi, because I would like to enterprise an anthropological research that use tabi as a model. I couldn’t put in practice this approach on a fieldwork, mainly due to the COVID19 outbreak. However, I metaphorically did it in the writing and the selection—or better say the encounter—of the sources. Thanks to Silvia Barberani’s (2006) work and her class of “tourism anthropology”, I started to see the encounter between guests and hosts, their interaction with the space and the creation (and perception) of traditions—key topics in tourism—, as a metaphor of ethnographic research. The encounter with Barberani’s work made me thought about a model of encounter and interaction with the “object” of the research that fascinated me since I started to be interested in Japanese minzokugaku: Miyamoto Tsuneichi’s “walk, observe, ask” (3.1). I idealized tabi as a kind of encounter in which the only aim is the continue research, without a goal, but a continue renovation (3.2). I understand how ethnography may be a sort of pilgrimages toward places filled of “spiritual” power, as Tōno can be: as the birthplace of Japanese minzokugaku, it’s a constant presence of many ethnographic works. In a similar fashion, I found Ivy’s work (1994) to be omnipresent when speaking about the world of vanishing. I realized that during the path of discovery, it’s inevitable to make some pilgrimages (3.3) toward the places many travelers consider as fundamental for the understanding of the object or for a personal growth. This could lead to some unexpected encounters and to the contact with a superior level of knowledge, or in finding something or someone that will give us the enlightenment we didn’t expect to find. However, there is also a kind of encounter in which the guests start from the idealization of the hosts or their culture. And this idealization become so central in their maps, all the path leads only there. What they discover, is barely what they know already they will find at the destination. It happened also in anthropology. In an overview about tourism, it’s possible to see how guests often are directed toward a particular view of a culture, through chosen information. And it’s also possible to see how some voices are muted: while Japanese women represent an important part of the “guests” they are often seen only on the hosts’ side at the service of the men (3.4). The lessons of the classes of “gender and kinship anthropology”, showed me that these problems are not an anthropological myth, but a common truth. In the analysis of the tourism 7 studies, many of the questions of anthropology appear. From how the colonial past is hidden or forgotten for the sake of economic prosperity (3.4.1), to how guests see themselves as promoters of sustainability and savior-like figures (3.4.2), there are different kinds of interactions that always seem to tend to benefit the guests. In this, I see a strong connection between anthropology and tourism. In ethnography, as in cultural tourism (3.4.3) it’s possible to see how a culture may be a representation of what the hosts expect the guests to want to see. To some extent, the hosts may become also a nuance when the guests already have clear expectations, and start their travel or research with a preventive idea of the things they will find. Here, guests only target what they already know they will find and hosts, moreover those that do not conform to their view, are considered as a nuance or figures “out of place” (3.4.4). At some extreme points, the guests may become the primary subject of the experience, becoming also the primary object of it (3.5). I found these connections between ways of experiencing travel and ways of doing anthropology while I was on my path. For this reason, these sensations are not explicated in the main text. I rather leave it vague so that some readers may sense an affinity between their way of experiencing travel and their way of doing anthropology. As I said, I do not have a goal nor I am in the position to give truths about Japan or the way of making anthropology. I just find out I like to be a tabibito rather than a tourist, and that tabi suits my ideal of research more than tourism does. Maps are drawn after the paths are walked, when the pathfinders reason on the travel they made. This map of my work couldn’t be done while I was writing it. In my own way, I want to think I may be a pathfinder. The final chapter of this work is not a conclusion. The reason is simple. I feel I barely started to study anthropology, and I’m at the border of a liminal point in my career: graduation. Arriving at the middle of a bridge (4.1) can be considered as a conclusion of my tabi? I hope not. As most, I can offer an overview of what this work means to me, what I learned from this experience (4.2) and hope that I, and maybe some readers, may take inspiration from it to develop further researches about Japan, traditions, sustainability, or all those topics that now I learnt I feel as important. 8 9 Recreation of the vanishing: creating the gap between tradition and modernity in Japan 1.1 - A first definition of tabi There are different words in Japanese that can be translated as “travel”, but among these, tabi (旅) has a particular nuance and a widespread use. The connection with pleasure and leisure of words such 観光 kankō or 旅行 ryokō1, limits their usage to tourism related activities, leaving more space of action to tabi, which often is associated with hardship (see Yamashita 2003, Yamashita & Funabiki 2008, Shirahata 1996). Tourism is a relatively new way of experiencing travel, that developed in the second half of the 19th century, aside of the deep changes in the people’s lifestyle and culture (Yamashita & Funabiki, 2008:190). Tabi instead is an older kind of experience that belongs to a time in which travel required a strong will and motivation, like happened with pilgrimages. Tabi becomes hence a metaphor of life, a journey full of obstacle in which there is no turning back, but a path, sometimes unknown, in which a traveller can discover something about the self. However, there is something unique in tabi that attracts people. In the words of Yoshida Genjirō <<there is nothing happier than the heart of a person who set for a tabi>>2 (Yoshida, 1949:10). Tabi is not an experience limited in geographical terms, but can be an experience that has a blurry and unclear starting point and leaves the end open to options and—in a final thought—it is temporary. There is not an ultimate destination, because that will require a coming back to a previous condition. Finish a tabi would mean to reach the end of one research, of one motivation to walk ahead in search of something. There is not an end also because there is not a planning in tabi: the individual that sets for a tabi can have a destination to move toward, but his mind is open to possibility, to dynamism, to the surprise and the changes. Different from tourism or travel, in which the destination is of primary importance, in a tabi it is the journey itself to become important. The metaphor with life results to be immediate. Life is a one-way journey toward an end, and virtually everyone has an image of the place where the journey will end. It is a journey in which an individual takes paths that can change at every step. There are no complete maps, maybe there are a few people that would give individuals some directions. There are few shortcuts, but also wrong paths from which it’s impossible to come back. This makes tabi a perfect metaphor for life. In Japan, this symbolism is clear. Tourism suggests a triphasic partition, preparation-experience-return. Tabi has not this triphasic partition as it’s a liminal experience. If life is a tabi, then tabi is only a path from what comes before the life and what will come after. In Japanese fashion, life is like a sakura, an ephemeral time in which the flower 1 According to Yamashita (2003) ryokō is closer to the English word “tour” with a meaning similar to the one of kankō (sightseeing or tourism). In this work, I will use the Japanese words in this way. 2 << 旅にをれば人の心ほどうれしいものはない>> 10 can only “burn with life”. It’s not important how that single flower was born on that branch, and it is not important how it will decay when it will fall down. The only important thing is that ephemeral moment of life that worth to be experienced. Marilyn Ivy explains that tabi << [...] has an aura of the antique about it. Tabi is a non-Sinified Japanese lexeme (not a compound), and, as is true of many such indigenous terms, it portrays an aesthetic and affective concept Japanese feel is uniquely theirs>> (1995:36). This suggests that the word tabi became part of the Japanese identity, like concepts such wabisabi (侘び寂び), or mono- no-aware 3 . There is not an intrinsic characteristic of these lexemes that make them part of the Japanese identity or the Japanese view of the world. It is the interpretation that Japanese give to them that becomes a part of how Japanese understand themselves. It would be better to say that is not the lexemes that became part of the Japanese identities, but it is that side of Japanese identities that can live in these lexemes. Tabi — as a lexeme — is not different, since its use depends on the feeling of the Japanese users. Sylvie Guichard-Anguis (2009a) lists a wide series of cases, which go from private to public, from infancy to adulthood, from individuals to groups, in which daily Japanese conversation presents the word tabi. One of the use that’s often possible to see is related to the journey in terms of development — and once again the metaphor with life. As an example it is possible to list books such “A tabi around Kami-sama” (2019) by Kokoroya Jinnosuke4 or Miyamoto Tsuneichi “minzokugaku no tabi” (2003), and different television shows that use tabi in their name. While translating “tabi” with “travel” or “journey” can be a decent compromise — because of the necessity to find a discreet title for literary works or documentary, etc. — the translation will inevitably leave something untold. As tabi is a dynamic activity, the meaning of the lexeme is inevitably dynamic in time and in its subjective character. Guichard-Anguis (2009a) explains also << [...] how deeply rooted the notion of tabi is in the Japanese perception of contemporaneous travels>> (2009a: 3). Tabi cannot just been seen through the eyes of the ancient travellers or been read in ancient travelogue. These are fundamental steps in creating Japanese modern identity, but it is through modernity that tabi is interpreted in contemporaneity. It shouldn’t be of surprise that technologies and progress have had a deep influence on how tabi is interpreted and undertook. For Saigyō would have been impossible to conceptualise tabi as a leisure-only travel to plan in its all aspects, including a GPS route. A simple 3 As example, Leonard Koren affirms that <<Although almost every Japanese will claim to understand the feeling of wabisabi – it is, after all, supposed to be one of the core concepts of Japanese culture – very few can articulate this feeling. Why is this? […] the main reason is that most Japanese never learned about wabisabi in intellectual terms>> (1994:15). This suggests us that some particular traits of Japanese culture are embedded in Japanese identities – as well as the opposite. I find that for tabi is about the same. Before starting this thesis and starting to investigate the matter deeply, I enquired some Japanese friends about the difference between tabi and ryokō, while they all recon a “little difference” between the two, their explanation was introduced by the statement that these were merely their opinion based on feeling, as many of them acknowledged a subjective point and quickly underlined it was not “the correct answer” (which anyway I didn’t expect). 4 <<神様めぐる旅>> by 心屋仁之助 (2019, Tokyo: Seven & I publishing [セブン&アイ出版]) 11 thing such as watching weather forecast—a daily action on which we may decide our outfits for the travel, or even the decision to enterprise the travel or not—was totally different for the traveller-poet. He could rely on the local knowledge of the season, by knowing that in a determined time he could find snow or typhoons in a determined place. However, he couldn’t wake up in the morning and be positive that at his destination he would have found pleasant weather, or a mountain pathway would not have been hit by a strong rain the same day. The previsions for the tabi would have been so vague that he couldn’t probably do more than hope for a favourable weather. Yoshino & Miyashita explained how << [...] starting in the 8th Century, the Chinese knowledge of relationships between weather and human health/disease was brought into Japan>> (2007:24). The same authors state that already in 1618, U. Ikeda wrote in his book entitled “Record of Genna Navigation”, that a person could feel a stronger pain in his wound when a storm (cyclone) was approaching. These are not modern scientific forecasts, but they give us the idea—confirmed also by some popular saying and proverbs— that in ancient Japan people knew at least a little about climate changes. They had some way to forecast and prepare themselves for change in the weather, through the knowledge of the sky and nature. This knowledge, anyway, would have not made the tabi easier. What is important to understand, is that people in different times, do not have the same range of value in interpreting and thinking about concepts we call by the same names. This is where tabi and cultures are dynamic. To state that the wound will hurt more when a storm is approaching had in 1618 a value comparable to the one of a numerical weather prediction today: it was the best of the knowledge. What we just in modern time can define as traditional—by giving somehow a historical and non-scientific nuance— was a modern way to forecast. Ancient travellers could however rely on a body of kantenbōki (観天望 気), which is prediction of the weather based on the experience of watch the cloud and the wind, or animals behaviours, and kishō denshō (気象伝承) that is the body of “weather lore”, an artefact that still in use today in some rural areas, or among some working class people such as fishermen5. 1.2 - An example of the dynamicity of travel: transportation While the changes in weather forecasts could have been of minimal impact on how people think about tabi, other technologies, such as the changes in transportation means, have a deep influence over it. Kurihara and Wu, in a research about the changes in tourism activities in an area served by the new shinkansen network, noted that << [...] tourism arrivals increased significantly in cities that were connected by the extended Shinkansen network. Especially in Kyushu Region, the extension of Shinkansen network contributed to an obvious increase in tourism demand>> (2016:42). Since the shinkansen – a technologically advanced improvement of an old artefact called train — led to new forms of transport experience, it is possible to affirm that the presence of a new technology – 5 Beside kantenbōki and kishō denshō, these “proverbs” goes by other names such tenkirigen 天気俚諺, tenki kotowaza（天 気諺), etc. The difference between these seems to be mainly regional, but is not a matter to be discussed in this work. 12 such the first train or airplane – it’s critical in the interpretation that the Japanese have about the word tabi. New means of transportation correspond to new ways of experiencing the travel. Transportation – including feet – is an important component of any kind of travel. Also, it represents a key aspect of the social life of a group. It is important to understand the relations that link individuals or groups to transportation means, since these kinds of relations may have an influence on the individual or collective identity. As an instance is possible to cite Professor Fujii which in his work about social dilemmas, explains how << [i]n the case of choosing the means of transportation to a sightseeing spot, using a car is defection, and using the public transportation is cooperation>> (Fujii, 2017:7). Defection is intended as the (social) behaviour that increase the private benefit and decrease the public one – the individual over the group –, while cooperation is intended as the behaviour that increases the public benefits over the private one – the group over the individual. It’s easy to understand the benefits that cars or public transportation represent: while cars allow the individuals to travel more comfortably, independently, without time restrictions, etc. it also generates more traffic and pollution compared to the public transportation6. There are high numbers of variables to take into consideration when individuals decide about the means of transportation for a travel, which may differ from willing to cooperate or not cooperate. As an example, a Japanese friend enquired about the beneficial aspect of choosing between the car or the train, just suggested that while by car is possible to visit more places at once, the train is basically more fun. To think that a train ride is more fun than taking the car, is not a cooperative action, but an individual choice that by chance can be considered also cooperative. However, taking for granted that the train is a cooperative choice, while car is a defection, it may be of interest to use transportation means as a media to understand if Japanese culture leans toward independence or interdependence. Kitayama and Bowman (2010) suggest that in Eastern collective cultures, the agency of the subjects in actions is based on features such as interdependency, mutual interpersonal atonement and harmony (Kitayama & Bowman, 2010:207). In their works, Kitayama and Bowman organise the interdependent parts that composed the “self-in-action” in three global components which are the epistemic, the normative and the motivational. They are explained as:  Epistemic: Once individuals are socialised in a given cultural context, they are often inculcated with beliefs of either independence or interdependence. These beliefs provide an epistemic basis for the corresponding modes of agency (pg. 207)  Normative: the prescriptive function of specifying which behaviours and actions are desirable and which ones are not desirable. Specifically, once individuals who share believes in either independence or interdependence are brought together to form a community, they begin to develop corresponding normative expectations. (pg.208) 6 See Fujii, 2017 for explanation 13  Motivational: These cultural views provide a variety of goal states: Whereas the independent view offers several individually oriented goals, the interdependent view supplies many communally oriented goals. Through socialisation, individuals internalise these goal states, thereby forming their intrinsic motivational propensities. (pg.209)7 In Japan, and in virtually any other country, there is a situation of multiculturalism that brings individuals to act differently in different contexts: albeit Japanese society may promote cooperation over individuality8, this does not mean that all Japanese prefer to use the train over the car for their movements. What instead resulted in interesting findings is the use of these three components in the forging of transportation means’ preferences. The components suggest to us that once the individuals are socialised in a determined way (E) they start to develop corresponding normative expectations (N) and oriented goals (M). In a reductive and simple way, it vaguely corresponds to say that once Japanese are formed to see trains as the preferred transportation means for the society (E), they will start to expect that the use of trains to be sustained to become the desirable option—against the undesirable ones — (N), and this option allows them to reach the collective goals that favour the social group (M). The reaching of collective goals does not enter into contrast with the need of reaching individual ones: reaching a situation in which the traffic is limited and the air less polluted (a collective goal), do not push people to not travel for tourism (individual goal) when only car is available. That individuals are socialised in a determined way, does not mean that individuals have no agency in the formation of an independent or interdependent group, or in the self’s definition. The preferences are dynamic and thus—as many marketing’s theories show — can be manipulated: <<Culture is also dynamic because cultural ideas and practices have multiple meanings that are constantly in flux, negotiated, manipulated, and arbitrated for a variety of reasons by all individuals who participate in a cultural community. [...] One particularly powerful type of symbolic resources of culture specifies the nature of self and its relationship with others. >> (Kitayama & al., 2007:138) Taking the culture as an interface with the environment around the self, an environment which includes also the others, the individuals have an agency that allows them to define the self and also to have an agency over the others that are trying to define themselves the same way. At the same time, they can manipulate this agency toward a direction in a reciprocal game of manipulations. This kind of manipulation on the identity of the individuals and the identities of the group – which must not be intended with the negative connotations that usually follow the word manipulation– was 7 8 All the definitions are citations from Kitayama & Bowmen, 2010 I find this dichotomy arguable, but a discussion over it may take too much time. In general, I agree with Miyanaga (1993)’s view of a traditional perception of individualism as a deviant behavior, but always present in Japan in different forms. I suggest Miyanaga’s work for a better understanding of the relation between groupism and individuality Japan 14 present also in the train’s promotion as the preferred mean of transportation to travel within the national borders. A marketing campaign that takes advantage and helps to reinforce the sense of nostalgia towards the countryside, the “lost Japan”, toward the use of train as the perfect means of transportation and the idealisation of a countryside not corrupted from modernity. It is possible so, to push people in experiencing travel in a determined form and toward a determined destination, by acting on the individual’s “self-in-action”. 1.3 - The vanishing Japan: modernization, secularization and education The “A travel to discover yourself” 9 catching phrase that the Nihon Kokuyū Tetsudō (日本国 有鉄道―nowadays Japan Railways (JR)―used in 1970 for the “discover Japan” campaign, became a popular theme in Japanese studies (Ivy, 1995; Kuwamoto, 2013; Noguchi, 1994; Nozawa, 2015) 10. Despite the marketing strategy beyond it, this campaign is interesting because it can depict the complex network of relations among the socio-economic and cultural changes that struck Japan in the period following the Pacific War. These are the actions and reactions involved in the process of modernisation that started in the Meiji period, the confirmation and the creation of authenticity of the Japanese culture, and the definition of the identities of individuals and groups in their dynamic interactions with all these factors. This campaign aimed to convince Japanese people to travel back into the Japanese furusato, to rediscover their Japanese identity that was going to disappear in the cities, as a consequence of modernization. The use in this work is not a trying of turn this campaign into a Maussian “Total social fact”. It is however interesting to see how this campaign fits perfectly into the centre of the network created by the above-mentioned facts. If, as Van Willigen (2002) suggest << [s]ocial marketing applies the concepts of marketing and marketing research to the task of cultural changes>>, then it’s possible to glimpse the culture and the social situation through the analysis of a marketing campaign. The JR’s campaign was created in a cultural moment, which is reflected in the campaign itself. A period in which Japanese felt they were losing their own identity. The second half of the ‘60s represented a period of strong social changes in Japan. In his final Manifesto “檄” (geki), in 1970, Yukio Mishima depicted the outline of Japan as he perceived it: <<In the post-war, I saw that we devoted ourselves to the economic prosperity of Japan, forgetting the foundation of the country, losing the national spirit, rushing toward the future without correcting the present, indulging in the moment with hypocrisy and make ourselves fall into the emptiness of the soul>> 11 (Mishima, 1976). Albeit it is possible to argue that the view offered by Mishima is an exaggeration of the cultural situation he was experiencing, that culminate in the ritual seppuku which 9 “自分自身を発見する旅” (Jibun jisshin wo hakken suru tabi) 10 A special mention among the citations goes to Ivy’s work, since her theory around “discover Japan” campaign it’s cited by many authors, and it was important also in the development of some of my works, included this. 11 <<われわれは戦後の日本が、経済的繁栄にうつつを抜かし、国の大本を忘れ、国民精神を失ひ、本を正さずして末に 走り、その場しのぎと偽善に陥り、自ら魂の空白状態へ落ち込んでゆくのを見た>> (三島、1976) 15 followed the writing of these words, it is possible to interpret this view as the << [...] articulations of the pain of disfiguration which the increasingly oppressive structuring forces of modernization impose upon the individual and society>> (Iida, 2002:3). Starting from the end of the war, which saw the Tennō admit his non-divine nature 12 and become “only” a cultural symbol, several cultural changes were imposed over Japanese identities. People had to move from the large countryside spaces to the small danchi in the urban agglomerates, to pursue a life-style that saw capitalism as the new doctrine to adopt: <<In the 1960s, Japanese society underwent enormous transformations of demography. The percentage of people engaged in primary industry agriculture, fishery and forestry – was 32.7 percent of the total workforce in 1960, but decreased to 19.4 percent by 1970, a decline of 40 percent in this period. The ratio for those engaged in agriculture was 26.8 percent of the total workforce in 1960 and just 15.9 percent in 1970. As if in proportion to this change, the movement of the population into cities accelerated. >> (Sakurai, 2004:18) The new necessities and wishes of the Japanese, which saw in progress an alternative way of enjoying their lives, led to the migration toward cities, but also to the expansions of cities toward rural areas. The migration was not an imposition, but a choice in which the neon lights of capitalism were a symbol of a better life-style. It differed from the migration that took place in the Meiji period, since the aim of the mobility in that period was the modernisation and industrialisation of the nation for war grinding, hence a collective goal. In the post-war mobility, the shifting from countryside to cities corresponded also to a shifting from collectivism to individualism (Miyanaga, 1993). Individualism is in strict connection with competition and also with an increasing request for freedom, two aspects reflected also into the employment and education systems. As professor Amano Ikuo explains: <<Since the Second World War, the family system has broken down to a great extent, and as nuclearisation of the family has progressed, competition over entrance to higher level schools has been shifting rapidly from the family unit to the individual level. Nonetheless, the influence of the family remains in the form of what we sometimes call “education mothers” or “education fathers”, parents who take a very strong, direct interest in their children’s education. >> (Amano, 1992:123) 12 The divine nature of the Tennō is a clear example on how much a process of secularization and scientificism based on western tradition, hit Japan. To say that the Japanese Tennō descend from kami is different from say that He descend from a God, since kami are not equivalent to divine creature in the standard of western religion orthodoxy. Both “divine” and “nature” in this context are the imposition of a Western canon on cultural elements that are part of that web of meanings that only makes sense when seen as a whole and from a Japanese point of view. When we only transpose the word from a language to another, we lose the meaning that these words have in the original language. Kami are not “gods” and Tennō is not an emperor in Western terms. 16 The new education system was at least partially in contrast with the society in which it penetrated. The socialisation in Japan, so called narawashi (習わし，custom/habit), learned in the familiar environment—what mother and grandmother teach their children—aim to foster cooperative people, respectful of the neighbours, devoted to the family and to the social life, almost in a tribal way. At the same time, one of the school system’s additional duty was to form members of the society with new cultural identities. This resulted in the generation gap which Sakurai defines as the “Intergenerational conflicts in the 1960s” (Sakurai, 2004:18). It would be easy to sum up, at risk of a heavy generalisation, the problems of the period: post-war Japan saw occupation forces to take the lead of the country in some of its key aspects, among which there was education. Education system is a tool through which the members of the society are formed and socialised. While Japanese society and culture (language included) underline the importance of collectivism and cooperation—despite individuality was present and important even in the past—the western style education system pushed the members of the society toward competition and individualism13. The subjects that emerge from this situation are individuals trained to compete for individual success—such a job into one of the leading companies of Japan — in a society that, at least in the general idea, push them to not work for individual, but for cooperative goals. The clash between the individual identity and the group identity, creates anxiety and distress in subjects that can feel like they do not fit completely in the society which they live in. This situation leads to several problems, such as depression or a higher rate of suicides. A potential solution in the 1970s was the rediscover of the Japanese self through travels in search of the authentic Japan. A Japan located in the furusato—the places where Japanese had the impression modernity hasn’t struck yet—and the phenomenon that Itsuki and Kamata (2016), among the others, define as “reinō-sha buumu” (霊能者ブーム）and often translated as “spiritual boom”. Reinō-sha indicates a person with spiritual abilities, and in a common usage is a term that refers to spiritual healers, therapists or counsellors, or spiritual leaders. The boom of these individuals is linked with a simple economic relationship to the major request of spiritual healing and counselling by the population, and show that anxiety was lived as an illness for the individuals and a sickness of the society. I think however, that to limit the “spiritual boom” to these practices and individuals it doesn’t reflect the wider range and dynamism of the phenomenon. As Nakamura (2011) explains, in the ‘60 there was in the Western countries14 a process of secularisation (世俗化、sezoku-ka) which is the << [...] process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols>> (Berger, 1989) 15. Eger (1980) suggests that the term “secularisation”, as the term “modernisation”, have a twofold historicity. As first they are both concepts that belong to a definite period of the European cultural sphere, and that Japanese scholar use these terms, it doesn’t imply that these concepts are superior (or more correct) to the different Japanese ones. It just shows that Japanese scholars follow a European model. As second <<both terms are connected with a a13 See Miyanaga (1993:92-95). Here we speak about a general belief, not an absolute truth 14 欧米、Europe and America 15 Also Nakamura (2011) defines “secularization” basing his work on Berger (1989) 17 changing understanding of “history” in Christian European thought after the Renaissance. >> (Eger, 1980:8). It would be hence wrong to accept blindly that the process of “secularisation”, born as a way to develop a “rational” though away from the Church, would fully make sense in Japan. Instead, would be better to think of the processes that in foreigner’s eyes see as “not-rational” in Japan, are in a final analysis completely “rational” inside Japanese society. And the cure for the sickness, the anxiety, deriving from the loss of the Japanese traditions, was to find out what the modernity, with its science and secularization, took away: Japanese cultures and identities. In Japan “secularisation” didn’t move away from the religious context, even just because there was not a Church to move away from. At most, it shifted the things that are scientifically “irrational” from a domain to another. As an example of this, professor Komatsu (2015) explains about Yōkai (妖怪) <<The modern science and the development and permeation of the material civilization eradicated Yōkai from the real world. However, also in the modern world, Yōkai are not extinct. They transfer their place of action mainly in the fictions and gossip of the cities, where they continue to live. In this aspect, also modern people still need Yōkai>>16 (小松、2015:10). “Secularisation” and “modernisation” didn’t overcome what they saw as the Japanese “irrationality”, at most they transferred it into a different realm. Won’t be wrong however, to state that “secularisation” and “modernisation” did actually bring the irrationality of the western traditions into Japanese cities, in the form of the scientific knowledge, leaving the original rationality of Japan, made of kami, yōkai and a strong relation with nature, outside in the countryside. 1.4 - Minzokugaku’s reaction to the vanishing Japan The minzokugaku (民俗学) 17 tradition in particular, helped to locate this “outside” in the furusato. The clash with cultural changes and modernity are not a post-war only phenomenon, but a constant in Japanese history. Japan has always been able to manage the flow of external cultures by extrapolating the salient features and reshaping them into a dimension that does not contrast too strongly with the indigenous culture. In the Meiji era, however, with the opening of Japan to western countries, the socio-cultural changes were massive. Yanagita Kunio, father of the minzokugaku, focused his efforts of research on kyōdo (郷土)—the countryside. Yanagita (1942b) thought the 16 <<近代の科学、物質文明の発達、浸透は現実世界から妖怪を撲滅してきた。しかし、現代においても妖怪 たちは滅びていない。活動の場を、都市の、それも主としてうわさ話やフィクションの世界に移して生き続 けている。その意味で、現代人も妖怪を必要としているのである。>>（小松、2015:10) 17 Minzokugaku is often translate at folkloristic or “native ethnology”. Despite these translations are generally accepted, I rather use the name minzokugaku in this work because the discipline it actually embodies characteristics of both folkloristic and ethnology, but leaving outside other. In particular, minzokugaku is a discipline influenced surely also, but not only, from Western anthropology and ethnology, which focus on the study of Japan by Japanese scholars. 18 research about kyōdo was a necessary field of study to put into practice fast, before the traditions— which he thought to belong already in the countryside—would disappear. Yanagita wasn’t the only authority who deeply connected furusato with the Japanese authenticity, but his role as “father of minzokugaku”, made his work particularly important in this linking. In fact, many consider Yanagita’s most famous work, Tōno Monogatari (遠野物語) written in 1910, as the milestone of the birth of the minzokugaku. Tōno Monogatari is a collection of old tales that feature mainly Yōkai and humans like Itako, narrated by a young habitant of Tōno, Sasaki Kizen, that Yanagita met in the university in Tōkyō. This collection of folktales arrives in a particular moment of Japanese literature history. Just a decade before, in 1900, Kosugi Tengai, wrote Hatsu Sugata (初すがた) as the first attempt of naturalism—which is referred as “early naturalism”, a movement lasted only a couple of years—under the influence of the deterministic approach of the French author Émile Zola. Naturalism came as a challenge to the romanticist tradition which saw in Izumi Kyōka—which works are full of grotesque and fantastic themes—one of the most famous exponent of the period. After the two years of early naturalism, the tradition became more solid and, by 1910, the use of the realistic and detailed description, and of the rationality became more and more pervasive in literature. It is a proof of the level of the penetration of western secularization inside the Japanese identity. Despite of his many friends among the naturalists, Yanagita Kunio wrote a book that recall the grotesque atmospheres of Izumi—of which he was an admirer—more than the rational point of view of the naturalism of his friend Shimazaki Toson, which after his start as a romantic poet, became one of the major proponent of Japanese naturalism. Naturalism was related to the (western imported) enlightenment, which already in the end of the 19th century, with Inoue Enryō tried—at least partially18—to eradicate Yōkai as a “superstition”. Yanagita instead walked the opposite direction: << [...] a radical interrogation of the modern western distinction between science and literature, thereby complicating the reading of the text. At no point in Legends does Yanagita condescend to his native informant; instead, he simply stylized—with great care—the oral tales reported by Sasaki, a walking database of Tōno narratives. In Yanagita’s portrayal, the people of Tōno have difficulty telling fact from fiction and the actual from the imaginary—much like the inhabitants of Sleepy Hollow in Washington Irving’s famous tale, who all walk about in a continual state of reverie and are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs. The people of Tōno thus not only narrate but also live what might be termed the “Deep North gothic” >> (Tatsumi,2006:71). At a first glance, the small town of Tōno represented an ideal “fieldwork” similar to the one that European anthropologists found in the Pacific area or Africa, with people, not yet “rational”, that still connected with the magic or supernatural. This was not true for the Pacific and was—as Yanagita knew—not true for Tōno. Tatsumi suggests that Tōno Monogatari <<is not anachronistic but “antidotal” to Japanese modernisation and westernisation>> (Tatsumi, 2006:72). The lexical choice 18 There are changes in perspective about the real aims of Inoue among recent scholars, see Komatsu (2015) 19 of Tatsumi, that defines as “antidotal” the work of Yanagita in light of modernization, it’s interesting. It suggests that under the point of view of Yanagita and Yanagita’s scholars, modernization was a problem, a disease, that had to be fought, and the research about and in the countryside would have been the medicine to it. Fukuzawa Yukichi (1962) explains that the relation between Japanese and Western started as a disease which he defined as gaikoku kōsai byō (外国交際病) or “international relationship syndrome”. Mizuta suggests that <<Fukuzawa, the social leader of the Meiji era and the founder of Keio University, criticised the Japanese who remained silent, or flattered gaikokujin even when the gaikokujin behaved outrageously to the Japanese. He claimed such obsequious attitude to be a disease [...]. Fukuzawa claimed that in order to cure this disease, the Japanese should understand that the Japanese and the gaikokujin are equal under the concept of human rights, and that Japan should become as modern and industrialized as the West. Japan’s success in industrialization, however, could not cure gaikoku- kōsai-byou>> (2009:44) Albeit the aims and the solutions were different, both Yanagita and Fukuzawa saw modernisation as a disease. Interestingly it is the cure they tried to found. Fukuzawa suggested that the disease was lying in the differences of status between westerns and Japanese, and the cure for it would have been reaching the equal social status—and the recognition of it—between the two groups. Putting Japan at the same technological and modernised level as Western countries, would have forced western countries to recognise Japanese as equal, and hence, would help Japanese people to feel as equals. Yanagita Kunio—as explained and emphasised by Mishima Yukio—saw modernisation as the disease which was killing Japanese culture and traditions, and the solution was to protect the places in which this culture was still (barely) living. Looking at history, it is possible to say that Japan adopted Fukuzawa perspective and walked the path of modernisation. This, however, as Mizuta pointed out, didn’t help to cure gaikoku kōsai byō. After the Pacific War, it forced Japanese to take a western path through a colonisation process19 led by United States. A path that apparently didn’t end yet. In post-war modernised Japan, the social difference between Japan and Western countries remained unchanged, if not highlighted. Not only in 1946 Ruth Benedict’s “the chrysanthemum and the sword” had the pretension to teach Japanese people what Japanese culture and identity was20. Foreigner scholars led the academic and education fields in Japan, even when the aim of study was Japan, with a better wage, better positions and roles, and often a worse competences and skills than the Japanese scholars. Even nowadays, Japanese studies still influenced by Eurocentric points of view from which is hard to take distances. 19 Even if mostly – at my humble knowledge of the literature – this phenomenon is not referred as “colonization”, the occupation with imposition of a culture, a language and a government mode is in fact a form of colonialism. 20 With the clear aim of justifying the American occupation in Japan as a necessity to make Japanese people become more civilized 20 Yanagita’s idea—later followed by many minzokugaku scholars—was instead to preserve Japanese authenticity by studying the Japan that modernisation didn’t contaminate yet. One of the crucial points of Yanagita’s minzokugaku was in fact to give commoners their right space in history. The history that, as Benedetto Croce’s historicism in Italy, neglected the commoners their own role. For Benedetto Croce, history was << [...] the “history of the spirit”, of conquest, from part of man, of increasing levels of theory and self-awareness. [...] this produced a double effect on the “sciences of man”: on the one hand it denied them any claim of real scientific because these sciences did not aspire to a “historicised” knowledge (from the point of view of the history of the spirit); on the other hand it denied the “primitives”, the “plebs”, the “lowlifes” any active role in the history (of the spirit) and therefore banned any serious cognitive predisposition towards them>> (Fabietti, 1991) 21. The sources for study about the Japanese past were operas such the Genji Monogatari or the Manyō shū—widely used by Orikuchi Shinobu—, in which the emerging lifestyle is the nobles and high society’s one, letting few space to a wider comprehension of Japanese common life. This doesn’t mean that a peasant could never enter history. As Wright Mills (1956) explains, to think that in all the epochs of human history a creative minority or a ruling class—what he defines elites—shapes all the historical events is a thought that usually covers a mere tautology. However, as Goody (2007) shows, history has never been the history of everyone. Yanagita, with his idea to introduce shomin (庶民)—a term coined by Yanagita himself to designate the commoner and farmers—inside history, helped to create an image of a multicultural Japan. He would eventually neglect this idea in favour of a unique Japanese-ness in his later life, but surely he gave a powerful impulse to later scholars such as Orikuchi or Miyamoto Tsuneichi, which choose the countryside for their fieldworks. In particular, Miyamoto granted value to the role of shomin in his research and, in a move not common for a man in the 1970s, he opens his work “shomin no hakken” (”the discovery of shomin”) with the words <<Half of the population of Japan are women. Even if women should occupy half of the history of Japan, there are only few things written about women. Even a female point of view on history was never established. [...] I would like to uncover the history of women that, even if once hidden in the 21 <<. Ma la storia era, per Croce, "storia dello spirito", della conquista, da parte dell'uomo, di livelli di teoricità e di autoconsapevolezza sempre maggiori […]. Lo storicismo Crociano produceva così un doppio effetto sulle "scienze dell'uomo": da un lato negava loro qualunque pretesa di vera scientificità in quanto tali scienze non aspiravano ad una conoscenza "storicizzata" (dal punto di vista della storia dello spirito); dall'altro negava ai «primitivi», alle «plebi», al «canagliume» qualunque ruolo attivo nella storia (dello spirito) e quindi bandiva qualunque seria predisposizione conoscitiva nei loro confronti>> (Fabietti, 1991) 21 shadow of men, and now are in the shadow of chattering women, faced silently the outside world rising children and working hard. >> 22(Miyamoto, 1996:1) 1.5 – Locating the vanishing “authentic” Japan Another important feature of Yanagita’s minzokugaku was his shūken ron (周圏論, concentric theory) known also as “snail theory”, which helps to understand the movement in space and time, i.e. the dynamism, of cultural artefacts. Giving a priori the fact that cultural artefacts generate in a cultural centre, in time these items move in all directions into the peripheries. At the time that the original artefact propagates from peripheries into the farthest peripheries, a new one substitutes and makes obsolete the former. Eventually, this artefact will also propagate toward peripheries with time, taking the place of the previous ones which will still live only in the farther peripheries, at least until this last artefact won’t reach these locations. Following this theory, the oldest and the most authentic version of a cultural item, it is located into the farthest point from cultural centres—which mostly correspond to cities—, while by moving towards the centre, it is possible to find newer and hence more modern versions of it (Yanagita, 1930). Following Yanagita’s theory, it is easy to locate the oldest and original artefacts in the furusato, the place that takes the roles of antithesis of modernity. This however is not enough to establish the “authenticity” of Japanese culture in furusato, for two major reasons. In the first place, it’s important to define what “authentic” means. All cultural artefacts are dynamic and they change and are changed in time, both in the centres and the peripheries. As an example, the garments used in the countryside during the Meiji period may have been more “traditional” compared to the “western” garments of the cities. This, however, doesn’t mean that the traditional clothes were anyway the “authentic” clothes, because they were already different from, as instance, the clothes that Japanese used to wear at the start of Tokugawa period, in 1600. The word “authentic” loses value also when used in a comparison “national/foreigner”. It is just with the advent of yōfuku (洋服, western clothes) that the compound wafuku (和服, Japanese clothes) come into existence and kimono (着物, lit: thing to wear) became the authentic Japanese garment. It 22 <<日本の歴史の半分は女がしめなければならないのを、女について書かれたものはほとんどない。女性史観という ようなものさえほとんどうちたてられてはいない。そうした埋没したものはほりおこせないものだろうか。かつては男 のかげにかくれ、今またおしゃべりの女のかげにかくれて外に向っては無口な、働きつづけ、子を育てつづけて来た女 たちの歴史を明らかにしたいものである。>> (宮本、1993:1). In this same intro, Miyamoto recognizes how his own works are influenced by Yanagita’s theories of shomin and their importance in history. The book, originally published in 1976, is a collection of previous works of Miyamoto. Tomida Hiroko (1996) explains how women's historiography first period of significant expansion ranges from 1948 to 1965, with a boom in 1970 and it’s firm establishment only from about the 1980. This is particularly interesting when once compare the space that Miyamoto gives to women in his works, compared to the one of other anthropologists, even outside of Japan, in the same period. Also Rosaldo (1980) points out that <<[…] 1970s saw a number of essentially comparable attempts to "turn the tables" by a wide range of feminist social scientists>> outside Japan. 22 is possible to see the same in the dichotomy washitsu (和室) e yōshitsu (溶質), the contrast between Japanese and Western houses, or with ryokan and western hotel, as will be later explained (see ch. 3.4.3). The emerging of the wa is a response to modernisation, it is resilience, a << [...] longing for a premodernity, a time before the West, before the catastrophic imprint of westernisation>> (Ivy, 1995:241). The research for authenticity hence, it generates through to the catastrophic imprint that it is trying to contrast. As Ivy explains << [...] the very search to find authentic survivals of premodern, pre-western Japanese authenticity is inescapably a modern endeavor, essentially enfolded within the historical condition that it would seek to escape>> (1995:241). Authenticity is a social construction linked to the particular social situation in which it was born. There is not a need of historical or cultural genuineness, since are the individuals that authenticates something as authentic. << “Authenticity” is a matter of interpretation which is made and fought for from within a cultural and, thus, historicized position. It is ascribed, not inscribed>> (Moore, 2002:210). The historicised position is a position of authority, since there are no intrinsic characteristics in cultural objects that confer to them any authenticity, and hence, this feature must be attributed to them. For this reason, authenticity must be understood as a subjective sociocultural production. Surely, Yanagita and other scholars and institutions helped to set the authenticity of Japanese-ness into the furusato, but it was because Japanese people could accept this notion that furusato embodies Japanese authenticity. In the end, as Surak suggests, << [a]uthority cannot simply be claimed, but must be acknowledged to be effective, for its power lies in the belief and submission of those over whom they hold it>> (2013:119). For this reason, instead of stating that the authentic Japan is located in furusato, would be more correct to state that Japanese perceive that furusato is a representation of the authentic Japan, or that Japanese bestowed the furusato with the authenticity of Japan. Big cities are the cultural centres in which modernization strike stronger, and the socio-cultural changes are emphasized by the institutions which promote such changes. Stevens explains how authenticity becomes a perception of people toward an object with her work about Japanese popular music: <<Audiences value cultural identity – whether Japanese or non-Japanese – for its authenticity. Japanese identity is “authentic” when it is distanced from the globalised culture of the industrialized urban centres. Perhaps precisely because of this, non-Japanese identity is “authentic” when it is associated with these urban centres and is often best expressed through the use of foreign languages. Once “authentic” expressions are established, to be accepted in a competitive market, an “authentic connection” between artists and audience must be established. [...] Authenticity is a crucial concept to the construction of the definition of Japanese popular music; yet its meaning is hotly contested. According to Baudrillard, our postmodern world is so multi-layered that there is no “authentic reality” anymore: everything is a reflected construction. Yet, even in the most postmodern society, we continue to use the word “authentic” to describe a positive aesthetic experience>> (2008:6) 23 Stevens gives a clear instance of the way in which Japanese identity is “authentic” when it is distanced from an urban centre and linked with furusato. By some extents, it is not even important if, echoing Lacanian psychoanalysis, authenticity is just a fantasy. Importantly, at least in this work, it is that people perceive some cultural objects as linked with the authenticity of their Japanese identity, and they have a more or less clear idea of the artefacts they may be considered as authentic. Instead, I argue that is precisely because of authenticity may be seen as a fantasy, that it can be subjective and can be manipulated. It is because Japanese people have a particular idea – or fantasy – about furusato, that they can easily link furusato with an authentic Japanese identity. It is what they imagine as Japanese and as not Japanese that, in the last point, creates the authenticity. 1.6 – Furusato as the traditional landscape It is also important to understand what furusato is. The translation as birthplace or homeland indicates a place where a subject is born. The translation countryside links it with a place far from the modernity of the cities. However, there is a deeper sociocultural aspect in it. Robertson suggests that <<Furusato is a word, or signifier, whose very ubiquity may camouflage its importance for understanding and interpreting Japanese culture>> (1988:494). The ubiquity which Robertson refers to, it lies in the context in which the word furusato itself is used. As an example, minzokugaku sees furusato as the place of the commoners, the place of customs and tradition. In this context furusato is a real place where is possible to experience a part of the Japanese multiculturalism. Researchers cannot experience artefacts that belong to the past, since they travel in space and not in time, but something that underwent fewer changes in time. And so these artefacts are more suitable to be compared to the past’s ones. At least in the ideal case. Changes arrive also in countryside, but they arrive there slowly. However, under a more subjective point of view, furusato is also the birthplace. Particularly in periods of strong industrial modernization, masses moved to cities in search of work, higher education pushed by the idea of a better life. In doing this, people left behind their lands, their families and a part of their past, keeping on their identity what Miyamoto (2015) defines as <<inaka kusasa>> (田舎くささ), literally “the smell of the countryside”. This is like a mark of the rustic and unsophisticated character of the people of the countryside. Miyamoto (2015) explains how in Tōkyō, he used to have around just a few people born and grew up in the city, while—may be also for his countryside origins, he admits—he used to be surrounded by other people that come from different provinces. In this context, furusato is not only the birth place of the single individual but also—the singular form it is not a mistake—the birthplace of the individuals that moved in Tōkyō after growing up in the countryside. If seen as the birthplace, for a person born in Tōkyō, the city of Tōkyō should be furusato. It seems, however, that this connection doesn’t work. Also as birthplace, furusato still connected with a space outside the cities. This may be because, in general, are people from the countryside that move in the cities, so are people from the countryside furusato that suffer 24 the loss of the birthplace. Miyamoto opens his work by explaining how people used to say they perceive a regional accent to enquire about the provenience of other people. Other people that come from other furusato, but share a common “not-born-in-Tōkyō” origin. Furusato is a mark formed by a series of tracts that cannot be deleted so easily, and in the sophisticated and modern cities it represents a symbol of identity that can separate locals and the immigrants. Moreover, it can also link immigrants with different regional origins. This not only confirmed that in Japan the multiculturalism proposed by Yanagita in his early works do exist, but also that Japanese individuals are called to negotiate different identities in the different social arenas in which they are subjects, which goes from the local, to the national and the international levels. This negotiation of identities is not a peculiarity of Japan. As Kuwahara explains in her work about Tahitian tattoo, regarding identity in Tahiti: <<[T]he complex articulation of indigenous and national identities expressed in the terms ‘Polynesian’, ‘Ma’ohi’ and ‘Tahitian’ indicates that people in Tahiti face socio-political complexities at several levels, dealing with the cultural diversity of archipelagos at the regional level, with the political state as internal autonomy within the French Republic at the national level, and also with the commodification of the island and people in tourism at the international level>> (2005:9). Japanese people face the complexity of indigenous and national identities that Tahitians face. This complexity became more complex with modernisation, as Japanese had to find their own “unique cultural identity” to use on an international level. Without taking in account the multi-ethnic face of Japanese reality—for sake of brevity—, Japanese need to negotiate daily with at least three identities which, echoing Iida (2005), are the national, the sub-national and the trans-national ones. If at the sub-national level, which may correspond to an individual level, furusato is the hometown of the subject, at a national level it is a multiplicity of place and, as multiplicity, is an abstraction. It is indeed the place in which someone is born, but is a place that trough the mediation of the minzokugaku and the discussion on the Japanese-ness, became the place far from modernisation where Japanese authenticity, its unsophisticated character, lives. It’s hence a symbol for contrast, the closeness of big urban agglomerates with the non-Japanese level. A physical place, but also an abstraction of it. In the furusato multiplicity it is possible to find characteristics that all furusato have in common. In this aspect, furusato becomes also an imagined landscape. With imagined landscape, I mean a landscape that encompasses features generally perceived to be proto-typical of this landscape. Roughly speaking, these features are associated with the kind of nature which is more abundant in Japan such mountains and hills, rivers and streams, forests and woods, and human-made scenery, such as local temple and shrine, or Japanese-style houses and farms. In a Japanese view, human disturbance is one element of a natural landscape. This furusato is the idea I have when I heard Japanese friends talk about furusato, or when I watch movies or anime which are set in furusato. This is to underline that a prototype is a 25 mental construction. According to Krause (2001) << [...] landscape scenery expresses the concrete and characteristic products of the interaction between human societies and culture with the natural environment. Landscape features can be identified as spatial units where region-specific elements, subjects and processes reflect the immobile structure and the dynamic ecosystem with typical alterations>>. Krause separates different kinds of landscapes in the following way:  Natural landscape: the appearance of a landscape unit based on its natural space character23  Cultural landscape identical with natural space: buildings/fields etc. are fitting in/subordinating to the structures of topographic relief, surface, water and vegetation canopy in terms of space, layout pattern, shape, material, colour, etc. of intensifying their appearance harmoniously, proportionally, canonically, etc.  Cultural landscape descended from natural space: Buildings/fields etc. are integrated into a general concept using relief/water system; the missing features are the mentioned naturelike individual relations to patterns of spatial formation, shape, material, color, etc. The appearance of natural space is mostly degraded or eroded.  Degraded cultural landscape: coexisting with nature-linked structures; Distorted or re-shaped (fine-)relief, straightened out stream beds, pathways, forest/field grids, etc.; cleared out and fallowed agricultural cropland, tree-less plots, squares, uniform greenery.  Format landscape: Areas are remodelled to satisfy those needs which do not come out of the traditional regional culture (agri-society etc.), such as sport and recreation facilities, parks, etc. Spatial formations, as well as their integral components are usually the result of intentional design conventions  Technical-industrial landscape: total distortion of ground areas and spatial formations in the natural and cultural landscape. Removal of disturbing objects, detouring, damming, dislocation and erection of autonomous elements (in comparison to the traditional landscape character). Furusato is not a “natural landscape” in Western terms, because the hand of the men is a necessary presence. To be perceived as a homeland, there must be at least homes. Even if it is impossible to deny the presence of elements of a “total distortion” in countryside—as dams or removal of disturbing objects may enter inside the furusato landscape — “technical-industrial landscapes” are better linked with cities, while–according to Krause definition — “format landscape” may fit both furusato and cities. However, since the spatial formations do not come out from the traditional regional culture, then it’s a kind of landscape that betray a manifest modern element which, as said 23 It’s a western idea of nature as will be briefly discussed in chapter 3 26 before, is often associated with the “industrialized centres”. Hence, furusato is a “cultural landscape”. The co-presence of nature and human-made elements it’s a constant of furusato scenery, as it is possible to see in the covers of the books of the series “utsukushii nihon no furusato” (美しい日本の ふるさと, “pretty furusato of Japan”)24 in fig.1. In these pictures, the harmony between the structure of the natural landscape, the regional features and the human-made elements are highlighted. Buildings consist mainly in minka (民家、folk houses) made in wood and of classical brown or white colour. Located near fields, or at the margin of the forest, these buildings seem to belong to a distant past. A picture of a city like Tōkyō, industries, skyscrapers and multicolour-lights shop names, just won’t suite the prototype of a furusato. However, elements such as electricity poles or cables are also part of the furusato scenery, since, despite their being “technological” features, are embedded inside the historical image of rural landscape. Another technological feature that is embedded inside the furusato landscape are local trains (ressha 列車), symbol of the travel toward furusato. Modern technologies, when they survive inside a culture, eventually become tradition. For this reason, they may fit the prototypical image of post-war furusato’s landscape. Furusato is also a cultural landscape with some clear and distinctive elements, that, despite their regional character, seems to be “general” 25 in the mental representation that Japanese have of it. It’s important to underline how and why this particular image of furusato became “the mental representation of furusato”. Karatani proposes that << [...] the notion of “landscape” developed in Japan sometime during the third decade of the Meiji period. Of course, there were landscapes long before they were “discovered”. But “landscapes” as such did not exist prior to the 1890s, and it is only when we think about it in this way that the layers of meaning entailed in the notion of a “discovery of landscape” become apparent>> (1993:19). What Karatani explains, it is that people until the Meiji period, could see a scenery without understanding it as a landscape, since the landscape is a historical construction, developed into a precise period and under precise social conditions. It’s possible to see a similar ideal in Orikuchi (1930c) which explains how jokeishi (叙景歌, scenic poetry / poetry that describes scenery) are cultural products that, as for images and painting of scenery, belong to a historical period. The poetry’s word choice itself could be anachronistic if not considered in that particular historical view of the world. 24 It’s a series edited by 産業編集センター that through the pictures of Kiyonaga and the text of Chitose, shows wonderful views of Japanese furusato 25 Here it is necessary once more to emphasize how universalization is a misleading concept, since there are surely many Japanese who do not perceive furusato or traditions by these terms. However, there are some cultural features or mental images that seems to be more prominent than others, and generalizations are used in these terms. 27 Fig 1 1.7 – Construction of the image of the furusato Orikuchi suggests that while Japanese had already formed an endemic way to express their vision of the world, an enormous influence came from China already in Asuka Period, and Yamabe no Akahito in Nara period, showed the true body of jokeishi. However, in the second poem of manyōshū, written by Emperor Jomei26 in Asuka period, there is already an outline of the landscape viewing idea. In this poem is narrated that the Emperor Jomei climbed Amanokaguyama, a mountain with150mt height. ca. in the Eastern part of Yamato plain (Nara), to perform a ritual called “kuni-mi” (国見, “seeing country”). This ritual consisted in climbing the mountain to its top and observing the country, to understand how population was living. Yamaguchi suggests that << [t]he mountain top was thought to be the point closest to the gods in heaven, and the “gazing” was regarded in folk tradition as having magical effect>> (Yamaguchi, 1987). The ritual suggests that the scenery seen by the emperor was a cultural landscape: the smoke coming up from the land (煙立竜, keburi tachi tatsu), was a sign that people had food to cook in their homes. In order to look effectively at how people in his land were performing, the interaction of the people with the land was a fundamental feature. Hence, kunimi was not an aesthetic gazing into the natural landscape or scenery, but a social and political ritual that embedded the knowledge that a cultural landscape could summarise the interaction that people had with their lands. It’s a different landscape from the one that Karatani suggested was discovered in the Meiji period, with a different subjectivity on it. This would be also in line with Orikuchi’s assertion that landscapes and sceneries are dynamic cultural features which may re-discovered under a new point of view, in relation to the time in which they are considered. Kunimi ritual is present also in other poems and in Kojiki. In particular Kohzai (1998) suggested that the poem 52 in manyōshū <<it is an attempt to clarify the configuration of the appearance of 26 As Emperor his name was Okinagatarashihi Hironuka Sumeramikoto (息長足日広額天皇), as reported in manyōshū 28 landscape>> 27 , always considering it in its historical aspect—as an ancient vision (古代的視覚). Kohzai argues that landscape viewing is a phenomenon that requests the human presence since, despite of the kind of landscape, a subject that “view” the scenery must be present. Under this view, landscapes are always a cultural point of view variable in time and space, like cultures are. Probably, wouldn’t be wrong to assert that the Japanese view of nature, that require human disturbance and it’s hence also a cultural landscape, it’s in definitive correct. If human kind belong to nature, the expression of its presence (culture), both as subject that view the landscape, or as a cultural object that is embedded in it, it’s part of the nature and of natural landscapes. The presence of landscapes’ descriptions inside literature works, such as kojiki and manyōshū, gives us the hint that a prototypical cultural landscape could exist already before the Meiji period. This prototype is based not only on personal experience but also on artistic works such as literature, theatre or painting. The problem is not to understand if Japanese had an idea of landscape as part of their environment or not. They had it and the literature proves it. The discussion that should arise from this point is how and how much the presence of landscape descriptions in literature—and with time also other media—helped Japanese people to shape a mental prototype of the Japanese landscape. In particular, would be possible to go back to the problem of authenticity: is it not a kind of Japan more authentic than another, just because of the way someone has described or painted it? I argue that the answer is positive, although it hides a problem within it. According to this idea, in fact, authenticity is nothing more than a fiction, or as Knudsen & al. (2016) suggest by echoing Lacan, a fantasy. The problem with alienation/authenticity proposed by Knudsen & al. deserves a better consideration. However, for the moment it’s important to understand how these fantasies are created and become prototypes. In short, once we accept a priori that furusato is not “a more authentic Japan”, but is the sense of alienation that modernity gives to Japanese to create a contrast which is defined “authentic”, what and how are the “authentic” furusato formed? Eleanor Rosch explains an important matter: << [...] the issues in categorization with which we are primarily concerned have to do with explaining the categories found in a culture and coded by the language of that culture at a particular point in time. When we speak of the formation of categories, we mean their formation in the culture>> (1978:28). This simple concept, often misunderstood as Rosch admits, goes in parallel with Orikuchi idea of a dynamic jokei. How landscapes are understood is historical, belong to a particular point in time. Thus, talking about furusato must be done by considering it in a particular point in time. Rosch affirms that << [...] the material objects of the world are perceived to high correlational structure>> and these structures do not require always a 27 <<この歌に定位し、風景なるものとその現れの構造を解明せんとする試みである。>> (香西、1998) ｡ In this case I arbitrarily decided to translate 風景 with landscape. 29 maximization of distinctiveness, as there is not any practical need to structure a dog with the most distinctiveness features to contrasting it to a stone. The structures, however, are important to help to recall what features the object must have to better fit the category, to create a schema. Schemas are not universal and objective, but rather dynamic and subjective. The words that form this schema are eventually used to evoke a mental image of the object itself. This image is built over the mental framework of the subject, and so it structured in Rosch’s terms. In an over-simplified vision, once a subject learned that a dog is a dog, when they will see a different breed of dog—a Siberian husky instead of the dachshund saw when he learned what a dog is—they will know that Siberian Husky is a dog and not a stone. Claudia Strauss (2018) suggests that: << [...] people’s mental frameworks are drawn from patterns in their own experience, not from patterns that an outsider might observe generalizing over many people or drawing upon the parts of public culture particularly striking to them. A person forms schemas based on the regularities they encounter; those schemas then can lead to reconstructing memories or even perceptions to fit the schemas. [...] Often, two people living in similar circumstances will acquire similar schemas. These shared cultural models, because of the way they direct attention and resolve blurry perceptions and memories, contribute to culture reproduction. However, members of a society, even members of the same family, do not have identical experiences. Differences in their experiences lead to some differences in their schemas; differences in their schemas later lead to differences in how they process new information, driving further differences in how they interpret public culture. Emotions and motivations are relevant as well. >> (2018:114-115) If it’s experiences that create mental frameworks on which images and prototypes are based, then it is people’s experience that gives form to the cultural landscape that (a part of) Japanese people call “furusato”. There is nothing intrinsic in a cultural landscape that makes it a furusato, but the shared experience of it. Experience furusato doesn’t necessarily means that all people who lived in a furusato possess the same framework of it. As previously said schemas are subjective, and also Strauss explains that <<[e]ven two people exposed to the same public culture will attend to different aspects of it and recollect different things>> (2018:115). Once again it’s important to underline how Japan is a multicultural country and that cultural elements such as furusato mean different things according to the subjects who are experiencing them. According to Tuan Yi-Fu <<Experience can be direct and intimate, or it can be indirect and conceptual, mediated by symbols>> (1977:6). By expanding this concept, it is possible to state that is not necessary to live the furusato and experience it directly, but is possible to experience it conceptually to create an equally valid schema of it. Not better, nor worse, just valid. It is wrong in 30 my opinion, to think that a mental framework is better than another, because this would imply that frameworks have an absolute degree of objectivity—there must be an only framework that is truly correct, while other at most tend to correctness—and in final thought, that there are kinds of experiences better than others. << Experience is compounded of feeling and thought. Human feeling is not a succession of discrete sensations; rather memory and anticipation are able to wield sensory impacts into a shifting stream of experience so that we may speak of a life of feeling as we do of a life of thought. It is a common tendency to disregard feeling and thought as opposed, the one registering subjective states, the other reporting on objective reality. In fact, they lie near the two ends of an experiential continuum, and both are ways of knowing>> (Tuan, 1977:10). I think that what Tuan is expressing in here is that we always connect feelings and moods to experiences, making them subjective. However, we tend to forget that our way to perceive the world is given by these subjective experiences. By consequence we tend to categorise our perceptions as objective. Used of North Italian climate, and having a favourable aptitude toward cold, during the time I lived in Taiwan I often thought that “objectively Taiwan has no winter” and I truly enjoyed seeing some Taiwanese friends walk with heavy jacket in December, while I was enjoying the average of 19 °C degrees often with shorts. It reveals that I have subjective thoughts about Taiwanese winter compared to some Taiwanese friends. And now, the readers who have read the previous passage, will have an equally valid scheme about Taiwanese winter based on my subjectivity, even if they have no direct experience of it. It just requires that they think “objectively, 19°C degree in winter is warm” or the opposite. Experiences create feelings, and feelings drive experiences. Once we are used to categorising 19°C degree in winter as warm, because we have experience it or because we are suggested it is, for us become easy to think our thought is objective and its alterity to be subjective and “strange”. Once again I want to underline that this “objectivity” is what makes something authentic, and it is a subjective idea, a subjective view. This applies also to the idea of furusato as imagined landscape28. A landscape imaged by the feeling people feel toward this image, and hence a heartscape. 28 In here I follow in part the constructivist approach to authenticity, which sees, as Barberani (2006:117) explains, the authenticity as a symbol, in which the correspondence with the reality can be the projection of a dream, of stereotypical images or any kind of object – intended not only as a concrete object, but also as a person, landscape, ritual, etc. – which are experienced as authentic not because original or real, but because they are perceived to be authentic. 31 Since the authenticity of the furusato is created by subjects, it’s now important to understand how this authenticity is created and why it is necessary29. It would be inappropriate to state that the reason is univocal, since there is a complex system of reasons and methods to create this authenticity. However, I agree with Marilyn Ivy’s idea of the “vanishing” as the primary reason to see in furusato the past—<<sometimes troped as “traditional” >> (Ivy, 1995:10)—and by consequence the authenticity of Japan. As Barberani explains <<The concept of authenticity in this sector [tourism] evokes at the same time the idea of distance and truth, [...] fundamental components in the production of tourism values, especially in the types of ethnic, historical and cultural tourism that presuppose a process of representation of the other or of the past>>30 (2006:115). Furusato as the “vanishing” Japan it is in close relation with tourism and, not a big surprise, with the kinds of tourism in which professor Barberani sees authenticity as a major striking force: ethnic, historical and cultural. Furusato can be defined as an ethnic, historical and cultural landscape, since it is the landscape of the “Japanese-ness” where the history and the traditions of the country still living or surviving. To connect the furusato landscape just with tourism would be, however, reductive. Not only because tourism is a relatively new kind of travel in Japan, but also because tourism, as said before, does not encompass the exquisite aesthetic and affective ideal of other forms of travel, which instead tabi has. The difference kind of travel experience, however, does not change always the experience of authenticity of furusato. Travel and tourism are an important arena of cultural encounter, and as will be later explained, both tabi and kankō are medium to connect identities. 1.8 - Creating the traditional furusato through literature: defining modernity and tradition So far, I’ve argued that furusato is an imagined cultural landscape, a heartscape, that encompasses the authenticity of Japan in contrast of modernisation. I have also sought support in different authors, to explain that this authenticity is nothing more than a perception given by the prototypical image of furusato that derives from direct or indirect experience of it. The reason Japanese at different stages in their history sought a way to define their Japanese-ness, is because 30 <<Il concetto di autenticità in questo settore evochi al tempo stesso l'idea di distanza e di verità, [...] componenti fondamentali nella produzione di valori turistici, soprattutto nelle tipologie di turismo etnico, storico e culturale che presuppongono un processo di rappresentazione dell'altro o del passato.>>. Il “settore” a cui si riferisce l’autrice è il turismo. 32 Japan is not a monochromatic culture as many tried to prove31, and it has never been. The dynamic character of modernity imposes us to see it as a cyclic period that hits over and over cultures, producing new modernity that eventually become traditions. If it so, when Japan became modern and furusato traditional? The answer is necessarily the right moment in which the western idea of modernity entered into the Japanese thoughts, and the new subjectivities and identities that this notion bring along, leaded to a unification of Japanese ethnicity with the “nation” and the creation of Japanese tradition. The unification of a Japanese ethnicity with the nation, and also with the nationstate, as any nationalism had a desperate need of the common: the common origin, the common history, the common language and the common traditions. Who more than the common people could embed this “commonness”? What it is common among us, and different from them, it is what makes our identity. For Western spectators, the Kyōto or Edo’s bourgeoisie’s lifestyle was pretty much enough to define the Japanese, because the Confucian thoughts of the merchant and nobles—the social stratum that represent bourgeoisie in western ideas—was whatever a more distant thing from the European’s one. Eating raw fish with chopsticks and wearing kimono were the Japanese “things”. Whoever travel to another country can easily spot the local “things” by noticing what the locals have that the travellers’ culture have not. For Japanese however, it was harder to find the Japanese “things”, a work that in different times in history, the “nihonjin ron” tried to complete. Even if for some foreigners, Italian culture may still pretty much be “eating pasta, lazy worker and mafia”—definition kindly provided by a dear Japanese friend when we were talking about stereotypes—it’s arguable that Italian people find in these features any sort of “Italia-ness”. There is also an extent by which is possible to argue that most of Japanese do not bother too much in searching what make themselves as Japanese. It’s hard to imagine farmers in the interwar period, which probably had little information about foreigners—despite the military mobilisation—to question themselves about their “being Japanese”. Isn’t being born in Japan and speaking Japanese—or better, a Japanese dialect—a sufficient condition? 31 Example may be Embree, Norbeck or Beardsley which in different periods affirmed that the villages they took in consideration in their studies (respectively, Suye Mura, Takushima and Niike) was prototypical of the whole Japan. A critique to Japanese homogeneity is present in Weiner (1997) and Ryang (2004). About “Japaneseness” interesting is the case of a volume of Yoji Yamasuke which original title is “日本人のこころ “(the heart of Japanese people), (2014, Tokyo: IBC Publishing) which was adapted, based on a translation of M. Cooney, in a 140 pages about volume published by Stone Bridge Press (2016) with the title “Japaneseness”. On this volume, the back cover has written <<This little book offers readers a provocative tour through seventy-six core life concepts that are at the foundation of Japanese behavior, belief, and beauty>>. Japaneseness is referred in the publisher’s preface as “the quality of being Japanese” (Pg.9). Despite the claim that the book is not a <<reductionist interpretation to prove Japanese “uniqueness”>> (pg.10) – I personally think that the volume is valid – I found interesting that Japaneseness was associated with Japanese “kokoro”, in the translation, and this was defined as the << […] traditional Japanese thought and the country’s value system>> (pg.10). 33 I believe that most of discussion on tradition and Japanese-ness were less important among the masses, than the ones of modernisation. Harootunian (2000) explains well that the 1920s and 1930s were a period in which discussions of modernity were central in Japanese daily lives, trough American capitalist movies, magazines and newspaper that described the new commodities, a new vision on women which emerge strongly in authors such Tanizaki. From Harootunian’s insightful explanation, it is possible to understand that Japanese people in the cities were not only living modernity, but they also welcomed it32. The discourse on traditions must start from here. With a simple equation, if modernity has as its opposite tradition, hence whatever is at the opposite of the “modern” things, somehow has to be traditional. It is city against countryside, western clothes against “kimono”, secularization against “religion”, science against folklore, western feminization against Japanese femininity, etc. Even if it’s wrong to think in terms of dichotomies, these oppositions seem to emerge often in a discourse about tradition. It’s a question of balance, for one to exist the other has to disappear, or to approach Ivy’s vanishing, for one to stay alive in its material form, the other has to dim its own presence and at most survive as a phantasm. The duality in the end, represent the best way to describe the alterity, a one can see it in Ruth Benedict’s arguable description of the “Them” and “Us”, where many tracts of Japanese and American are exasperated or hidden, depending on the convenience to let emerge the idea that “they” are “whatever” we are not. However, reality tells us that the dichotomy tradition vs. modernity, is not that clear. Mishima Yukio, which already is per se a character in which dualities emerge and mix, gives us a description of the hybrid dichotomy of tradition and modernity after the Russo-Japanese war, in work such “Haru no Yuki” (春の雪, Spring Snow): <<There were several pavilions used for the tea ceremony and also a large billiard room. Behind the main house, wild yams grew thick in the grounds, and there was a grove of cypresses planted by Kiyoaki’s grandfather, and intersected by two paths. One led to the rear gate; the other climbed a small hill to the plateau at its top, where a shrine stood at one corner of a wide expanse of grass. This was where his grandfather and two uncles were enshrined. The steps, lanterns, and torii, all stone, were traditional, but on either side of the steps, in place of the usual lion-dogs, a pair of cannon shells from the Russo-Japanese War had been painted white and set in the ground. Somewhat lower down there was a shrine to Inari, the harvest god, behind a magnificent trellis of wisteria>> (Mishima, 2000:11-12) 32 From the sources cited by Harootunian (2000), it emerges how “modernity” was a widespread term. A proof could be the emergence of words such moga (モガ) and mobo (モボ) as slang for “modern girl” and “modern boy” in 1920s. 34 The duality between tradition and modernity is vivid in Mishima’s words. The stone steps, the stone lanterns and the stone torii (鳥居, traditional gate of Shintō shrines) are the tradition. However, in the place where the (stone) lion-dogs (the komainu, 狛犬, also present at the entrance of the shrines) should be present, there were instead cannon shells from the just ended Russo-Japanese war painted in white33. Modernity in contrast—on the other side—of tradition, but also modernity instead —at the place—of tradition. A similar duality is present in Tanizaki’s “Tade kū mushi” (蓼食う虫, 1951), but the tradition versus modernity clash in this work takes the shape of a dichotomy between Japan versus the West. Instead of gardens, Tanizaki uses women as the major symbol of this duality. While Kaname, the main character of the book—and probably a representation of Tanizaki himself— at the start of the book seems to embody fully the western aesthetic, with an emphasis on veranda (typical of western houses) and his passion for English books34, he will slowly find a passion for traditions embodied in Ohisa, the geisha who accompanies his wife’s father. Differently from Mishima that seems to suggest trough the autochthon nature of the garden, where western features are just an appearance, that even with modern features the substance is traditional—a Japanese garden still a Japanese garden even with western features—, in Tanizaki’s work, is the Japanese tradition to be just a façade. Ohisa despite her traditional appearance, symbolized by kimono, manners, the black teeth, the gestures and the talking style, all external features, incorporates many modern and western characteristics, which shows that even if the outlook is Japanese, the substance, the spirit, may be westernized. 33 Here the emphasis on difference is not just on the object itself but also on material: the stone against the iron, one been associated with the tradition, with something fixed that from the past survived until the present, the latter associated with the modernity and the military advancement, which in Japan is represented by the metallurgic industry and its comparison with foreigner powers. This kind of dichotomy iron vs. wood is present also in Tanizaki (1933). Another interesting point from this section from Mishima, is that all the trees cited by the author are native from Japan – a thing which do not emerges in the translation. The cypress in the original Japanese version is an 檜 “hinoki” which is of the family of “false cypresses” and it’s native of central Japan. The wild Yam in the originally a 自然薯 “jinenjō”, a kind of Yam native of Japan and Korea, which is different from the wild Yam native of North America. The wisteria 藤 “fuji” in Japanese, is another native flower of Japan and it evoke one of the main character of Genji Monogatari, Fujitsubo 藤壺, beside be part of the family crest of many Japanese families which include the character 藤 in their family names, such the important Fujiwara family which dominated the political scene of Heian Japan. By some extent, is possible to argue that Mishima wanted to underline that even if the appearance – of the garden, but maybe also of the people – may lean toward modernization and foreigner tastes (the tea pavilions against the billiard room), the nature still “Japanese”. This image is also underlined by the idea of Honda toward Kiyoaki’s home: <<Although the Matsugaes seemed to lead a Westernized life and although their house was filled with objects from abroad, the atmosphere of their home was strikingly and traditionally Japanese. In his own household, on the other hand, the day-today life-style might be Japanese, but the atmosphere had much that was Western in spirit.>> (Mishima, 2000) 34 Here the dichotomy is not between west and east, but between Japan and the “west” which includes also middle-east. In fact, Kaname shows a true passion for an English translation of Arabian nights and the explicit sex scenes in it. 35 From these two authors, which despite of writing in different periods and socio-cultural situation depicts a similar period, it is possible to see how modernity and traditions, Japan and the West, are mixed and present in the Japanese daily life. The authors are depicting a dichotomy between these two poles that the reader can perceive, but that the characters of the books seem to live without noticing, even if they are inevitably influenced by them. What it is more important, at least for the development of this thesis, is that these two authors—and many other authors like them—are suggesting to the readers what is the tradition and what is the modernity. In “In praise to shadow” published in 1933, Tanizaki underlines even more explicitly the dichotomy between modernity and things Japanese. While the title “In praise of shadow” may suggest an exaltation of the Japanese things—the shadows represent Japanese aestheticism—Tanizaki is not trying to condemn modernisation and the western things in favour of a Japanese sense of beauty or a Japanese superiority. He is simply stating—in an essay that has the tone of a conversation—that there are different ways of perceiving beauty that sometimes are just not compatible, but they need to co-exist. A coexistence that in Japan is surely present. Tanizaki explains how people like his friend, the owner of a Chinese restaurant called Kairakuen, may be << [...] thoroughgoing purist in matters architectural. He [his friend] deplores electric fans and long refused to have them in his restaurant, but the complaints from customers with which he was faced every summer ultimately forced him to give in>> (1977:2). Seems that modernity is something we cannot escape from. And again, is a subjective thing: Tanizaki’s friend is a purist when it comes to architecture, but he is owing a Chinese restaurant, symbol of an imported culture. The interesting feature of this book is not a view on what is better between the Japanese things and western things, but it’s the fact that Tanizaki is giving us clear features of what is Japanese and what is Western. The difference between western and Japanese heating system is that << [...] without the red glow of the coals, the whole mood of winter is lost and whit it the pleasure of family gatherings round the fire. >> (Tanizaki, 1977: 3). Also the description of Japanese toilet – and its praise that reach “perfection” (1977:5) – it is detailed and create a vivid imaging of the difference between East and West. Tanizaki expresses a melancholic resignation to the advancing modernity, and it’s inevitable, because of the convenience, and the predominance over the Japanese things. Japanese toilets may be perfect, but are the western ones, with the cold ceramic tiles and iron features instead of the bamboo ones, to be clean and hence convenient. The anthropological importance of this particular work of Tanizaki, may also be notice in his discussion over fountain pens35. The author argues that if a device such fountain pen would have been created by ancient Japanese or Chinese, it would have a tufted end similar to a writing brush. This would have led to the use of a thicker dark ink, and the mass production of something near Japanese paper, more suitable for such ink. The 35 As Tanizaki explains, the comparison between fountain pens and Japanese brushes was made in an article written for a magazine. 36 discussion on abandon Japanese script in favour of roman letter (Latin script) would have been less noisy – it was in fact an argument of discussion of that period – and Japanese would have felt more affection for the old system (supposedly writing) and literature. Japanese thought, in the end, wouldn’t have been so imitating of the western ones. This observation over a simple writing equipment is a reasoning over one of the most discussed topic of post war and also recent anthropology, the clash between western technologies and science against the “others”, basically a discourse around development. The rising of the phantom of Japan it emerges in his words: << [...] can be no harm in considering how unlucky we have been, what losses we have suffered, in comparison with the Westerns. The Western has been able to move forward in ordered steps, while we have met superior civilization and have had to surrender to it, and we have had to leave a read we have followed for thousands of years. [...] If we had been left alone we might not be much further now in a material way than we were five hundred years ago. [...] We would have gone ahead very slowly and yet it is not impossible that we would one day have discovered our own substitute for the trolley, the radio, the airplane of today. They would have been no borrowed gadgets, they would have been the tools of our own culture, suited to us>> (Tanizaki, 1977: 8-9). These are “empty dreams of a novelist”—as Tanizaki defines them—however they are important. Important because he suggests that there is something that is perceived as modern, civilized, and it belongs to Western cultures. It is not the Japanese way, not a Japanese tool, but a borrowing which does not suit the Japanese. It is important also because these empty dreams give us the feeling of surrender toward modernity, not of an anthropologist who try to find a pseudo-scientific positivism behind the modernity and the sense of the lost, but of a novelist who is speaking as a Japanese to a Japanese audience. It was not one of those works, such as Nitobe’s “Bushido”, written to explain Japan to foreigners. This was a work for Japanese readers. “Written text still the most important existing communication technique” said once prof. Mauro Van Aken 36 . Surely Tanizaki was not an anthropologist, but it is probable that his book has been read by Japanese more than Yanagita or Orikuchi’s academic works. 1930s was the period of the 円本ブーム (enpon boom), books sold for 1 yen which profit comes from low gain for massive sales. Despite at the time was not so convenient to buy these books, as Kawana (2018) explains, they were in high demand. Literature became an important media on Japanese’s identity formation. Somehow, it seems that authors such as Tanizaki, Sōseki, Mishima or in more recent time Murakami, Ogawa or Sumino, being fictional authors for the most, are not reliable as sources. I admit I didn’t make a thorough research on the use of fictional 36 In introductory lesson of his course in Università degli Studi di Mialno Bicocca in March 2020. 37 authors and novelist as an anthropological source, since it is not really fundamental for my thesis. I’m sure somewhere, someone did already discuss the topic, and weather was the conclusion, someone else said it was wrong. My feeling—if this is a better definition for an idea which has not thoroughly researched—derives from the simple gesture of opening the hundreds of books about Japan I have here at home, mostly academic works, and see how less these names appear in the bibliographies. However, I just wondered if the Japan I read about in Murakami, Tanizaki or Mishima, is really that far from being an authentic window on Japan. In the end, what would be the reason for Murakami to set the plot of one of his story in a fictional Japan, when both him and his (Japanese) readers are embedded in the real one? Instead, I find that the ability of a novelist of describing places and sets, of describing and arousing multi-sensorial emotions, to allow the reader to be virtually present in the set, it is an important anthropological resource. Murakami not only has the eyes of capturing situation and feelings that the anthropologist, in his attempt to rationalize and create theories, may have not. Murakami does also possess the gift of narrate this reality, a gift that the anthropologist or the people that works as middlemen for the Japanese, i.e. informants, probably do not possess. An author such Murakami is not just a person who lives the Japanese reality, he also has the tool to narrate this reality in a way that Japanese feels acceptable. In literature is present the effect called yojō (余情), the lingering effect, in which the readers’ emotional experience is triggered by images created by some kinds of indirect and implicit writing. According to Senko K. Maynard (2011), when interpreting yojō, sustained visual images, empathy toward the world created by the writing and toward the writer’s thoughts, are among the aspects involved. The Japan depicted by Murakami, besides having yojō, is more realistic and infinitely more enjoyable and engaging in reading, than the one depicted by Ruth Benedict, which however seems still omnipresent in the bibliographies as a Bible for western students of Japanese anthropology and culture. Literature, not only can depict a real image of Japan, but depicts that image of Japan toward which Japanese may feel empathy. The image of Japan that Japanese may image. With this long digression, I wanted to reason on this simple fact: literature and art were a sizeable force into the creation of the Japanese authenticity, even as perceived by the Japanese themselves. For this reason, I totally agree with Mishima when he states that a work such as Tōno Monogatari, is one of the most important literary works of Japan, a proof of the dying past, of traditions that smell of rotten corpses. In the same way, I see Ivy’s “vanishing” as one of the most important books about Japan ever written. Japan’s authenticity is a fiction, is something narrated and perceived, is a view of the world and a feeling. It is the modernity that pushed the traditions in the countryside, but at the same time, is the tradition that exists only in contrast with the modernity itself. It is the fictions in which Japan is depicted and imagined, but is also the way in which Japan is lived 38 that emerges in the fictions. It is the feeling of belonging to a country with a unique culture and a unique identity, but also the necessity to find one’s own culture and identity somewhere in the countryside. The tabi toward furusato, the journey toward traditions, lies totally into this game of lights and shadows, in which what’s authentic, what’s traditional, what’s Japanese, is already decided a priori through the use of the fictional world created. Even through other people’s narrative, by our imagination and idealisation. Tabi toward furusato is not tourism. It is a path toward a place that is a non-place, is a return to a place in which the subject maybe has never been, it is the research of an identity which is already embedded in the individual’s identity, but requires interaction with the alterity to emerge. Tourism toward traditions instead is not discovery. It is a confirmation of our idealizations, is the confirmation of our expectation. It is to know a priori what is there to be found, thanks to experiences mediated by other people. As the research of real tradition, tourism is a fiction, because traditions are an invention of modernity, as an escape from modernity tourism is a fake, because this breakout is possible only in the modernity itself. A tabi instead, when these ideals are not created a priori, may become a real chance to encounter the alterity and form a relatively new identity. It means to make one’s own experience of the space and the time, and change. However, these experiences, so profoundly different in their compositions, are all fundamental to construct our own identities and in understanding the world. And also this fiction of modern-traditions and nonplace-localities, is our own reality, our world. Tabi, tourism, travels, journeys, reading, listening, conversations, writing: whatever is the way, all these are meant to experience these realities. The tabi starts from here. 39 40 A tabi in furusato: Japanese rediscovery of the self in the image of furusato 2.1 – Furusato as the cure for individualism? “Discover Japan” to rediscover the self I already cited the 1970 JR’s “discover Japan” campaign – without diving into the details – as a temporary starting point for the discourse about tradition, modernity and authenticity. On that occasion was only an outlook, since I didn’t really develop an explanation of it. This campaign is important to understand the conceptualisation of furusato in post-war Japan. It would be hence a good first step. The catching phrase “Jibun jisshin wo hakken suru tabi”, “A travel to discover yourself” was a meaning to suggest Japanese people to use the train to travel toward furusato. I explained already how trains can be considered as a cooperative choice of transportation means comparing to the car. It also evokes the imaginary of the coming back to one’s hometown in a period in which cars were not such as common. The train – local train, not the shinkansen — was seen as a symbol of the tradition and it became a very important feature of the furusato landscape, at the point to lose its value of modern artefact. The JR’s campaign had to aim to change the “self-in-action” (ch.1) and to modify the epistemic and motivational components of it. The first point to take into consideration is the state of the “self-in-action” of Japanese in the 60-70s. The mass migration toward cities had a deep influence over Japanese representation of the self. The reality of the socio-cultural changes was not uniquely the migration which could coincide with new living habit. Migration toward cities represented a new definition of the identities. Among these changes there was a transition toward individuality (Miyanaga, 1993), a change in education which aim to the individual success, a meritocratic basis that stressed the important of personal academic success in employment and working advancement (Rohlen, 1977), and a strong change in the idea of family which led to a decreasing into the fertility ratio (Nosaka, 2009). JR’s campaign it can be an anthropological tool to read these changes. I want to underline that is not a consequence, nor a reason, but just a reading tool. In 1960-70s people started to think in a more individualistic way in the collective layer. Japanese, as Miyanaga (1993) suggests, wasn’t free of the idea of individualism. Since ancient times there were hermits, samurai leaders or ronin, important managers of companies or corporations. These figures are not despised in Japan, even if they do not fit the “community” and “groupism” that form the Japanese collectivism. The difference between these “famous” people and the individualists of 1960-70s, is that in the first case the individualism was an example of success and superior ability— 41 something that make them like “superior persons”—as an exception to society, in the second case, individualism was becoming the routine of the society, even at his more common substrate among people who do not reach any kind of success. Also, I was suggested by a dear friend, that the individualists such as hermits, ronin, big companies’ managers were essential to the community. They pray, protect, give work, heal, perform those tasks that required a step further from the collective. She suggested that the individualism in the post-war period aimed at a personal profit and sometimes was contrary to the community welfare. This latter kind of individualism, underlined in the places of group interaction such schools and workplace, was reflected in a clash between the epistemic, the normative and the motivational components of the creation of the self: individuals were socialised with beliefs of interdependence, with a corresponding agency, since the desirable behaviours was to put the self after the group at the level of the community. However, the goals of the individuals suddenly shifted to independent oriented aims—such as success in school for advancing in career—and competition over cooperation. Individualism has always been present in Japan, as something exceptional, but in the post war became something more and more ordinary. If in the past individualism was a peculiarity of some individuals, in post war became a characteristic common in layers of the society. << [...] the majority of Japanese still view individualism as deviant behaviour. A major reason for this is that Japan’s economic success, which is still concentrated in the mainstream, has been built upon the foundation of corporate loyalty, imported through particular forms of collective group orientation>> (Miyanaga, 1993:124). The mainstream which Miyanaga explains to be the “Japan, Inc.”, the one formed by large and famous corporates, represents only a small part of the Japanese economy’s back bone37. However, it is the part in which the individuality emerges. From an external point of view, it looks like the collective group orientation has the goal of let a small part of individuals to emerge. I must underline how this is only an opinion, but at large, appear as a discrepancy among what the society shows, the society teaches and the individuals perceive. This translated in two major issues, which again shows that Japanese is not a monochromatic culture. On one side there was anxiety for the change brought by modernity, secularisation and individualism. This anxiety led to the emergence of so called “spiritual boom” (Nakamura, 2011; Itsuki & Kamada, 2016 ), the return in the furusato and the interest in folklore. Something following could be labelled as “新伝統主義” (shin dentō shugi) or “new traditionalism”. On the other side, there were people who wanted to live what can be defined as a “new individualism” (Elliot & Lemer, 2006; Elliot, Katagiri & Sawai, 2010). Features of this “new individualism” are: 37 A fact that Kondo remarkably explains in her “Crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace”, 1990, Chicago, The University of Chicago 42  A call for self-reinvention (自己再創造への要請)  Endless craving for instant changes (即座の変化への終わりなき渇望)  Allurement of the social acceleration, speed and dynamism (社会の加速化・速度・ダイ ナミズムの誘惑)  Attachment to episodicity and short-termism (短期主義とエピソード性への執着) (Elliot, Katagiri & Sawai, 2010) “New traditionalism” and “new individualism” do not necessarily form a dichotomy. Even if their most direct association is with rural Japan and urbanised Japan—tradition and modernity—they present some similar features. 2.2 – Nostalgia as the spark of reinvention There was, however, another kind of self-reinvention which worked the other way round. The oppressive sense of modernity of the big cities created nostalgia for the “good old countryside”. Japanese had to reinvent themselves as “Japanese”. Not only big cities were now too modern to be Japanese, but this process of transformation embodied also the villages. There was no place for escaping from modernity, at least not physically, since it was impossible to de-structuralize the villages from the network of the economic growth of the 1960s. The changes in the cities influenced the villages heavily. There was also a growing nostalgia for those furusato experiences (the rural life) that, in truth, some Japanese—probably the majority of them—never experienced. Jennifer Robertson explains how <<The cogency of furusato, as a sentimentally evoked topography, increases in proportion to the sense of homelessness experienced by Japanese individuals or groups. In this regard, Japanese social scientists have suggested that with the rapid urbanization of the countryside since the post-war period, the Japanese “can’t go home again.” Because villages and cities have lost their distinctiveness as social environments due to the urbanization of the former, the nostalgia provoked by estrangement from an “old village” has become thin and insignificant. There is no particular place to “go home” to; consequently, there is no particular place to feel nostalgic toward. Homelessness today is a postmodern condition of existential disaffection: nostalgia for the experience of nostalgia>> (Robertson, 1988). 43 This homelessness is created by a loss of the furusato (故郷喪失) and it is placed at the base of the nostalgia, the driven force for the furusato-dzukuri, which is itself a post-modern selfreinvention. Miyamoto (2015:23-24) explains how the cities created a personality split (二重人格者) in people, which comprise city people (都人士) and country people (地方人). According to the scholar, most of the people born in the cities affirm that they do not have a furusato (私には郷里がない), even if the cities, as their birthplaces, should be. Since many of the inhabitants of the cities are aliens, they do not feel such a deep attachment to the land and hence, concludes Miyamoto, if one lives in the city, the “furusato consciousness” (郷土意識, kyōdo ishiki) is not that strong. The connection between city people and furusato is weakened also by other components that contribute to the formation of the “new individualism”: the social acceleration, speed and dynamism. An improvement of the rate of literacy and the link between university graduation and employment, translated into new living rhythms. The workplace’s clock beats the time—where in countryside was the sun—, and the pole around which the individual life spins became the career. Companies’ regulations not only influenced the daily life, but also the free time and the possibility to back in the furusato. The post-war led to the secularisation of the State, hence many traditional festivals, which are religious in their origin, become less prominent in the life of Japanese. Already in the Meiji period the Gregorian calendar was adopted and January was considered as the start of the year. A big difference compared to the previous division of the time that was following the lunar year. Festivities such as the Obon (お盆), which were based on the Chinese calendar, were implemented in different days, based on the region. The first day of the year became January the 1 st according to the Western calendar, and after the war many national holidays were invented, often on the base of traditional ones that lost their original meaning. As an example, the Niiname-sai (新嘗祭) was the festival in which people used to thank the Kami for the previous harvest and pray for a prosperous one in the next year. Traditionally, it fells on the central day of the rabbit on the 11th month38, but with the introduction of Gregorian calendar (1873) it was fixed on November 23 rd. In 1948, with the secularisation, the 23rd of November became the “labour day” (勤労感謝の日), a national holiday in which labour and production are celebrated. A festival to collectively thanks the kami for their gifts to the community, became a holiday to celebrate the production and also the occasion for a break from one’s work. A moment in which the individuals could separate from their colleagues. This shows how modernity helps to create “new individualism” through the management of time. While in Niiname-sai people used to gather to celebrate, “labour day” it is more like a personal holiday. The change of the date broke any links with the rural production. 23th November is a common working day for farmers. Labour day, however, is accounted as a traditional (national) holiday: the same time 38 陰暦11月の中の卯うの日 44 management which creates “new individualism”, it helps also to create “new traditionalism”. Farmers are traditional, because they follow the traditional flow of time, the rhythm of the nature. They cannot stick completely to the “modern” holidays celebrated by the big industries and companies39. The rural rhythm cannot be organised like the fast social acceleration of the urban centres. It doesn’t mean it is a slow pace tempo, but it is a cyclical time which never speeds up. Modernity could decide when the production can take a break. Farmers instead, cannot decide when the nature does it course. This time is the time of tradition because it never accelerates. Traditions appear to be in a slow motion, because their dynamic character and time—which is not in the past, but the present—do not work at the same speed of the sped up modernity. Or again, one can say that things that appear to be static due to their necessary low pace speed and lack of acceleration, sooner or later, will end to be labelled as traditional. Since the workplace—and the school—betas the time, Japanese had to arrange their lives according to this fast pace rhythm. The development of Shinkansen trains allows people to travel from city to city in shorter time, both for work and for leisure. The massive development of the shinkansen line shows that time is a major value in Japanese economic mentality. As Okada explains: <<The method used most often to quantify the effect of rapid transport on the social economy is to convert the time saving compared with conventional transport into money. If 85% of the total passengers on the present four shinkansen lines shifted from conventional lines, the annual time saving calculated from the difference in schedule times between the shinkansen and conventional lines is approximately 400 million hours. By calculating the value of the time per hour from GDP per capita, the value of the time saving is approximately ¥500 billion per Year>>(1994). In these terms, the Shinkansen represents an economically advantageous technology. At the social level, however, it is not only an economic choice. It also provides a culturally positive idea of mobility. In the 1960s there was a general big change in transportation means. Along with the first shinkansen, the 1964’s Tōkyō Olympics represented the virtual end of the post-war reconstruction. Since the 1st of April 1964, Japanese citizens could travel freely overseas, giving a boost to the aviation industry. The flight toward overseas, together with an increment of personal cars, had a great impact on the railway which usage decline strongly by the start of the 1970s. The crowded trains that connect suburbs with the urban centres started to be associated with the negative images of stress and penance (苦行, kugyō). Trains were connected with the need of commute from home to work, with the hard work and fast-paced life, the low sociability and the violation of the personal spaces, cases of sexual 39 It is possible instead to affirm that familiar bounds are re-created around new festivities, such new year, since is a period of vacation. Modern holidays hence become the moments in which is possible to back in furusato. 45 harassment and also suicides. JR had to give a whole new image of trains that could evoke in Japanese positive emotions. The new image was an image linked with the past. 2.3 – Marketing nostalgia to sell furusato: examples of commercials evoke the “good old Japan” These notions of authenticity, modernity, tradition and individualism, the depicting of Japan in literature, the phenomenon of nostalgia, all cooperate in forming the background on which the “discover Japan” campaign was launched. An old CM40 of JR (1970), gives a general insight of the situation. As a CM, the aim of this video is not to explain the social situation of Japan, but to attract people to use JR’s trains to travel around Japan. It was the promotion of the new image of the train. As a CM, its aim was to promote what for JR’s company would have been a desirable product. In particular, the kind of scenery that the primary consumers of the CM, the “homeless” Japanese, needed. As Robertson (1995) explains <<[f]rom “Discover Japan” in the 1970s to “Exotic Japan” in the 1980s, the Railways advertised its world-bridging services to “homeless” urbanities. The railroad brings people back to both the countryside and a nostalgic frame of mind>>. This is the reason this CM can be considered as an important tool to read the phenomenon of “furusato-dzukuri”. The CM last about a minute half, and can be separated in two distinct parts. The first part features two young Japanese women at a train station, wearing modern (judging by the fashion of those years) westernstyle clothes, with an ekiben41 and a handbag each, embarking a train for travel. The size of their bags suggests a kind of travel similar to backpacking than tourism, or a return to their hometowns. Backpacking became popular in the 1960s-70 years in Japan as a means of self-discovery. Despite backpacking is usually refereed as a travel overseas where the individual can enter in contact with other cultures, a similar situation was present also within Japanese borders. The following scenes of the CM, features the two girls on the train reading maps and (probably) a travel book. Then, the next scene sees the two women enjoying gathering vegetables in a field. Back on the train they are depicted using a modern camera to take a picture out of the train window. On their second stop they are eating apples caught directly from a tree. Then we can see them playing cards with another woman on the train, running in fields, eating bentō on the train, drinking tap water from a fountain, eating with a family in a Japanese minka (a classical Japanese country home). At this point, a male voice says <＜ Tabi is a continue discovery. JR’s 5084 stations are waiting for your tabi of discovery＞＞42 while the two women are enjoying an open-air onsen. The scene on the onsen shows the two women in the 40 Commercial Message, the Japanese definition of a promotional video 41 A lunch box (bentō) bought in train stations to be consumed on the train. 42 <<旅は新しい発見の連続. 国鉄の五八十四箇所の駅があなたのディスコバーの旅をお待ちしています>> 46 foreground, clearly relaxing in the bath. In the background, a man is going to enter the onsen as well, but after a few steps outside the door, he apparently wants to get back in. It is hard to say if this man was there by purpose or is just a casual customer. It is also hard to understand if his apparent reluctance of entering the onsen is because of the presence of the camera or the presence of the women. Mixed bath was already not so common in the 1970s, and were legally regulated since Mieji period because of the government’s worries about the western idea of mixed-bath as unmoral (Clark, 1994:34-35)43. In the last scene, the two women are happily greeting the audience. The first part of the CM ends with the campaign logo and the suggestion of request stamp of the campaign as a memory with the slogan <<Let’s stamp the memory of DISCOVERY>> 44 . This suggestion of stamping a memory, is a strong cultural reference, since recall the practice of receiving a seal (御朱 印, goshuin) as a proof of the visit of a temple or shrine during a pilgrimage. The second part of the CM, features the famous illustrator Ohashi Ayumi (大橋歩) which affirms that she really likes to greet people she does not know, in places she does not know45. The CM end with the question <<what will you find there? >>46 . This CM conveys some important messages that can put light on some truths about Japanese society in the period around 1970.  “Tabi” is not a ready-made experience as tourism may be. Tabi is a process in which the subject may discover unknown places or new people, as a way to enrich one’s own life. Differently from tourism it is not just the destination which is important, but the path itself. And subjects should enjoy the tabi in each single aspect. There is no way to understand if the two women’s final destination was the onsen, but surely in the video it is the path to be emphasised. This is also because the CM wants to address the idea of travel by train, i.e. the time spend on the train.  In the furusato, people can do those activities they used to do in the past, or far from the cities. The normality of gathering vegetables, eating apples from trees, relaxing in an open-air onsen and greeting or talking with strangers. This is what cities and modernity rob them of. This is where nostalgia emerges.  There is no need to travel far to discover something new. Furusato is not just a comimg back, but may be a totally new experience, moreover for those people born in the big cities. It is a place for escaping from the stress of modernity and enjoyment, but also a way to enter in contact with the self. 43 I found particularly a passage of Clark (1994) << Referring to the mixed bathing of the old days, an old man smilingly told me, “You Americans ruined a good thing.”>>. Also mixed bathing is a phantom of Japanese culture. 44 <<DISCOVERY の思い出スタンプしましょう！>>. To be noted that the word discovery is in capital roma-ji character. 45 ＜＜知らないところで、知らない人たちにこんにちはするのが好きです＞＞ 46 <<あなたならそこで何を発見しますか＞＞ 47  Tabi toward furusato is no more connected only with the return to the husband’s family. Two young women can travel safely around Japan. It shows that women are now emancipated and travel within Japan is a safe way to show their independence. This is a development of the idea of solo travel, the one where one is supposed to better know him/herself47. Keeping in mind that this CM has the purpose of incentive people in taking the trains, ressha is depicted as the perfect means to connect all these aspects. It allows the passenger to be more than a “luggage”—as Okada (1975) defines the new travellers. Okada compares new travellers to luggage because they embark at the starting point to disembark at the destination, with no cognition of the path. Like luggage, they sit on their seats without talking, interacting, watching the landscape outside. Taking the train, as the CM shows, is different. It is a continuous experience in which, at every single step, one may find something new. Local trains are not only the one which people embark to go to work or school. It is not only the train people keep their head low in books, textbooks or documents, but also a train where people can socialise. It is not the train that brings the subjects always to the same station (home, school, workplace), but the train that can bring them in a new furusato, to a new experience. Train is the mean to run away from the boredom and the stress of the cities, without the necessity of going far by shinkansen or airplane. This also because shinkansen connects a city with the modernity and stress of other cities. Moreover, the train is safe for women. It is not casual that the CM features women as primary subjects48. It is a symbol of emancipation and it underlines the fact that trains must be not connected with the phenomenon of sexual harassment. It’s a CM that sees women as guests in tourism, and not only as hosts (see Ch.3.4) Marketing campaigns involve a wide range of actors and strategies which aim to promote at the best use of a product. First, as mentioned above CM is a typical Japanese style. While promoting the use of local trains, a message that implies the non-use of adversary transportation means such airplanes, cars, or shinkansen, it doesn’t use direct comparison with competitors. The CM tries to play on the audience’s emotions and feelings to implicitly convey a message. A communication strategy which is part of the Japanese language, in which the meta-message (ura, 裏, literally the hidden part) takes the precedence over the message (omote, 表). As Lazer et al. (1985) explain <<Japanese marketers tend to be more intuitive, subjective, communication and human relations oriented>>. The CM in fact, speaks by meta-message and the above-mentioned crucial points 47 In Chapter 3 space will be given also to the difference in gender during travel experience. In particular, 1970s show an increment in travels made by women, a trend that continues nowadays (3.4). 48 In fact, men are present only on the host side, as the JR’s staff or as the host’s family where the two women eat bentō. This is a relevant particular since, as will be explain in chapter 3, the role of women in Japanese tourism has usually been analyzed on the side of the hosts. 48 emerge from it49. As a second point, this CM pushes on the concept of nostalgia and presents the furusato as a place where one can discover the self. The fundamental concept is once again expressed by a meta-message. The tabi is a way to discover, and the things that are “discovered” in the CM involve the simplicity of the countryside life. The competitor of the furusato is the city, the competitor of the simplicity of the traditions is the complexity of modernity. There are no direct references to this duality, besides glimpse of modernity in the women’s appearance and the starting scene which sets in a relatively big station. However, also these points are a meta-message. The departure from an urban station toward furusato is an escape from the city. The women who start their travel with western clothes and jackets, slowly lose their clothing, ending the CM literally naked into the onsen. Metaphorically, they are undressing from western-style and urban appearance, to re-gain the Japanese corporal substance. The campaign was set around the concept of nostalgia for the good old furusato and the invisible competitors were the cities and the modernity that permeates them. This nostalgia is driven by the dichotomies associated to the development in the post-war period 50 , a development that has clear symbols, such dams51, to which correspond the loss of something else. It is in this fear of losing that “nostalgia” was born. The connection of furusato with nostalgia, the dichotomy urban/modern and furusato/tradition is not limited to the 1970s. Creighton (1997) through the analysis of a 1991 advertising campaign for ANA (All Nippon Airways, or zennikkū) 52, finds symbols of urban modernity and rural tradition, and a separation between the two. The advertisement displays two scenes of the same family that travel by zennikkū from Tōkyō (upper scene) to Kumamoto (lower scene), to get the daughter married. The symbols of modernity in the upper scene are the business suit and tie with briefcase for the husband, stylish modern designer dresses for the wife and the daughter, and their home squeezed between neighbouring houses and demarcated by walls. These are not just symbols of a material modernity, but also symbols of the 49 In order to better understand the meta-messages, I also consulted some Japanese acquaintances which used to be in their twenties during those years. 50 During a lesson in Spring 2020, professor Mauro Van Aken explained how the idea of development was based on old concepts which includes evolutionist theories and the creation of a “us” different from a “they” which was for the first time unified under a category, “the lack of…”, despite their geographical, cultural, environmental provenience. “They” are the ones that “lack” what is considered as a symbol of development, and in Truman’s “Point four program” (1949, January) this “development” is associated with “plus” (abundance). In post-war Japan, development, universalized in western standards, was (almost) all in the cities. The countryside represented the opposite to this. Many urban Japanese were, and in my personal opinion still, at the edge between considering themselves as part of this developed “us” and the dichotomic “they”. This is because they clearly do not feel “western” and felt they do not belong to the “us”, however, they acquired too many “plus” (and in the process lose too many “less”) to feel completely Japanese. The “plus” (more clothes, more materials, more electicity) of the modernity, it is always balanced by the loss of something. 51 Dam as a symbol of development that can destroy furusato and traditions is underlined in the 1983 movie “furusato” directed by Kōyama with a superb interpretation of Katō Yoshi. 52 全日空 zennikkū 49 modern identity in which financial achievement, such a home in one of the main Tōkyō’s wards, is one of the desirable aspirations. On the lower part, the husband still wears his business suit, but his wife is wearing a traditional kimono and their daughter the white kimono, robes and headpieces typical of Japanese brides. In the scene also the groom is present, wearing a hakama and the montsuki53 with his family-crest. The picture now shows the family stands in a grassland, with a dirt road, rice fields, roofs of the Japanese typical architecture and mountain peaks in the background. In contrast to the modern financial achievement, the traditional achievement for a family may be the family itself. Another important contrast, underlined by the scene, is the relation between people. In Tōkyō the houses are squeezed together, but well separated by a wall. In countryside the spaces are wider, but there is no such strong individual demarcation. Few fences, no walls. Creighton explained that <<[t]he advertisement suggests that air travel makes the transition in space from urban center to remote rural area possible within the same day. It also implies that air travel is a venue offering the possibility of a similarly dramatic change in lifestyle, thereby promising to eliminate the problematic choice between a modern, Westernized, urban lifestyle and a more traditional Japanese way of life. Travel is presented as the medium through which modern Japanese can have and experience both>> (1997) Airplanes, like trains, is a medium to connect the modern Japanese with traditions. It’s possible to argue that trains connect more towns to the cities than airplanes do—because of the presence of a train station also in many remote places—but the major difference between the two transportation means another. As Creighton underlines, airplanes allow a fast connection between modernity and tradition, and return. This implies three of the features of the “new individualism” which are the instant changes, the social acceleration and speed, and the short-termism. Plus, the fast return to the cities shows the triphasic partition of the travel, typical of tourism, and not of tabi and discovery. Different transportation means lead to a different way to experience tabi and furusato. The two decades between the JR’s CM and the ANA’s advertising display similar symbols of modernity and traditions. These symbols are a powerful technique of connection between modernity and past. In the 2015 year CM of the Satsuma Shiranami, a famous shochu 54 from the Satsuma peninsula, Kagoshima prefecture, this link is perceived in the background. In this CM the message is not a link between identity and furusato, or a dichotomy between city and furusato. These elements emerge in the meta-message. The focus of this CM is the relation between a father and a son, with the shochu as a means of creating the bound between the two. The depiction of furusato, city, 53 Hakama 袴 Japanese traditional formal trousers. Montsuki 紋付き is the jacket to wear over hakama that shows the family crest. 54 A traditional Japanese liquor. 50 modernity and tradition is in the scenery. There is much to say about this CM since it’s rich in details. First the CM is an anime, and is directed by Satō Yoshiharu, famous for his work at Studio Gibli, especially as the animation director of “Tonari no Totoro”. The quality of the anime is clear from the level of details of the scenery. The plot, in short, depicts a man living in Tōkyō that, by entering a sake shop, finds the same shochu that his dad used to drink. There he sees a cup with the drawing of Imogami-sama, resembling the one his father used to drink Shiranami and that the man, as a young boy, accidentally broke. In his remembrance of that event in the past, the scene shows him to use his money to buy a new cup which in this case depicts a megami (a female kami), that however, his dad refused to accept. While he is thinking about these memories, the woman working in the shop appears to him as the megami of the cup he gave to his father. The following scene depict the man and the woman travelling by train to the man’s hometown, where he sees that his dad had always used the cup with the megami drawn on it. The relation between the man and his father seems to become good, since the next scene depicts him drinking happily in a bar with his dad. As said, the quality and details of the animations allow the viewer to understand details of the story and feel a boundary with it. In the first scene, the men wearing a business suit with his briefcase is walking by the street of Tōkyō. It’s easy to recognise the city by the Tōkyō Skytree in the background. The view of Shiranami shochu is a strong connection with furusato: even in big cities there are elements that comes from past and traditions. When the man travels back to his furusato, from the window of the train the image of Sakurajima, an active volcano, ends up to be in the centre. The same volcano can be seen as background in his father’s home, a background that still stands steadily from past to present. A hallmark of the birthplace of the man, and a symbol of his coming back. The view from the train suggests also that the man’s furusato is in Satsuma peninsula, like the shochu itself. In the man’s flashback it is possible to see the Yamakataya department store, one of the famous attractions of Kagoshima city. The encounter with his father, when the man sees that his father is using the cup that he pretended to refuse when the man was a kid, has a strong impact on him. In the last scene, the man is wearing a less formal business attire, with his briefcase, and he is calling his father to go and have a drink together after work. However, now the man seems to work in Kagoshima, as this scene happened in bunka-dōri, a famous place of the city. The CM ends with the slogan “furusato, is always new”55. This link creates a sense of nostalgia for the furusato, emphasised by the local products. However, it reminds us also that furusato is a dynamic entity and a product of modernity. In furusato there is always something new to discover. If for the man’s father the furusato seems to be the same, for the man, the coming back from the city correspond to a rediscover of the furusato. Some other details are important. Considering the level of details, it’s easy to guess that Satō Yoshiharu wanted to communicate something with these points. One is the difference in the business attire. While in 55 “ふるさとは、いつも新しい“. 51 Tōkyō the man is wearing a business jacket and tie, in Kagoshima he is only wearing a shirt, without tie or jacket. This may suggest a less formal approach to work, that gives less importance to appearance, a symbol of modernity. The symbolic value of the coming back in furusato is family bound. Another point is the after-work scene. While in Tōkyō the man walks in a street with just a few people, in Kagoshima the area is lively. It creates a sense of warmth that contrasts the “tsumetai” (cold) attitude that many Japanese friends suggested me to be a peculiar feature of Tōkyō. It is the groupism of the less modern places, as Kagoshima could be compared to Tōkyō, against the individualism in the big cities. To be individualists or to feel lonely, is not a question of the number of people one has around. It depends on the aptitude. Another interesting detail is the arrival in the hometown, the point of change, which is represented by a tunnel. Just outside of the tunnel, these is furusato. This is a situation which recalls the famous starting line of Kawabata’s “Yukiguni” (1939). “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country”. This translation of Edward Seidensticker doesn’t fully convey the meaning of this starting sentence. The original version recites <<国境の長いトンネルを 抜けると、雪国であった>> which should be translated as <<passed through the long border tunnel, it was snow country>>. The tunnel in question is the Shimizu Tunnel that starts in Gunma prefecture and ends in the town of Yuzawa, in Niigata Prefecture, which is the “Snow country”. It is not a normal long tunnel, but a tunnel that connects two prefectures and at the time of its construction—just a few years before the publication of the work—it made the run from Tōkyō to Niigata about 4 hours shorter. Because of the impossibility for steam locomotives to pass through it, it was electrified from the start. It is a tunnel that brings modernity over the border, the liminal passage to reach Yukiguni. Another mistake in the translation is that it doesn’t stress enough the particle “と” (to）that connects the two clauses of the sentence. This “to” indicates a relation between the fact of the subordinate clause and the fact of the main clause, that is an almost natural consequence. In the specific, it is not a subjective relation, but an objective view that expresses the fact—often extended to the natural laws—that when the previous situation occurs, a following situation occurs automatically and spontaneously. The idea, in the original version of Kawabata, sounds like a natural and spontaneous connection between the end of the tunnel and the appearance of the new landscape. There is no train coming out in the original version, but the appearance of Yukiguni outside the tunnel. This is because the subject, the viewer, cannot see any train to come out from it. The subject is on the train, not an external viewer. To give the idea, in depicting this scene, there is not a steady landscape and a train that appears as the next scene. The frame before the appearance of the landscape is the darkness of the tunnel. As Childs (1991) suggests <<the novel exemplifies the generally accepted view of traditional Eastern landscape art which invariably depicts human beings blending in as part of the scene, as opposed to Western landscape art which usually takes the perspective of the human being looking from the outside>>. The tunnel represents liminality: is the passage from the darkness of the cities, to the white snow of Niigata prefecture. It is the liminal passage in which Shimamura—the protagonist of 52 the novel—leaves behind the dark artificiality of his life in Tōkyō, his work and his family, for the natural, immersive candour of the snow of Yuzawa, and the new emotions that he will feel there. It is at the end of that tunnel that Shimamura’s travel become a tabi. These he begins it’s personal tabi to rediscovers himself. 2.4 – Multiple layers of furusato: from type to archetype Kumamoto and Kagoshima are neighbouring prefectures, and one could expect a certain degree of similarity in their depiction of furusato. It’s harder to believe that Kumamoto or Kagoshima’s furusato share similarities to the one found in Niigata prefecture, which is more than a thousand kilometres far and has a completely different climate, environmental and cultural features. The geographical distance should provide different images of furusato. Nevertheless, the elements that characterise them seems to be recurrent. Like a landscape picture in which multi-exposure are layered to create a mean of the shoots, the prototype of furusato resembles a multi-layer image created by a different exposure to a variety of imaged furusato. As said, the prototypical image, the epitome of furusato, emerges from the different kinds of descriptions of it. These descriptions derive from the typical furusato to which Japanese were exposed in their histories. Types, according to von Ballestrem and Gleiter (2019) << [...] are not created through invention, but are instead the results of developments that occur over extended periods of time. They reflect the concrete models of representation, social order, and economic organization. In cases where typology comes under the influence of specific historic-cultural constellations, it is closely connected with issues of cultural identity. [...] Cultural identity occurs on the basis of types, and types give cultures stability>>. It is possible to speak about two different prototypes of furusato, each one linked with a different cultural identity, based on a micro-level or a macro-level. One on side is the prototypical furusato, which is the epitome of regional types and cultural identities. In this case there is a multiplicity of prototypes of furusato, which corresponds to the multicultural aspect of Japan. The features of these prototypes are more marked—tend to the specificity of the details, like the particular style of minka —to underline the differences between the types. A classic example could be the typical images of Kantō and Kansai areas, in which features of culture and identities are often considered so different that it seems like speaking about different countries56. These prototypes are the ones that create the 56 See as example Nihon Hakugaku club (日本博学俱楽部, 2003)’s [Kantō and Kansai differ so much dictionary] in which are listed in a series of differences in eating, communication and life’s habits. A more emblematic book may be Fujimoto & Tanba’s [ōsakajin to nihonjin] (2005) in which the emphasis is put on the difference between people from Ōsaka and the rest of Japan. The first words of the books are “I’m a person born under ōsaka Flag. In any case cannot say is Japanese flag”. 53 regional—in the sense of “area” specific—furusato. On the other hand, there is a multi-layered prototype in which the details are blurred and just the outline is presented—it tends to generalisations like as instance minka instead of western style homes—to underline the similarity of the types. A sort of “Japanese furusato” prototype, which works on a macro-level. In this case, it is also possible to think that the prototype is not formed by overlapping types of regional furusato, but results from the overlapping of the regional prototypes, i.e. the prototype of regional prototypes. Also this macro-level prototype is present in a multiplicity of forms, as each individual can create a different image of it. This multiplicity of prototypes, when they take a more uniform outline, could give the impression to be a singular one. Nostalgia, that comes in the difference between a “general” traditional furusato against the “general” modernity of the cities, has this macro-level prototype as a trigger. This nostalgia brings to the transformation of the prototype into an archetype — which in this case is a collective image of furusato—, that is the idealisation of the “real Japan” of which furusato is the symbol. Archetype of Japan is built over the prototype of prototypes of types of furusato and the nostalgia arises when the archetype and the reality are too different, or in short, when individuals perceive that the Japan they idealised doesn’t correspond to the one they are living. The phantom of Japan. From type to archetype, furusato is never present in a single form. Types of furusato, that create a prototype with generic outlines, could lead to reason in terms of a functionalist approach. In fact, in the after war, works such as the ones of Norbeck, Embree, and Bradsley used a strictly functional approach to prove that each village they took into consideration was a typical field which could be seen as the prototype of all Japanese rural villages. This approach is faulty in at least two points: it does not take into consideration the multiplicities of cultural, geographical and social features of Japan and, maybe even worse, it completely turns Japanese rural villages into static entities without “encounters”. These “encounters” are << [...] events, “things that happen”, the unit of history>> (Tsing, 2015). Furusato is always a cultural landscape, so it is always created and modified by the encounter with what Anna Tsing defines as a human or non-human “disturbance” (2015). In the type-prototype-archetype chain the starting typology, the one to form the “regional prototype”, it is based on a real furusato57. Since each furusato has different encounters and disturbance, it’s impossible to consider any of them as representative of each other. Prototypes, in this view, are never perfectly overlapped images. The multi-layered regional prototypes hide features of some landscapes and display features that are not present in all the typologies. To explain it easily is possible to think about the railroad. While the train is a feature of furusato—the CM discussed above are a proof of this—not all furusato have a railroad access. The absence of the feature does not make the last kind 57 If, for instance, a writer describes a fictional (a not real existent one), yet realistic furusato, his description is already a prototype, since it’s the image that derives from the author knowledge and idea of type(s) of furusato. 54 of furusato less typical, as the presence of it does not make the first type to be more. It is possible to think about the train as a visually strong feature, while other feature, such as crossroads, are occulted. To display and to occult, again, is a different technique from the one of the functionalist approach. It is not like to occult the missionaries, the cars, or the anthropologist inside the anthropological work, to make the “savages” to appear more “savage”. The absence of a feature is just a problem of complexity: too many details would mean making the furusato hard to conceptualise. It is normal for us to obscure the details we find to be not relevant when we describe familiar things such as the street where we live. This shows also the dynamics of prototypes. If an individual compares, as an example, the crossroads in the Kanto and Kansai areas’ furusato, it would be necessary to create prototypes that include this particular feature, in this case crossroads. Despite this, as a functionalist approach, some prototypes can also occult signs of modernity, moreover, if these are prototype of a “traditional” furusato. Also this fact however, shows that there are not real villages that can be considered as representative of all the rural villages, and the functionalist approach just does not work. The only representative prototype of all Japanese rural villages is a mental creation that belongs to individuals, it is dynamic and in continuous change and, in final analysis, is always multiple. 2.5 – Furusato and its network: encounter among modernity, sustainability and the biodiversity To understand the interactions between people and landscapes and put them into the discourse of tabi, sustainability and restoration or development, I find that focusing on a single furusato—or even more of it—and explore its life in details, is not a correct approach. The reason is easy: tabi, sustainability and restoration are necessarily linked with everything that is outside the village’s life. Tabi implies movement and exploration that goes beyond the borders that the schematisation of the village’s life requires. Sustainability and restoration are in constant contact with policies and the outside world, and they do not work only on a local range, but have influence over a broader public. Despite urban areas are considered as the antithesis of nature, the restoration of rural environment requires an active link with the cities, which in return will benefit from the environmental resource. This doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t base a work on a Japanese village as field. Ethnology requires fieldwork and fieldwork requires a field. What I want to underline is the importance of avoiding the thought that a single village may be a prototype, instead of a mere example, of Japanese culture. Also, I want to underline the necessity of consider the village as a living entity that has encountered which other living entities. These encounters create new realities or “live hoods”, to cite Tsing once again, from which is possible to understand the histories of Japan. Also histories have to be plural, in which they are multiple. The exchanges between cities and cities, villages and 55 villages, villages and cities gave life to unpredictable numbers and kinds of links and results. To notice these exchanges and be open to multiple links and results, can help us notice those features that may be neglected in a goal-oriented approach. An example could be Tōkyō. While cities are usually seen as the antithesis of nature, Tōkyō supports a rich biodiversity through two ecosystem types: one includes the urban, the secondary forests and the satoyama, the other is an oceanic island system (Numata & Hosaka, 2018). Certainly, for those who goes beyond the curtain of the impression and investigate it thoroughly, it’s easy to assert that outside the 23 wards (Tōkyō City) in its largest geographical scale (Tōkyō Metropolitan Area), Tōkyō extends on a range that includes Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, Ibaraki, Tochigi and Gunma prefectures, and hence it should be of no surprise to see satoyama areas or second forests. Still, beside possibly some experts, few people associate the name of Tōkyō with a natural landscape, pretty much as happened with New York or Shanghai. To make a simple example, how many people would study Native American culture selecting New York as the primary field? When we investigate furusato or satoyama, we exclude Tōkyō from our radar because of understandable bias. It works the same the way around, by studying Tōkyō urban culture (or subcultures) excluding the connections with external areas. In this way, however, we would lose important facts that could result to be useful in a comparative analysis. The interactions between Tōkyō City and Tōkyō Metropolitan Area (but also between Tōkyō and other areas, to stay only in Japan) are histories of dreams, fears, nostalgias, adaptions, compromises, hopes. Reading these histories, it means to read into some Japanese identities. And these histories are obscured when we neglect indeterminate encounters, connections and travel experiences. There is another aspect in which to oversee the encounters of a furusato or a satoyama would lead to a neglect of some important features of it. Modern furusato and satoyama are modern, and products of the modernity. The framework of modernity creates traditions. The return to furusato has a meaning only when the departure point is not the furusato, but the cities. A return to the traditional works or the traditional way of production exists only when there is a modern counterpart. In the middle there is an infinity of shades, but all these are embedded into a discourse of modernity. Instead of focusing on a straight path that conduct to the most traditional of the traditions, it would be interesting to take one of the many sideways and investigate how and why some of these modern traditional villages are created. In this way, instead of a goal-oriented approach, it’s possible to let research to be open to different endings, hence see different aspects of this Japanese phenomenon. In the furusato-zukuri or in satoyama revitalisation, it’s possible to see how these connections work. Furusato-zukuri literally means the making of furusato. This suggests once more how furusato is a cultural construction. According to Robertson (1989), furusato-zukuri is a << [...] political process by which culture, as a collectively constructed and shared system of symbols, customs and beliefs, is socially reproduced>>. Robertson, by this definition, sees furusato as symbolic systems that 56 possess an ideology which is culturally reproduced and transmitted. Cultural reproduction always depends on the socializing influence of major institutions (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990), because even if the traditions and the technologies, the customs and the beliefs are (invented and) transmitted from the bottom, the decisive and most influential changes comes from the top. Furusato-zukuri is not a local movement of resilience of the rural area against the urbanization, but a “political process” that promotes a social reform, which generates in the centres of that urbanization to encompass peripheries as urbanization itself does. Furusato-zukuri is not a bottom-up change that starts from the willing of rural communities to change, but a rational project in which the past—reflected into the created prototypical image of furusato and the nostalgia connected with it—it is used as a catalyst for a social transformation. This doesn’t exclude the willing of the people to transform their lands. It may be a change that derives from a local-layer trigger, but it is always embedded inside an institutional framework. These same social transformations are involved also in other kinds of “landscape-making” policies, such satoyama revitalization, machi-zukuri (city making), mura-zukuri (village making), etc. Satoyama and furusato in particular, are terms that can be subsumed to each other. Satoyama, are landscapes formed by secondary forests, at the board of villages that use the woods for sustaining their lives. In a wider sense, they are also formed by farm field, rice paddies, irrigation canals and the settlement themselves (Takeuchi et.al, 2003, Takeuchi 2010). Satoyama embodies natural, cultural and social landscapes, and furusato are among these cultural and social landscapes. At the same time, the image of furusato englobes the surrounding of satoyama. Satoyama is formed by villages, rice fields, wooded areas, streams and reservoirs, but is also a social landscape: in the satoyama, the villages acquire all that is necessary for living and, since a satoyama serves more villages, inevitably it helps to create relations, or networks. This network of relations stretches further than the limits of the satoyama itself. One example of this could be the iriai-ken system (入会権), an ancient land management system which is explained by Yokota Hideo as: << [ ...] the right of a person who lives in a certain land to make a profit in a certain forest or field in a certain mountainous area. For example, a village resident may cut down trees, harvest dead leaves and branches, or prune grass and weeds in a certain forest or field in a certain way, as if he or she is doing stock-farming. >>58 (Yokota, 1906:321) Yokota continues to explain that iriai-ken system may apply also to other people’s possessions, and in this case it works as an easement (地役權) in which peasants have the rights of land use. Yokota suggests that the right of admission to membership is a customary practice in Japan, which differs from region to region, and therefore the civil law follows the old regional customs and practices of the 58 <<入会権とは一定の土地に住める人々一定の山林又は野地に於て共同して収益を為すの権利を謂ふ例へは或村の住民 ヵ共同して一の山林に於て樹木を伐株し或は落葉枯枝を株収し或は其下草を苅取り或は又一定、野地に於て雑草を苅取 り若くは牧畜を為すか如し>> (横田、1906:321) 57 past. He also suggests that this system shall be maintained, and its effectiveness shall be based on local customs and special practices. These practices are not conventional of a village, but of a set of villages embedded inside the satoyama area. Once again, we see how it is virtually impossible to set borders to a village and do not consider it in its actual setting as a point of a network of relations that stretch at least as much as the satoyama area. Iriai system was not excluded by the modernization and the economic growth. A series of national policies from 1950s that promoted the exploitation of timber, transformed the natural forests into tree plantations. However, it is interesting to notice that iriai was considered as a kind of silviculture based on informal regulations. These kinds of regulations can work only when the freedom of land use it is sided by a strong communality, to avoid the exploitation of the resources by a single individual or a single group. The benefits derived by iriai cannot be individual, but are meant for the collectivity. This connection between satoyama and collectivity, but also the harmonious connection between human and nature, is at the base of the nostalgia and the willing for satoyama restoration. Takeuchi (2001) explains that: <<Earlier when rural areas switched to a dependency on fossil fuel and chemical fertilizers in the 1960s the satoyama was considered useless as a resource supply and, as a result, these areas became a target for large-scale urban and recreational development. There are now, however, considered a valuable space for maintaining the quality of life, and this recognition has been brought about by the nostalgia of people who have lost their close relationship with the natural environment. People are also becoming concerned about the continuing destruction of the natural environment that was once so familiar to them>>. Satoyama revitalization, as furusato-zukuri, has loss and nostalgia as the base for its creation. People that lost their close relationship with nature, or people that become concerned about the continuing destruction of the familiar environment, suggest that these movements are organized around people’s own will. Post-war urbanization reclaimed lands for large-scale residential development to the expense of the farmlands and woodlands. However, in the atmosphere of nostalgia and anxiety, urban residents’ fear that the connection with nature was lost, became the base of many local-level citizens’ movements 59 and the sparkle of travels toward these areas. Takahashi (1986) 59 It would be not correct to do not mention as a source of this fear and anxiety the yondai kōgai-byō (四大公害病, the big four pollution diseases), which struck Japan in 1912 (Toyama prefecture, caused by cadmium poisoning), 1956 (Kumamoto prefecture, caused by methylmercury), 1961 (Mie prefecture, caused by sulfur dioxide), 1965 (Niigata prefecture, caused by methylmercury). The false claims of companies involved in these and other accidents bring to the creation of the Consumer Union of Japan 日本消費者連盟 in 1969, a political and financial independent NGO involved in the protection of Japanese environment and people against illegal or cartel industries. CUJ was also advocates of a petition against the liberalization of Japanese rice-market to protect local farming (1982), or the opposition to the genetically modified food in Japan (1996) which leaded in 2003 to critics toward the resumption of the import of U.S. beef in Japan 58 suggest that in the 1980s, the “town planning” (町づくりmichi-zukuri) and “village development” (村おこし mura-okoshi) movements which aimed to revive communities without the intervention of a central government, been spreading across the country actively, in a real national boom. However, this phenomenon started at least a little more than a decade before, in the 1960s, in contrast with the rural areas’ abandonment. Differently from Japanese developmental praxis that at least until the1990s relied much on public funding—both from national or local government—for their maintenance, new policies broke the top-down funding relation. It was the desire for decentralization, and the difficulties in finding public founding in a time of economic crisis, that led to the creation of self-sustaining mechanisms to support local management free from government subsidy dependence. This implies also a transition from a vertical management system to a horizontal one. In this meaning horizontal and vertical do not refer to the frame or attribute of the individual in the society as in Nakane Chie’s tateshakai (1967) directly, but implies relations that are based on power hierarchies. For vertical relation, I mean everything that sees one of the parties to be dominant over the other, while with horizontal I mean a situation of interchange and mutual dependency. In particular, in the “-zukuri” projects, the shift from a vertical to a horizontal management is present in communities’ relations, in the kinds of knowledge relations and in the human-environment relations. The human-environment relation in furusato-zukuri, machi-zukuri or satoyama revitalisation is the central feature. Most of the projects start from the concerning of communities for the disappearance of their familiar landscape and their relation with it. Satoyama, as an example, represents a << [...] valuable model of a nature-harmonious society because it fosters the biodiversity of a secondary natural environment created through interaction between human activities and nature>> (Takeuchi, 2010). However, since the 1960s60 satoyama witnessed a deterioration in the relation between human and nature (Kobori & Primack, 2003; Ikenaka, 2008; Takeuchi, 2010; Satsuka, 2012; Kada, 2012). The reasons pivot around urbanization and economic growth. Among these:  Decrease in extraction of satoyama resources (Ikenaka, 2008) also due the increasing use of fossil fuels (Takeuchi, 2010)  Massive import of livestock feed (Takeuchi, 2010) which leads to the neglect, abandonment or conversion of the grasslands used for those purposes.  Industrialization (Satsuka, 2012) and a shift from rural to industrial jobs. It’s important to note also a shift in urbanisation. From the concentration of the population and the industries in the central cities of few major metropolitan regions such Tōkyō, Ōsaka or (2005) due to the fear of mad-cow disease. It is clear that in order to protect local communities, CUJ needs to be involved in global networking and environmental knowledge. 60 This date is recurring as a starting point for discourse of renovation. 59 Nagoya (centralisation), to the dispersion of the population and the industries in the suburbs of the central cities which has a faster growth (decentralisation) (see Yamada & Tokuoka, 1991). This process of decentralisation must not be confused with a migration toward rural realities, but as an expansion of the urban centres. Under this process, there was also a reduction of the farming area.  Urban development and large-scale engineering projects, such construction of dams and the filling in of wetlands, which bring also to water pollution (Kobori & Primack, 2003) 61 .  Depopulation and aging society (Kasa, 2012). While it is correct to affirm that this chain of reasons all contribute to deterioration of satoyama, the main trigger of this deterioration is the breaking of the horizontal relation between human and nature, which consist in the << [...] breakdown of the functional relationships among the elements of the land-use mosaic>> (Takeuchi, 2010). It is quite common, particularly in western countries, to idealise the human impact over forestry as a negative one (see Tsing,2015). It is not the case of satoyama, which instead is a mosaic created through the constant interaction between human and environment, and hence it requires the human presence to survive. Satoyama represented a model for the cyclical use of bio-resources, and a model for a harmonious human-nature relation. To better understand the cultural dependence of biodiversity, one can think about some Japanese species that exist primarily or exclusively in satoyama. The sasakia charonda, commonly known as “great purple emperor” or ōmurasaki in Japanese, is the national butterfly of Japan. The larvae of this butterfly feeds on celtis sinesis, which is a feature of coppice woodlands, and lives on it. The adult instead feeds on the Quercus acutissima’s sap, which is secreted only from young trees. This requires human management, as the trees have to been cut periodically and regenerate to produce the sap necessary for ōmurasaki to survive. Again, some wildflowers cannot make their way out from a thick mattress of fallen leaves in deciduous forests, or survive in the evergreen woodlands’ darkness. To bloom, these flowers need a human intervention, such as the gathering of dead leaves used as fertiliser or the regular cut of the trees. Useless to say, these wildflowers attract insects that, in return, attract birds. Similar disturbances are necessary in grasslands, paddy fields or wetlands, to sustain the peculiar biodiversity so familiar to the Japanese. Satoyama offers a horizontal relation between human and nature, because there is not a dominion of the human over the nature, nor a wild nature which provides everything that the humans need to survive – as a divine gift – without the necessity of human intervention. Satoyama does not conceive an anthropocentric view on a justifiable overexploitation of natural resources. An eco-centric view is required as satoyama must be protected in all its biodiversity 61 Connection with page up! CHEKC where speak about dams. 60 for its survival. However, this view cannot contemplate a complete absence of human action. To be protected, satoyama needs to provide bio-resource, disturbances, periodical renovations. Satoyama is hence a model of a harmonious relation between human and nature. At the same time, it provides a superb base model for a resource circulating society. In my humble opinion, this requires a breakdown of the anthropocentric and vertical management and a shift toward a horizontal entanglement of the biodiversity that each environment offers. 2.6 – Encounter between traditional and scientific knowledge: satoyama as a mean to educate to traditions in modern Japan Abandonment of the satoyama means loss of the biodiversity. Kobori & Primak suggests that << [w]ith changing agricultural practices many plants and animal characteristic of satoyama are now in danger of extinction. For example, the “Seven Autumn Wildflowers” beloved by the Japanese as a symbol of beauty of nature and the object of intense poetic sentiments from ancient times, are under threat>> (2003). In the 1960s, the urban agglomerates expanded toward rural areas to accommodate industries and the bourgeoisie population, and the harmonious relation between human and nature was breaking down. It was however in this climate that a new awareness about the loss of the ecosystem provided by satoyama arose. This is not only comparable but also complementary to the loss of furusato and the nostalgia that arose from it: as people felt that they were losing their traditions and social relations in furusato, they felt that they were losing a familiar ecosystem and their relations with it. The two things are complementary because they depend on each other the same way that satoyama and furusato are entangled. Satoyama required community’s work to be maintained and offer resources for the community. Industries, while may need teamwork, do not require the coordination of all the actors and push toward individualism—the salary is the sufficient condition to support a family—breaking the relation between the individual and the product/production, as most of the output of the work is not directly involved in the individual’s life. The lack of the cooperation in urban agglomerates put fences—as explained before, literally and metaphorically—between people, and the relation between consumer and the product, that is peculiar of furusato, also faded away. Marxist theories saw in alienation one of the feature of capitalism. <<In his attempts to redefine and reconfigure the concept of alienation as the central experience of capitalist subjects, Marx amplified it with the concepts of commodity fetishism and machine labour. In this amplification, the concept of alienation comes to define a world determined solely by economics>> (Wendling, 2009:13). Describing the alienation between the consumers and the products, it means to acknowledge breaking between the user and the producers, hence breaking in the relations. In the capitalist supply chain, traders—or the mediators—put a wall between the production and the consumers. Considering the 61 sugarcane in Brazil and Caribbean as the basis of capitalism, its ability of hiding how sugarcane was produced also boosted the economic impact that it had in Europe (see Mintz, 1974; 1986). In a wider sense, the alienation between the consumer and the producers includes the obscuration of the environmental conditions, which include the violence, theft and exploitation, in which the product is created. Beside this, by losing furusato and satoyama, people lost traditional and ecological knowledge. I want to separate traditional knowledge (TK) from traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), to leave TK a wider use linked with traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) and give TEK a narrower one linked with ecosystem management 62 . World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) defines traditional knowledge as the << [...] knowledge, know-how, skills and practices that are developed, sustained and passed on from generation to generation within a community, often forming part of its cultural or spiritual identity>>. This definition includes also TEK, which is also a body of knowledge about a community and its relation with the environment and its biodiversity, and how it is developed and transmitted within the group. Barnhardt & Kawagley (2005) made a comparison of TEK— labelled by the authors also as indigenous knowledge or traditional native knowledge—and western science that, erroneously, they define also as Western knowledge system. When they express that << [...] we compare Indigenous and Western knowledge systems and worldviews>> (2005:10), in fact they are comparing TEK with the one form of western knowledge, which is the one that derives from the scientific tradition. We must not make the mistake of thinking there is no indigenous traditions in Western country, instead acknowledging that there are different TEK in western countries that differs from SEK (Scientific ecological knowledge), or SK (scientific knowledge) as much as the ones of non-western country. We should acknowledge that also Western Science is a kind of knowledge that comes from a tradition, i.e. the scientific tradition, and this tradition is Western just in its modern sense, or by a western appropriation of the term science. By some extents we also need to recognise that Western science is not only western but, as a tradition, it got a history which is made by encounters and contaminations with diatonically distinct realities. For this reason, while it may be easily agreed on the dimension of the definition of “Western science” compared with TEK, I prefer to use the label SEK in this comparison. Barnhardt & Kawagley’s work makes a scheme of the principal difference between TEK and SEK, and some common ground they share. TEK is a kind of knowledge based on cumulative and collective experiences learned from the observation and transmitted mainly verbally. It uses a holistic approach that sees environment as a part of the social and spiritual 62 Due the similitude between the two and the mixed use of the labels TEK and TK in the sources I entered in contact with, and the fact that is not a main feature of the work, I will not really underline the difference. In general, I use TK speaking about furusato or artefacts and cultural products, and TEK when I talk about satoyama or human-environment relationship. SEK and SK will follow the same guidelines. 62 relationships of the group. This approach, which is mainly qualitative, is based on the data that are generated by the users of the resources, which have a long period relationship with the local environment and seek to apply and integrate the knowledge in the group’s daily life and in their traditional practices of subsistence. In contrast, SEK is a knowledge based on theories and laws taught and learned analytically through the written words. It uses a reductionist approach that focuses on the static properties of elementary parts, with constant variables used to see environment and its relation with human beings as a compartmentalised and hierarchical organisation. This approach is mainly quantitative, as it is used for hypothesis’ falsification and models’ building through data collected by trained specialists in a series of short-time investigations over a wide area. Both TEK and SEK acknowledge that knowledge is not static, but always open to improvement and modification. Both TEK and SEK utilise empirical observations of the environment and natural setting, to recognise patterns verified through repetition, and to make inferences and predictions. From this analysis it emerges that while SEK allows a certain degree of alienation from the environment, TEK requires a strong bound between the subjects, the environment and the social groups. To have a functional TEK, familiarity between the actors involved and the environment must be taken as the base. SEK results to be limited in this because basing the approach on models’ building, it creates scalable approaches to environment conservations that, because of the different biodiversity and configuration of different landscapes, is not (fully) scalable. The reason TEK and TK are important in satoyama and furusato construction and reconstruction, is the familiarity of the actors involved with the biodiversity—and multiculturalism— and the environment. I do not intend that satoyama revitalisation does not require SEK at all. My idea is that satoyama revitalisation’s projects reshape the hierarchical relationship between SEK and TEK—which often sees scientific approaches as the guideline—to create a new horizontal link that allows TEK and SEK’s cooperation. Satoyama and furusato are a good ground for the application of what Berkes (2009) defines as “co-production of knowledge”. SEK is a vital part of urban planning, ecological sustainability and satoyama or furusato recreations. However, any planning project that makes use of SEK faces the reality that from cities to furusato, -tsukri projects need local population’s support and acceptance to be effective. TEK and TK have a major role in favourite of this acceptance: TEK and TK are fundamental to entangle to the local population in furusato or satoyama recovery plans. First, this knowledge come from a long relationship between the local communities and the spaces they habit. In this sense, I believe that TEK and TK help to boost the sense of familiarity and nostalgia. Using traditional knowledge creates in the observer the idea that modernity didn’t hit the locality and somehow time has frozen. While this is not true and rural areas—as much as artisanal works—should be considered as products of modernity, the traditional knowledge helps to foster a 63 sense of communality and the idea that there is a repetition and, by consequence, the conservation of a real Japan. Repetition and transmission in the kata’s form, is typical of the Japanese TK. Tokitsu Kenji (2019) defines kata as a sequence composed of formalised and codified gestures, subtended by a state of spirit oriented towards the realisation of the way (dō)63. The keywords are “formalised and codified gestures”. Kata are formalised, because they are created and handed down according to a precise form, and this precise sequence will have to be handed down to the successors. It is also codified, because their meaning is not explicit in their realisation, but must be understood within a system of knowledge and interpretations that in part is transmitted in words from master to pupil, but must also be deduced from observation and holistic participation in the various aspects of the discipline. The repetition in form of transmission help to preserve an original meaning. This meaning is inclusive since it is understandable only through the holistic participation and observation of the community’s life, and it is exclusive since can be understood fully only by the people of the group in which it is shared. The formalisation of the kata or the TK, is a sign of their originality, their strong link with the past. Communities, shared knowledge and willing of transmitting this knowledge are the fundamental elements to preserve the real Japan. Second, SEK/SK is perceived as a “cold” and far type of knowledge. It is not directly linked with the locality or the community, it does not require a holistic observation and participation of the group’s daily life and its inclusiveness and exclusiveness work against the local people. SK is inclusive in the sense that is a kind of knowledge that can be gained even by people that do not have a direct relation with the group. It’s scalable and can be learned in everyplace where academic knowledge is accessible. On the other hand, it is exclusive because it belongs to the academic world, which has its own hierarchy and rules, a particular transmission method that use forms and languages, that may exclude the local people which are the principal actors (or objects) of this knowledge. SK may be felt as an alien form of knowledge, a product of that modernity that generates the fear of loss of the familiarity with furusato or satoyama, that is the trigger of the nostalgia. It’s however important to acknowledge that SK is a necessary medium between the local and the global, and that it is hard— where not impossible—and ultimately wrong, to consider furusato as a self-sustained reality with no connection with urban and global realities. To survive, furusato needs also the participation of guests. Guests who possess the willing to find something they have lost, have the willing of leaning and be educated to TK. They are guests who will to discover something about the furusato, the hosts and themselves. This can happen only through tabi, researches or willing of discover. Not through leisure activities such as tourism. 63 From the italian translation of Tokitsu’s work where kata is defined as: <<sequenza composta da gesti formalizzati e codificati, sottesa da uno stato di spirito orientato verso la realizzazione della via (“dō”)>> (2019:21) 64 Being a social and cultural landscape, furusato needs communities to be formed. Individuals actively create and are also shaped in those communities that in return need satoyama and furusato to survive. Miyamoto Tsuneichi (2002) emphasised the connection that links individuals to communities: << To think about how a society is shaped up, or how about a community is formed, we need to reflect on the way we are leading our lives. It is true that we live for the preservation of the individual. But the preservation of the individual is at the same time the preservation of those species that include the individual, and the species themselves. In other words, it is what makes up the community. Individuals cannot survive unless they are organically linked to the species. >> 64 (2002:138-139) Miyamoto explains that not only the relation between individuals and community is organic but also the one between the individual and the environment. By organic (有機的), the Japanese anthropologist means a necessary relation between environment and individuals—or between community and individuals—that cannot be broken (2002:126). Organic means that the environment is not something separated from the individual, but an extension of it. According to Miyamoto, in fact, it is impossible to convective the individual without the environment, or even the environment with just one only individual. From this perspective, he argues, environment is equal to individuality and so the extension of individuality, which is the community, may be seen as a deep and wide awareness of the environment. Miyamoto does not make a specification about it, but I think the next step may be that a deep and wide awareness of the environment is equal to a deep and wide awareness of community. What Miyamoto suggests, it is instead that education is a means to install the awareness of environment in children—an important topic for the anthropologist—and a concrete medium (具 体的な媒介) through which this awareness generate, is represented by the local (Miyamoto use the word 郷土, kyōdo)65. He continues by arguing that the assimilation into the environment corresponds to the development of a self-direction 66 . Since environment is an isotopic complex society 67 , by 64 <<社会はどうしてできあがるか、また共同体というものはどうしてできるかということを考えるためには、私たちの 生活がいったい何のために営まれているかを考えればよい。私たちが、個人の保全のために生きていることは確かであ る。しかし、個の保全は同時にその個を合む種の保全であって、種はすなわち共同体を作っているのである。個がこの 種に有機的に結びついているのでなければ生きてゆけない。>> 65 Robertson (1995) suggests that kyōdo, while having a similar meaning to furusato, <<is used primarily when location is the primary aspect emphasized>>. Researches I made on monolingual dictionaries and other sources, in most of the cases confirm Roberston’s assertion, for this reason, I decided to maintain separated the word kyōdo as “local” and furusato. 66 主体性 shutai sei, i.e. an attitude and disposition to act responsibly, based on one's own will and judgment. 67 同位複合社会 dōi fukugō shakai. I translated dōi as the Greek derived word isotopic to render the idea, that each element occupies the same position. This reflect Miyamoto general idea that in a plural or complex (fukugō) society, each individual contributes to the equilibrium and the preservation of the biodiversity and of the community. 65 knowing it, it is possible to understand the agents that are working beside it. Again, Tsing’s work (2015) can be a good example, since it underlines how to understand what matsutake are, one needs to enlarge the field of view to the biodiversity and the various agents that form the environment in which matsutake can live. In short, to comprehend furusato it is necessary to enlarge the field of analysis outside the actors which are the direct object of the research, and encompass external actors, guests, which are entangled in a network of relations with the furusato. This view of Miyamoto, beside showing the relations between communities, environment and individuals, it suggests another important point: awareness of the environment is instilled through the mean of education. This is an important assertion for two reasons. A first reason is that education does not have a singular pattern. As Nomura & Abe (2010) suggest the involvement of Japanese higher education institutions—with government support—in education for sustainable development (ESD), is one of the most active in the World. There is a variety of shizen gakkō (自然学校) or “nature schools”, which are learning facilities that focus on nature experiences, and educational facilities that use nature as a stage for education (Nishimura, 2006). Education may also be separated from institutions, as the many volunteering programs for satoyama renovation or the non-formal environmental education that developed since the post-war (see Ando & Noda, 2017). There is a return to the discussion about SK and TK. However, if we accept the fact that a mix of TK and SK may be an effective education system, then everyone, from child to elderly, could be possibly educated to environment and (re)discover an identity connected with the kyōdo or furusato. Plus, it is necessary to consider the relations between the local communities, the alien communities which enter by different degrees in contact with the local ones and, not less important, the institutions involved in the furusato development projects. The second reason, which is deeply connected with the first one, is that education enlarges the network of people that can be part of the community, but also diversify the way in which people can be included into the community and their relation with environment. Surely local is an important medium for creating awareness of environment or furusato, but this doesn’t mean that the contact with furusato must be constant. As a medium, furusato must transmit the awareness of the environment—and the identity of the community—in a way that can be understandable by individuals that are not fully educated in the mindset and habit of the community. Different problems arise, however, when the analysis takes in consideration the reality of the theory. The actors at both sides of the medium can manipulate it to give it a meaning that is different from its original one. Education, in all its forms, is a kind of cultural transmission, and can be manipulated (see Dessí, 2008) and interpreted. This was the case of furusato as an archetype. The way in which local live it, how they transmit it, how is perceived by the external, it’s a matter of 66 mediation. There may be hence an inconsistency in the interpretation of the medium, the nodes of the local-outsider’s network, and by consequence an inconsistency in which the two poles of this network interpret the community. This inconsistency must be not seen as a negative-only aspect. When outsiders idealise furusato in their own liking, they are showing a will to enter this network made of multiple communities. They feel they enter in contact with their ideal mindset, without really abandoning their old one, and obscuring whatever they feel is not likable. Local people may propose a manipulated version of their own furusato that suits the idealisation of the outsiders for various reasons, such as the protection of their local identity and autonomy or the promotion of tourism and the incentive that it can have over local economy. This happened often in eco-tourism (see chapter 3). In this aspect, that some people are not fully educated in the mindset and habit of the local community, may be the only way for them to enter willingly inside this network. When real but not enjoyable tracts emerge, the outsiders may feel they do not want to be entangled in this set of relations. When modernisation enters the image of furusato, the outsiders may feel that there is not more need to entangle in a new network that brings them in contact with a new community. Both outsiders and local may mutually obscure modernisation in “I see only what you display” kind of game. Speaking about local, in fact, it doesn’t mean to confine the actors in closed communities, but recognising that actors with their communities are part of networks that need intercultural cooperation and mutual understanding to survive. 2.7 – Furusato’s enlarged network: problems and advantages of the network’s encounters This shows also that the furusato community is an enlarged network. Since outsiders are not only involved in the construction of the ideal furusato, but they are also part of it, any analysis of furusato should include them. There are several aspects in which this network may be analyzed. The political-economic relation between the furusato and the cities (as an example the furusato nōsei tax system68), representations of modernity and tradition, local and global, relations between education 68 ふるさと納税, created by Suga Yoshihide in 2007, which allows people to make donation to a local government of their choice to have a deduction from the local tax imposed by the municipality where they reside, to a certain limit. Often, there are presents in return of a donation in the form of local produces. Usually in Japan these presents given in return for a gift received in precedence are called okaeshi. Are presented in the website of furusato nōzei (https://www.furusatotax.jp/product , ret, 2020, July 24th) as orei no hin. Okaeshi is a social convention that help to maintain and foster the social relations between individuals, and hence can display the relations between furusato and cities. On another side, furusato nōzei also bring on the stage the way in which gift-giving and the social relations are at the base of economical transactions. In fact, donation of money to a local government is not a disinterested activity, and the knowledge that the local government will send orei no hin in return of a donation, makes the donation more similar to a purchase. In fact, on 67 and environment, as previously outlined. Tourism and travel are also a good arena for these network analysis. Tourism is a powerful tool of cultural creation and preservation, but also a means for social and cultural change. Barberani (2006) explains that a differentiated access to the tourism industry generates in the first place contrasting attitudes towards the inconveniences induced by the advent of tourism, alteration of the pace of daily life and loss of privacy. When a furusato becomes a touristic attraction, the daily life of local people (hosts) inevitably changes. This is the arena in which hosts and guests cooperate or have conflicts. These conflicts include the guests’ ideas that they have the rights to take part in the authenticity of the local life. Hosts, on the other hand, may believe that is their right to protect their privacy and the authenticity of their culture, and it’s enough to offer a theatrical representation of their tradition to the guests in their effort to cooperate. While some guests may cooperate by accepting what the hosts’ offer, other may be more invasive in their quests for the search of authenticity. Tourist expectations in fact may vary, and the same locality may be chosen for different reason, giving life to different host’s offers. Tourism in fact is not only an arena of encounter between hosts and guests, but also between guests and other guests. <<While travelling, people mix and often interact with each other. Other tourists become, regardless of one’s liking or not linking it, part of one’s travel experience because they share the facilities and attractions>> (Yagi, 2003). It is something that most of us have seen in travel experiences: is where stereotypes, likes and dislikes of the others emerge. In my experience, I found these stereotypes in 2017 in Arashiyama, where I sadly witnessed a group of Chinese tourists engrave bamboo in the famous forest69, or I was insulted in Chinese after I made aware a lady she has forgotten her trash on the way, to do not say she was littering70. It is far from my intention to state that Chinese tourists all have inappropriate behaviours, but is one of the stereotype supported by the many facts that appear on news. It’s hard to do not create stereotype by witnessing or reading news, such as the one about a young Chinese boy that engraved his name on a 3,500 years old Egyptian temple in Luxor, or when two tourists on a Bangkok to China flight did not immediately get the seats they wanted, so they threw hot instant noodles at a flight attendant and threatened to blow up the plane 71. Despite one needs to recognise the huge the website is well explained how much high the donation must be to receive a determined product. I think it may be interested, in another work, to analyze the gift-giving social convention in Japan also in the light of furusato nōzei system. 69 A behavior that is not limited to Chinese tourists and sadly seems to keep going on (see https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/bamboo-trees-in-kyotos-iconic-arashiyama-forest-defaced-by-tourists, retrived 2020, 07, 29) 70 Sadly for her, my Chinese was good enough to answer by tone and make two older people, presumably her parents, to pick up the trash and apologize. 71 See https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/08/405183120/beijing-clamps-down-on-chinese-tourists- behaving-badly?t=1595978507183 (NPR.org) or https://www.nikkan-gendai.com/articles/view/life/251465 (Nikkan Gendai JPN) or http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/899846.shtml (Global times CHN) or https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/01/16/beijing-is-embarrassed-about-unruly-chinese- 68 number of Chinese tourists and admit that some of them may be really well mannered, these are the news that help to create stereotype and, while we are tourists, these are the behaviours that we immediately notice. It’s hard to notice other tourists that throw their garbage properly in a garbage can, because no one notice what seems to be obvious and normal. It’s ways easier to notice people littering. Just to be fair, I witnessed also Italian tourists’ inappropriate behaviours. The main problem, as Barberani (2003:74-75) suggests, may be that tourists are often inclined to abandon a part of their old identity, temporarily assuming behaviours and attitudes are at odds with their usual conduct: they engage in what is called “rites of reversal”, also helped by the anonymity of the experience. These behaviours emerge stronger in hosts-guests conflict, in the cases in which the hosts think tourists’ behaviour is disrespectful of their culture, their rules—which are not always legal laws—or their privacy. Emblematic is the need of Kyōto’s government to set up a fine for tourists that sadly harass geisha or maiko, by taking picture without their permission, touching them, forcing them to take picture together or trespassing in private areas as they please. An action that in most of the countries from where these tourists come, would be probably consider as harassment of other kinds of illegal actions. However, I think the problem of behavior is a conflict presents also in guest-guest relations. In witnessing other tourists act through behaviors I consider shameful, in presence of other guests and hosts, I experienced what is called vicarious shame and guilt. This had an influence on my travel and my travel behavior. It makes me frustrated to travel in places where I know there are many tourists, since I always can see behaviours I feel as disrespectful. I do not intend that my behaviour is always perfect. I never harassed geisha in Kyōto, damaged bamboo or litter in Arashiyama, nor took a picture of people without their permission, even if in some shots people are unavoidably present. I did however enter some small Shintō shrines to pray without knowing if I were allowed. However, because of my love for Japan, I felt bad in seeing some foreigners’ behaviours, and during my last travel I preferred to go places in which less or no tourists were present. This personal experience was an arena of cultural conflict I had with guests that come from other cultures, and similar experiences happen daily to virtually every tourist. This guest-guest conflict may also have ramifications over the hostguest relation, since the comparison between different guests may bring the hosts to like more one or the other party. It could be considered as a sort of Evans-Pritchard’s “segmentary opposition”, in which determined host and guest, make a coalition against the behavior of a third guest they dislike. tourists-and-plans-to-publicly-shame-them/ (Washington Post USA) or https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/travel/2019/10/25/chinese-tourists/ (the New Daily AUS) (all retrived 2020, 07, 29) 69 The same “segmentary-opposition-like” relations may happen in hosts-hosts conflicts or relations, because of the changes that tourism brings to local daily life. These changes may be overseen by the ones who see tourism as a business and benefits from the income that comes from tourism. In this case, some may even accept disrespectful guests’ behaviour. Regarding the acceptance of some Chinese tourists’ ill behaviour, one example could be that their purchasing power is too valuable and worth to oversee some misconducts72. Hosts may arrive at the point to defend guests’ inappropriate behaviours, with the “excuse” of the cultural difference. Conversely, those who are not directly involved into the business, may emphasise that tourism brings a progressive worsening of the living conditions that comes from the commercialisation of the local culture, moreover in those areas, such furusato, in which the cultural aspects are more vulnerable—usually in the peripheries. << These different attitudes lead to the creation of real factions and often result in open conflicts between locals that can have significant repercussions on daily social interactions, especially in the case of spatially and numerically circumscribed communities>> 73 (Barberani, 2003:60). This host-host conflict creates social division locally, which reflects also on the way in which the local culture is presented. In short, it is possible to see how tourism and travel are an arena for social conflicts, not only between host and guests, but among all the parties involved in the experience. 2.8 – Tōno: a positive case of the encounters in a furusato’s network The link between Tōno and Tōno monogatari has influence also on local population. As Ōta (1993) suggests, the city of Tōno symbolises the streets in accordance with Yanagita’s work. This means, as they became dependent on tourism industry, people of Tōno started to imagine themselves as living in a world of folkloristic representation. And, by consequence, the city administration objectified the culture of Tōno as the homeland of folklore in the tourist attractions. This phenomenon is not limited to Tōno. Barberani (2006) explains that this phenomenon of deconstruction is peculiar of the postmodernist approach to tourism. It’s exemplified by the hyperreality of Eco (cit. Barberani) or Ross (cit. Ōta), and the hyperreality in Tōno is the recreation of a folkloristic reality. It is << [...] a product of fantasy and imagination, to which the attributes of truth or falsity are not applicable given the absence of an original that can be used as a model. In this 72 http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/899846.shtml (retrived 2020, 07,29) 73 <<Queste differenti attitudini inducono alla creazione di vere e proprie fazioni e si traducono spesso in aperti conflitti tra i locali che possono avere notevoli ripercussioni sulle interazioni sociali quotidiane, soprattutto nel caso di comunità spazialmente e numericamente circoscritte.>> (Barberani, 2006:60) 70 case, the process of deconstruction of the concept of authenticity passes through the restructuring of the links between the copy and the original, or between sign and reality>> (Barberani, 2006:118)74. In other words, the city of Tōno is the reconstruction of a representation of the city of Tōno, so is not the true a Tōno, yet is not a false. The tourists that visit Tōno are in search of authenticity. Not the authenticity of Tōno as a city, but the authenticity of Tōno as the furusato of minzokugaku. Ishii Masami (2007) shares the same view as Ōta, as he also suggests that the machi-zukuri plan of Tōno, was based on Tōno monogatari, and focused on the folktales. Professor Ishii argues that since there was no more chance to narrate monogatari inside the households, the storytellers brought their arts in the city’s sightseeing places. What people asked them to narrate, were not folkloristic tales, but the tales of the kappa and zashikiwarashi narrated in Tōno monogatari75. Hearing these stories makes tourists believe that Tōno monogatari is still alive in Tōno. There is a strong connection between how guests idealize a location and the way in which hosts present it to them, that influence the authenticity of the city. Hosts create a city (machi-dzukuri) which is a folkloristic reality, imagining themselves as inhabitants of that hyperreality, and offering an authentic version of this hyperreality. Tourists ask for an authenticity having as the original a description of that folkloristic reality. To experience the authentic Tōno, tourists must recognize the hyperreality as alive. This doesn’t mean, however, that hosts show a false version of Tōno, nor that guests are experiencing a false version of it. If hosts are imagining themselves as inhabitants of the folkloristic reality, then it means they imagine their daily life as a part of it. When they are asked to put on display the authenticity of Tōno, they cannot do anything but objectify the image they have of themselves. And this image, influenced also by the tourists’ requests, comes from Tōno monogatari. Not all people of Tōno take part in this theater. However, the ones including government, who are living the folkloristic version of Tōno, the one that mostly interacts with guests, are also the creators and the keepers of this folkloristic reality. Now, is this version of Tōno real or false? It is false because it is a city created to copy a book. However, it is also real, when we accept that is the creation of a city which is based on that book. In short, it’s both real and false, or instead is neither one nor the other. The categories of reality and falsity that Barberani suggests are not applicable for the lack of an original that can work as a model, in Tōno are not applicable because there are two versions of Tōno and both worked as models. 74 <<[…] prodotto della fantasia e dell’immaginazione, a cui non sono applicabili gli attributi di verità o falsità data l’assenza di un originale che possa essere usato come metro di riferimento. In questo caso, il processo di decostruzione del concetto di autenticità passa attraverso la destrutturazione dei legami tra copia e originale, o tra segno e realtà.>> 75 in this regards, Ōta cites a history narrated by Iwamoto Yoshiteru in his work mō hitotsu no Tōno monogatari (もう一つ の遠野物語、1983、東京：刀水書房), cited also by Yamashita (2003:139). According to Iwamoto, a taxi driver in Tōno said that the stories he heard from old people were really different from the ones narrated in Tōno monogatari. However, if he tried to narrate the stories as he knew, the tourists complained that his stories were not good because did not corresponded to Yanagita’s account. The taxi driver than continues by telling that they (Tōno people) learned to memorize the book and base their account on that. 71 Tōno in its folkloristic reality is a perfect example of machi-dzukuri. It exists in this form and as a tourist attraction because there is a request for it. It was the post-war nostalgia that created such request and Tōno, more than other localities, had the possibility to be the emblem of the good-old furusato that Japanese thought they lost with modernity. This owes much to Tōno monogatari. Since the Meiji Era, in fact, Japanese progress was in close relation with the import of foreign knowledge. Almost all the academic disciplines that formed the corpus of the progress, the modernization and the urbanization, were acquired—even if through selective methods—from other countries and by different degrees, imposed over Japanese population. Among these disciplines, minzokugaku was one of the few indigenous to Japan. It was a discipline born in Japan that studied the Japanese culture and the Japanese’s past for the sake of Japanese people. And Tōno became the city where this discipline was virtually founded at the point that the Tōno Tourism Association’s 2020 pamphlet, accredit Tōno as the “place where monogatari were born”. Tōno is advertised with the title “eien no nihon no furusato” (永遠の日本のふるさと), the eternal homeland of Japan ( 遠野市観光協会 , 2015; 2020). In one of its brochure, the Tōno Tourism Association (2015) invites tourist to encounter furusato through the Tōno monogarati (『遠野物語』 でふるさとに会う), in the landscape that the Japanese genes yearn for (日本人の遺伝子が懐かしむ 風景へ)76. Using the word “genes” (遺伝子, idenshi), suggests that this feeling of yearning is not only a feature of a determined socio-cultural moment in history, but it is a feeling transmitted from generation to generation, almost natural, and embedded in Japanese people spirit. In a scientific way. Yamada (2007) individuates various reasons for the success of Tōno in this initiative of machi-zukuri, underlining particularly 3 of them: 1. An interchange-oriented machi-dzukuri plan that utilises the local environment 2. Glocal economic revitalization measures 3. An inclusive life-service system and shared information. The effectiveness of these points can be seen in different actions. As first, since the start of the machi-dzukuri project in the 1970s, there was a continuity of intentions. The policies were adopted and implemented even with the change of the political leading party, giving stability and adding value to the project, and helping to reduce the costs on the region. These policies, based on inclusiveness and comprehensiveness, have been developed in balance and with great attentiveness 76 懐かしむ natsukashimu is a verb that imply a nostalgic feeling, something missing or something to cherish. 72 to life-service, human development and the promotion of industries. They involved an active interchange between local people and institution, especially with mayor Honda Toshiaki (Takei, 2018). It was a holistic approach which could succeed only through an emphasis on the use of local resources. the collaboration of local people and the exchanges and collaboration of people from inside and outside the region. This is the enlarged network of the furusato. The cooperation of citizen was important also to include the newcomers inside the project, by educating them to the local knowledge, and they required a great deal of flexibility to adapt, also through scientific knowledge, to new challenges that development brings, such the objectification of the local culture in a way that could suit the tourists’ requests. As Takei suggests << [t]he driving force of machizukuri in Tono City is the attitude of the city workers and citizens, as shown in their actions to strengthen their abilities to generate new ideas and pursue challenges>> (2018:104). Local people were also fundamental to communicate their authentic lifestyle to the outsiders to foster tourism and, on the other side, the information network which included television, internet and other media, was fundamental in exporting Tōno’s culture outside77. This helps to create an interchange network with other localities that brought Tōno into a national, if not global, arena. The consequence was an increment of the tourism that creates more profits for the local population. In this approach, also people not directly involved in tourism would benefit from it. In fact, it is possible to infer that, at a major presence of tourists in search of authenticity, correspond a major request for local food, and hence a major request for local commodities such agricultural products obtainable through satoyama revitalization. A positive cooperation between hosts and guests is a part of success of Tōno’s tourism. The changes required to make Tōno the touristic attraction is now, do not allow to label it as an eco-tourism destination. However, the survival of local culture, such matsuri or the traditional knowledge and professions—as storytellers could be—owes much to tourism and guests’ requests. Without the nostalgia that modernity and urbanization bring in postwar, the “discover Japan” campaign and the national programs of rural development, there won’t be a Tōno as a stronghold of the vanishing Japanese traditional furusato and lifestyle. Tōno is a product of modernity and in this aspect represents a perfect case of revitalization of a furusato. This revitalization is not a recreation of a rural town where the old lifestyle is put on display. It’s not a static theme-park-like reconstruction based on historic facts, like New Salem could be, that tries to restore a nostalgic imagined past to contrast modernity. Yet it’s not the survival of an authentic Japanese past, nor a town where hosts could recover long gone traditions thanks to the interaction with guests. It’s a clever urban planning that took advantage of the nostalgia to create a successful model of city management. Tōno’s model is comparable to the approaches necessary for a successful satoyama revitalization project. Satoyama in fact requires similar policies and cooperation with local 77 An example could be the news that report a couple to witnessed kappa (, ret, August 7th, 2020) 73 people and outsiders to be effective. As Takeuchi (2010) argues, << [...] objective in launching the Satoyama Initiative is to revitalize the satoyama landscape, not in order to restore it to some nostalgically envisioned state, but to rectify the imbalance that has occurred as a result of successive periods of overuse and under-use>>. In Satoyama, local citizens need to participate in the interchange with outsiders coming from inside and outside the region. While satoyama can take advantages of traditional knowledge, it must be embedded inside the reality of the modern world. It requires a diligent use of resources and not selvage exploitation. It must aim at the conservation of the biodiversity, and this requires human intervention. This intervention must be, as the traditional Japanese mentality could teach, in harmony with nature and not in a top-down relation of control over it. As Tōno adapted to the changes of modernity, through the re-imagination of the furusato identity, cooperation of the citizens and their involvement with the infrastructures, education and information, extended networks, inclusion of outsiders and adaptability to them, each satoyama could use the same approach to reach a successful revitalization. Each satoyama, however, requires a particular body of knowledge. While it has been a positive example, the Tōno model is not fully exportable, since there is no a Tōno monogatari that other cities could use. The model per se is not scalable to other realities. Nevertheless, the path blueprinted by Tōno, worth to be taken into consideration for future machi-dukuri, as it represents a perfect arena for encounter, cooperation and revitalization projects. 74 Tabi to tourism as a metaphor or ethnography: different kinds of experiences and different approaches to the relations of guests with hosts 3.1 – Walk, observe, listen: Miyamoto as a model Tōno breakthrough is linked to the “discover Japan” campaign. On one side it was the ability of Tōno as a city to react to the particular historical moment and working on the right policies to reach a successful urban planning. On the other side however, was the request of self-discovery driven by nostalgia for the authentic Japan that gave Tōno the basis to do so. This desire of self-discovery, as much as the desire for discovery, is still an important driving force for tabi. In Tōno, the encounter between hosts and guests, not only was translated in a chance for hosts to revitalize their city and reimagine themselves living this new reality. It was also a chance for other Japanese to discover a different reality, and by the interaction with it, a chance to re-discover themselves as Japanese. Miyamoto (1975) invites to understand the reason why Japanese travel from a famous proverb: <<let the cute kids travel. By travel they will know also sadness and melancholy>> 78. This proverb, which inspires to not spoil children by keeping them safe inside the household, according to Miyamoto it suggests that tabi was a fundamental part of social training (社会的訓練) and, since Japanese are curious by nature and Japan has an environment that makes it easy to travel, it would be a shame to not do it. The reason why Miyamoto thinks that Japanese environment is suitable for travel, is the fact that Japanese people belong to the same ethnic group, strengthening the bound between people. He didn’t take in account the Japanese multiculturalism. He also suggests that even if there were dialects, these were for the most mutually intelligible. As Yanagita is considered the father of minzokugaku, Miyamoto is known as the tabi no minzokugakusha, the traveler folklorist. He travelled virtually the entire Japan and proved that people live and make a living in every corner of the island (Tatehira, 2006). As an ethnographer, Miyamoto took a significant advantage from his farmer origins. <<Trying to set for a tabi-like journey made me thought about many things. I wondered if the reason they [the peasants] spoke to a completely stranger traveler [Miyamoto] without doubts or concealing thing, was because they considered me one of their own, and that they found comfort in talking to me. Whenever I say things like “I am also the son of a farmer, and even now when I back in home, I take my hoe and sickle to the fields That’s why I can do all kinds of peasant work”, for a while 78 「かわいい子には、旅をさせよ。憂いと悲しみも旅で知れ]. This idea recalls the history of Śākyamuni, which also had to leave his palace, know sadness and melancholy, to find the illumination. 75 the conversation turns around agricultural produces. And they seem to think the other person [Miyamoto] is not a stranger. What I learned about peasant work came in handy later on>> 79 (Miyamoto, 2002:182). Being in a moment of encounter and debate between subjects with different cultural backgrounds, different views of the world and different aims, an ethnographic encounter may present some ethical, political and methodological problems. Fabietti (2010) explains about the role of ethnographer that << [o]ften, his permanence arouses tension and discontent within the host community. Sometimes he is suspected of being a government spy, sometimes governments think he is a political troublemaker, an agent of some foreign power or political party sent to stir up hostility towards the authorities. Sometimes, much more simply, as a nuisance. Fieldwork is in fact something that does not only involve data collection but, in addition to interaction with the community being studied, also a laborious “negotiation” of the role>>80 (2010:34) These are not far from the same problems that arise between the hosts and the guests in tourism. The hosts often see the tourists as a nuance, and the guests accuse the hosts to hide their real culture. The difference between ethnography and the tourism is that a tourist may be disappointed by this experience and maybe decide to never come back to the same location, but at the end of the day, that experience will end with the travel. Ethnographers instead must use the data collected for produce ethnographic works, and to do so they must collect data which reflect the reality accurately. Hence, it’s important that hosts can trust the ethnographers, and feel at ease in talking without hiding things or feel doubts. Another important thing is that tourism is usually a fast experience, while ethnography requires a continuous participation in the community life. Miyamoto could use his rural origins to obviate these problems. Even when he arrived in a village as a stranger, he could easily fit into the community and create bound with locals. 79 <<旅らしい旅をしてみていろいろのことを考えさせられた。見ず知らずの旅人に何の疑念も持たず、かくすところも なく話してくれるのは、私を自分たちの仲間だと考えているからであり、話すことによって気の休まるものがあるから ではないかと思った。｢私も百姓の子であり、今でも家へ帰ると鍬鎌を持って田へゆく。だから百姓仕事は一通りでき る｣とはなすと、大ていはひとしきり農作物のことについて話がはずむ。そして相手も他人ではないと思いこむようであ る。この百姓仕事について聞いたことが後に大変役に立つことになる。>> (宮本、2002:182) 80 <<Spesso la sua permanenza suscita tensioni e malumori all’interno della comunità che lo accoglie. Talvolta è sospettato di essere una spia del governo, a volte invece i governi pensano che sia un sobillatore politico, un agente di qualche potenza straniera o di una parte politica inviato a rinfocolare l’ostilità nei confronti delle autorità. A volte, molto più semplicemente, come un rompiscatole. Il lavoro sul campo è in effetti qualcosa che non prevede solo la raccolta dei dati, ma, oltre che l’interazione con la comunità studiata, anche una faticosa «negoziazione» del ruolo>> (Fabietti, 2010:34) 76 His ethnographic method is described in the title of a magazine that Miyamoto published through the Kinki Nippon Tourist (近畿日本ツーリスト) from 1969. The magazine title was [Aruku Miru Kiku] (あるくみるきく), walk, watch and listen. Walking is important because it is the basis of a fieldwork. Aruku means to have the occasion to see different things and think about different things (Miyamoto, 1993). Miru was also an important operation. << [...] I loved to see people’s activities. Whenever I walked in the mountains, I would see the age of the pine trees. Pines only grow one section a year, so you can get a rough idea of how old they are. Few of the pine trees in the Izumi Mountains are over 100 years old anymore. [...] People often say that mountainous areas are natural, but there were very few mountainous areas in the Izumi region that were not cared for by human hands>>81 (Miyamoto, 1993:76). Besides suggesting, like in the discourse on satoyama (ch.2), that the human hand is historically necessary for the survival of the ecosystem, Miyamoto explains why observing is important. Walking in a wood and watching the node of the sections of the trees to understand their age, can give the ethnographer insights about the local people’s life. As an example, why a particular tree and no others are present, or why they are cut down, or what’s the use made of the wood. And again, there is an appropriate age for the tree to make it more suitable for a cut that depends from local knowledge or protection of the ecosystem? For Miyamoto to walk and see was more than watching peasants’ activity. It means to observe their life and habits also by walking the same place they did and watching the disturbance they made on the environment, how they relate to it, not only in the big events but also in the smallest detail. Kiku is about interaction with people. It means both to listen and to ask. To walk and to see are activities that happened at the same time and at the same speed. The pace must be adapting to let the eyes of the ethnographer to observe what’s around, but it must also be a continue movement, to allow him to always see new things. The asking and listening come after, when the ethnographer saw what he should have seen and need to ask questions to understand what he cannot understand by observing. Ethnographers, however, are not only observers of the otherness and recorders of it. The fieldwork is a place for entering in contact with the knowledge of different social groups, but it is also a moment in which the other could enter in contact with the culture of the ethnographers. It’s a moment of exchange. Maybe not equal, maybe not even, but nevertheless an exchange. The pathfinder of the tabi, according to Miyamoto (1969), on one hand found interest and enriched everything in their travel. On the other hand, by travelling they could bring knowledge with them. Tabi is not only a way to gain knowledge but also a mean to transmit it. As societies are diverse, so 81 <<[…]人の営みを見るのが好きだった。山の中歩いていて小松山の中へはいると、かならず松の樹齢を見る。松は一 年一節しかのびないから、大体の年数がわかる。和泉山地の松山には百年をこえる木は少なった。[...]人はよく山地を 自然だというけれど、人の手の加わらない山地は和泉地方にはほとんどなかった>> (宮本、1993:76) 77 are travel and the way to undertake them. << [...] there were many discoveries in the way we travelled. For example, in terms of the way of looking at a landscape, people began to move away from the miniature garden view of the three most beautiful views of Japan to discover also the beauty of the sawtooth oak forest in Musashino>>82 (Miyamoto, 1969:68). The eyes of the travellers reflect their personality. This happened in Tōno. in a particular historical moment, the landscape people researched became the rural archetypal Japan, and so their way to experience tabi changed. This change influences and it is influenced by the dynamic events of the societies. Socio-cultural changes led travellers to look for new experiences, and this quest for new experiences brings with it further socio-cultural changes. Miyamoto explains that <<as the facilities and institutions of travel became better equipped, people lost the chances of interact directly and study from other people, and with this the quest for knowledge, the transmission of knowledge, and the use of travel for selfdevelopment were replaced by a journey for mere entertainment. Nevertheless, the desire to travel and gain something new that is missing from one’s life, still strong>> (Miyamoto, 1969:68)83. The way of experiencing travel changed, and also the institution changed along. If in the past, tabibito used tabi as a medium of contact with the alterity, a way of gain and transmit knowledge and hence, a way to discover and develop the self, modern travel becomes only entertainment. However, Miyamoto acknowledges that the desire to gain something new, being this a knowledge, an unfamiliar landscape or a fresh memory, still strong. This may be the reason many people like to travel in places they never visited before. The tourist experience however differs from the past and still developing in alternative forms. New institutions, but also new technologies that Miyamoto couldn’t witness, bring the traveller to new forms of experience, alternative way of interaction with the hosts and the landscapes. If in the past, the contact with local people was virtually necessary during a tabi―just thinking about the lodges, the food, the information about the directions to take ― modern technologies allow us to travel without the minimum contact with the local people. Hotels’ staff have in discretion and tact one of their most important qualities. Good staff are always ready to answer the guests’ questions, but never ask for personal information. Plus, new technologies, such electronic keys and online payment systems, allow a traveller to not even need the staff’s assistance. A traveller can arrive to his lodge, take the electronic key through a computerised system and check out without ever see the host’s face. Similarly, the situation for the food, the tickets, and the shopping. Even the old art of asking for directions, probably one of the easiest ways to socialise with the locals, went lost due 82 <<旅の仕方に多くの発見があった。たとえば風景の見方一つにしても、日本三景を最高の美しさとした箱庭的な見方 から武蔵野のクヌギ林にすら美を見出す人達が出てきたのである。>> (宮本、1969:68 ) 83 <<それは一つは旅人をうけ入れてくれる社会がそこにあったのであるが、旅行の設備や機関がととのってくるにつれ て、民衆が民衆に接し、まなぶ機会が失われてくるとともに、知識をもとめ、伝達し、自己形成のために役立てようと した旅から、単なる娯楽への旅が展開してくる。それでもなお旅に出て自分の今までの生活の中にないものを得ようと する気持ちはつよい。>>(宮本、1969:68) 78 to the easy access to GPS via smartphones. The biggest changes, however, were the motivations that lead people to set for a tabi. In an enjoyable work, Okada Kishū (1993) retrace -– partially –- the motivation and the method of travelling of people in history. From the commerce of the Phoenician to the wars of the crusaders, from the colonisation of a new world to the grand tour as a celebration of the come to age in 17th and 18th century. Different reasons, different methods and different experiences, that can show the dynamic of culture and societies, and the different way of face, understand and interact with the alterity. But with two common features: the contact with the hosts and the landscape, and the desire to acquire something. 3.2 – Tabi: an aimless path to discovery Tabi is where this work started. It’s a kind of experience different from tourism or pilgrimages, yet hard to define. Among the various ideas about tabi, my preferences go on the ideal of Miyamoto and Okada Kishū. Okada (1975) makes a first difference between tabibito and ryokōsha—which he discerns in English as travellers and tourists. <<A traveller, by definition, was essentially a person who did not insist that his or her journey had to be in a particular place, but who went out knowing that there were risks and uncertainties. [...] Just as life has its stormy situations, so does travel, and the traveller was half expecting it>>84 (Okada, 1975:7). Okada uses a past tense to define travellers (tabibito) because, he affirms, travellers ended up becoming tourists. <<For those who had become tourists, the only thing that remained strong was their interest in the places they visited>>85 (Okada, 1975:7). The difference between tabibito and ryokōsha reflects the difference between tabi and ryokō. Tabi is a travel or a journey where the destination is not important, while in ryokō (trip) and tourism (kankō) is the fundamental part. According to this author, trips are simple forms of travel to enterprise for a short time, while journeys consist in going somewhere far and do not even require a coming back. <<When it is not merely to go far, but danger and anxiety are assumed, then a journey become a travel>> 86(Okada, 1975:8). Similarly, as Yanagita Kunio who saw tabi as painful (苦) and ryokō as an ease (楽), Okada underlines how the tabibito expects and assumes that their tabi must present difficulties and anxieties. Kishida Kuniō, a famous Japanese dramatist and among the 84 <<トラベラーとは、本来、その語句の定義からいっても、旅先が、ある特定の場所でなくてはならないということに はこだわらず、危険も不安もあることを承知で出かける人のことであった。[...] 人生に波乱があるように、旅にもそれ があり、それを半ば期待してのがトラベラーであった。>> (岡田、1975:7) 85 <<ツーリストと化した人々には、訪問地への興味だけが強く残った。>>(岡田、1975:7) 86 <<たんに遠くへ行くだけでなく、そこに不安と危険が想定されれば、ジャーニーはトラベルに変わるといえる。 >>(岡田、1975:8). Later in the work, Okada’s use of travel in some occasions changes from meaning tabi to be more similar to trip 79 founders of modern Japanese drama, wrote in its essay “tabi no kurō” (the hardship of tabi) that one of the reason he was not fond of tabi is that he felt anxious when he had to set for one (1990). This does not mean that people who set for a tabi are seeking for hardship and anxieties, but only that they are expecting to meet some. Some may even like these difficulties, and some may not. For these reasons some people enjoy tabi and some, like Kishida, are not fond of them. Hardship is a part of the tabi, but not the intent of it. The aim of a tabi is different: <<For what reason, and toward where I walk? On what aim did I set for a tabi? Where should I go to get what I’m aiming for? Why when I think about a tabi do I feel elated? These feelings arise unexpectedly in my heart. It doesn’t seem a tabi to search for the end of loneliness. Usually is not even the case that I feel that kind of loneliness that only a tabi can erase. I do not think also that nature is so quiet and immutable that I should walk in search of a different scenery than the one I have in front of my eyes. The curiosity of walk in search of a mutable or beautiful landscape has never aroused in my heart. Why then? What is it I am looking for by walking? Where should I go to get what I am looking for? Something lively that can resurrect or arise quietly in my heart. This is what I’m looking for. With an expectation of fear and pleasure, I’m seeking for this. >> 87 (Yoshie, 1914:3) The expectation of fear and pleasure is the contour of the experience, but the aim, for Yoshie at least, is finding something that will come to mind, something worth to remember, or something that arises and brings to some change. Is to find something missing. <<I would like to try to devote myself toward new countries, toward a new world, toward the unknown, toward the old, and in the midst of that discover a new myself. The heart that is seeking for travel is a heart seeking for newness. Is a heart that is seeking movement for what is stagnant. Is the heart that seeks for the flowing of what has been gathered>> (Yoshie, 1914:269-270). This definition offered by Yoshie is not a universal feeling about tabi. I believe, that self-discover is one of the motivations of tabi, but not the only one. At first, tabi is an individual experience. Even when more people are walking together on a path, in the same way Bashō walked with Chiri, their experience is always personal. Among the various reasons why this experience is personal, two are worthy of attention. 87 <<何のために、何處へ歩いて行くのであらう？ 何を目當に旅へ出たのだらう？ が得られるのだらう？ 何故旅を思ふときに自分の胸は躍るのだらう？ 何處へ行つたらば、其目的のもの この樣な考えが不圖胸の中へ浮んで來る。 「寂 しさの果て」を求めて旅へ行く、さういふ旅でもないらしい。旅へ出なければ消されない程の寂しさを常々感じてゐる わけでもない。目先の違つた景色を求めて歩く、それ程に自然を無變化な、靜的なものだとも考へても居ない。美しい 景色とか、變化の多い景色とか、さういふものを搜して歩く好奇心が自分の胸に起つたこともない。それでは何故か。 何を求めて歩いて居るのだらう。何處へ行つたらば、その求めてゐるものが得られるのだらう。靜かに引きしまつた自 分の心の中へ何がよみがえつて來るのか、何が浮んで來るのか、私はそれを求めてゐる。恐ろしさとうれしさの期待を 持つてそれを求めてゐる。>> （吉江、1914:3） 80 The first one is that tabi, according to Okada (1975), requires all the five senses. He suggests that the ideal tabi is the one that satisfy all the five senses, and the lack on one of them could bring to a certain lack of emotions in it. However, he also acknowledges that nowadays travelers do not necessarily enjoy a tabi that satisfies all the five senses, since tabi itself has changed. This change does not consist in a difference between individual and group travel, since in group travel is possible to satisfy all the five senses and in individual tabi they are not necessarily satisfied. The problem is instead in people’s expectations toward tabi: << This is because of the sadness of modern people who no longer expect travel in a simple form as they did in the past>> (Okada, 1975:46). Modern travelers (tourists) seek for exceptional experiences, often encouraged by the hosts’ proposal of their places, which depict the destination manipulating the information to attract travelers in a pure marketing operation. At the point that a << [...] picture of the mosaic of water and islands fading into the horizon, no matter its picturesque merits, is not enough for the modern tourist avid for experiences. [...] lakes have to be made ‘alive’ by giving them meaning understandable by the target audiences>> (Tuohino & Pitkänen, 2004). To see new sceneries, hearing unfamiliar voices, trying new tastes it is not enough for tourists. The trip must be a complex experience, and for the most, an individually tailored one. For tabibito the simple travel was a novelty already. New travelers need something more. And this “more” is something which is not reachable through the five senses. Tourists do not search for the new tastes or the new landscapes, but for the tastes and landscapes that guidebooks suggest. There is not a full desire to know the local, but to experience what media, such as magazine, books, television or internet, suggests to be “local”. Everyone can notice how the majority of tourists gather in the same places, those places labelled as “touristic spots”. What Okada does not explicit, but it’s clear enough, if that all the five senses are personal. Each person tastes food in a different way, with personal likes and dislikes. Some like cold, some like warm weather. Some like quietness, some like noise. For this reason, even in group travel, each individual makes individual experiences. The second reason why tabi is personal, which in my opinion, is that tabi in its true meaning is a dynamic experience. It doesn’t look for a destination, but it also doesn’t have a proper start. The starting point of the Gokaidō (五街道), the five centrally administrate routes that connect Edō to other provinces during the Edō period, or the Nagasaki Kaidō, that connected Fukuoka to Nagasaki, had their zero mile’s marker (道路元標, Dōro genpyō) amid bridges. Famous still the mile marker on the midst of Nipponbashi in Tōkyō, under the statue of the two kirin. In Japanese culture, from Shintō to Buddhism, but also in folklore and performing arts, bridges are a symbol of connection between the kami and the human’s realms. In Japanese cosmogony, it is said that Izanagi and Izanami were given order to let the earth emerge from the primaeval ocean. The two kami, standing on the Ame- 81 no-ukihashi, immersed the spear Ame-no-nuhoko in this sea under them, and when they pulled it back, salty water drops fell down from the spear and gathered forming the island of Onogoro88. Ame- no-ukihashi represents the axis mundi between the realm of the kami and the place from where the realm of the human was created. While with some romanticism, Ame-no-ukihashi could be seen as the location in which the tabi of humankind—and of the world as well—started, it’s important to underline how this start is a dynamic process. This starting point on a bridge, in fact, symbolizes that Izanami and Izanagi were not more kami as they were before, and yet they were not human in their features. Once they reached Onogoro, their body was formed—Kōjiki emphasized the formation of genitalia and the discovery of their sexes89— and they procreated. Slowly they shifted from kami to semi-human entities, learning about love and sorrow, life and death. Ame-no-ukihashi can be seen as a liminal passage between the realm of the kami and the human realm. In this sense is both the starting point of a tabi as much as a milestone of another tabi, a wider one, that started in the realm of kami and will continue, probably, even when the humankind or this world won’t exist anymore. Bridges are also the means of an encounter with the alterity90. Differently from Ame-no-ukihashi which is a vertical connection, the alterity connected by bridges is usually horizontal. In many tales, bridges are the place where a human can easily encounter Oni (demons), but in a broader view, is the place of the encounter with aliens (異人, ijin). Aliens are not always extraordinary entities such oni or kami, but can be also people belonging to an inner group with a different status or deviant behavior. As an example, monks, foreigner, women. Komatsu (2015) explains that ijin could be considered also as a difference between the realm of men and the realm of women. Bridges are a means of communication between these realms and the only way to cross a river. In metaphorical terms, bridges are a conscious choice of crossing a border, and are hence the liminal condition of the passage from what travelers’ lives were and their desire to connect with a different realm. This realm can be also a temporary one, as it can represent the past and the future of the same individual. However, differently from liminal stages which entail the abandonment of a previous condition to a new one, tabi is the continuation of the previous condition—with changes — and the impossibility of reach a full attainment of the new one. In fact, once a tabibito arrives at the end of a tabi, in the middle of a bridge, and bridges are liminal conditions, as one cannot live forever in a liminal status, the next step after the arrival implies the start of a new tabi. Tabi is a continue walk in seek for an enlightenment through the encounter with a horizontal or a vertical alterity, and it always implies one individual previous tabi in it. For the most, is a never ending experience, since just a few individuals may reach the enlightenment. In many 88 The meaning of Onogoro in cosmogony is special, because is the only island that was created and wasnt born (despite the literal meaning of Onogoro would be Self-Consolidated Island). In Kojiki is said that all the other islands of Japan are born from the copulating of Izanami and Izanagi. 89 Interesting is that they were already opposed in gender, even before knowing their sexes. 90 Tunnels have the same function but are relatively more modern 82 cases, one individual’s tabi is a lifetime long circle. For this reason, tabi is a personal and dynamic experience that cannot be experienced by other people in the same identical way, even when the path walked is the same. Not only other people cannot experience a path in the same way an individual did. The same individual can never experience the same tabi twice, even when he or she walks on the same path. Satō Norikiyo, known as Saigyō (1118-1190), was a famous poet which poetries often concern travel and cherry blossom (sakura). During his second trip to Michinoku, he stood in front of Sayononaka mountain (小夜の中山), in nowadays Shizuoka prefecture, which was one of the three hardest mountain pass on the Tōkaidō. There he wrote a poem: 年たけて Toshi takete また越ゆべしと Mata koyubeshi to 思ひきや Omoiki ya 命なりけり Inochi narikeri 小夜の中山 Sayononaka Yama Did I ever imagine I would make this pass again In my old age? Such is life! Sayononaka Mountain91 This poetry, written in Saigyō’s late years, explains the astonishment of the author to have the occasion to walk the same path that he walked about forty years ago. Shirane (2012) suggests that the key of the poetry is the fourth line, which he translates as “such is life!”, and refers to his life span. Considering life as a transient and fleeting thing, Saigyō was astonished he could walk once again the same path after forty years. His joy derives from the possibility of living such a long life. This poetry suggests another thing. Saigyō walked the same path earlier in his life, while he was younger. However, this time, when he reached the same place, he did it as an older man. Same individual, but a different identity and, by consequence, a different point of view about the tabi. The boundaries that the tabibito crosses on the journey are not only geographical or spiritual, but also temporal. The alterity they encounter on the way includes also a different self. Japanese culture values dynamic over static nature. The aesthetic value lies in the transient and ephemeral, rather than in the eternal. Even Ise Shrine is rebuilt every twenty years, and Japanese do not feel this makes it less valuable. In many western cultures, the use of stone for building, calls for abiding structures. Just need to look at the Hoover Dam and Oskar J.W. Hansen’s vision of a structure that will still there after tens of thousands of years. 91 English translation from Shirane (2012) 83 Constructions of wood do not allow such a vision. Japanese culture prefers movement and change, renovation and return. 道 dō, the Chinese dao, is a clear example of this. A tabi on the dō, cannot be anything else than an ephemeral journey of change and renovation. A tabi of discovery. Tabi is such personal experience, in which an individual enters in contact with different people, different realms or a different self. It is a perfect metaphor of life. As everyone’s life has different trajectories, different paths and different aims, so tabi has. Okada suggests that <<[...] some people even take the view that something that has a purpose is not a tabi>>92 (1975:108). The difference between tabi and life, is that the latter is a one-time experience. Everyone may repeat a tabi with a different outcome. However, both experiences’ outcomes are not fully predicable from the start. During a tabi, and during life, tabihito have occasion to change their mind. << Tabi it means a change of mind performed spontaneously along the way. It’s good on rely on spontaneity. I want to avoid to say that a tabi is a journey that one imposes on the self from the start. As an outcome, there may be some things we impose on ourselves. But in the beginning, it is better to be more spontaneous>>93 (Okada, 1975:116). The major problem of a tabi is how to accept this spontaneous change of mind. Okada suggests that on a journey some people even fail to accept this change of mind, and this is not a tabi, but a mere act of movement or a journey to observe. For other people instead, a simple journey cannot be called a tabi. But it is correct to state that a journey of discovery and self-discovery should be not easy? There are people who see tabi as a synonym of spiritual practice. However, does a spiritual practice always require hardship and an abandonment of pleasure and enjoyment? The answer cannot be positive. As said before, tabi is not about the destination, but about what can be earn on the path. Hardships may be expected, as they are part of life, but a tabi calls for spontaneity and so these hardships shouldn’t be imposed. I think a reason for set for a travel, is a spontaneous and instinctive desire of enjoy discoveries, and self-discovery. Miyamoto, contrarily, suggests that the fun of travel lies in the hardship at first: the first condition is that the tabi must be painful (1975:64). Nevertheless, it must bring to discovery or self-discovery, which are both, as Okada defines them, a change of the self. If a tabibito doesn’t have any change during his tabi, then the journey was not a tabi. Tabi has a nuance of walking and experience an unknown world. It requires continuous interaction with the hosts and the landscape, the only way to acquire knowledge. In his work “tabi to kankō” (1975), Miyamoto explains that one of the biggest differences between tourism, travel and tabi, is that in travel or tourism, the traveler use his own money, car, choose a lodge their like and 92 <<[...] 何か、目的があるのは、旅とはいえないという見方をする人さえいる。>> (岡田、1975:108). 93 <<旅とは、自分の心の変化を、その途上で、自然におこなってゆくことだといいたいのである。自然にまかせるがよ い。はじめから、自らに課して出掛けることが、旅だという言いい方はさけたい。結果として、自分に課するものがあ るかもしれない。しかし、最初は、もっと自然でよい。>> (岡田、1975:116). 84 moreover, it is a question of go and back. Tabi instead is not an ordinary repetition of a routine. Tourism may give the impression of taking a break from the daily routine, but the simple fact that the ordinary repetition of it continues at the moment of the return, it shows that tourists do not fully search for a change of the self. When tourists go back to the location where they start their travel, they back at their previous condition. They may have some knowledge more, but not a genuine change of mind. When tabibito were back to the location where they set up for a new tabi, they do it with a new mind, hence they back as different individual. The coming back however is not part of the tabi, but the result of another tabi. Miyamoto’s view is that in the past people who carried out tabi were mostly monks, Yamabushi or shajin (Shintō’s shrine adepts), who could receive lodge and food on their journey—the compassion of others—and had wish to undertake a tabi to know about the rumors of the world. They do it also to gain new knowledge and skills to improve their lives, or have medicine prepared, or again have prayer recited for them. Also entertainers used to travel in search of a new audience, and some warrior in search of a new master. According to this view, and at least partially in contrast with Okada’s one, it could seem that tabi had a destination. However, their idea is fact similar, when one realizes that the destination of a tabi is not an ultimate point. A monk that seeks for knowledge, has to gain it when he found it, through study. An entertainer who find new audience, must entertain it. A warrior that find a new master, has to “climb the mountain to surpass the way made by the master, and advance in the path for teach to his future disciples”94. Pilgrimages are similar to tabi, because while having an ultimate point in their destinations, most of the changes of the individual happened on the path, and these changes lead the pilgrim to a new tabi, or life. A tabi in search of something is nothing more than the interlude, and in some case the preparation to the acquisition of that thing. The thing on which Okada and Miyamoto surely agree, is that tabi must be a way to learn and discover. While Okada’s idea on tabi hinges on the individual’s development and self-discovery, Miyamoto emphasizes the discovery through the encounter with the alterity: <<To learn by tabi is to experience the way of life of the people living at the destination. As I walked around each area, I encounter some villages that makes me wonder how some people could even live in such places>> 95 (Miyamoto, 1975:123). Miyamoto’s tabi was a chance to enter in contact with other people and learn from them. He could discover about Japanese culture and tradition by talking with other people, at the point to acknowledge that tabi made him more talkative. Miyamoto insists, however, those new forms of travel such as tourism and the new infrastructures, while intensified the contacts between guests and hosts, created a communication distance between them. The reasons are 94 This is what Sensei Hatano Yoshiharu, my Karate sensei, explained me about the meaning of keep study the “way” of Karate. 95 <<旅で学ぶということは、旅先でそこに生きている人びとの生き方にふれてみることであった。各地をあるいてみて いつも思うことであるが,どうしてこんなところにまで人は住んだのであろうかというような場所に村がある。>> (宮 本、1975:123) 85 that on one side hosts not always welcome guests, and guests do not have a warm aptitude toward hosts. Moreover, more and more people do not have interest in the culture and lifestyle of the people who live in countryside. This view also emphasized how for Miyamoto, tabi and discovery had a clear fieldwork, which was the rural Japan. 3.3 – Pilgrimages: in search of the insight toward the destination The key point of tabi is to earn or discover something on the way to change one’s mindset. The destination, present or not, is not as important as the path and there is not a real come back from tabi. Pilgrimages plays an important role in the history of Japanese travel. They were, in fact, one of the few reasons—or excuses—that people could use to travel from a place to another. Usui suggests that <<The principal type of pilgrimage in Japan is one based on the worship of the main image of a Buddhist temple. In many cases the main image is Kannon>> (2007:25). It is a tabi based on a religious experience. While I recognize that Usui is correct in asserting that the connection between pilgrimage and Buddhism is strong, I think is necessary to underline also that not all pilgrimages in Japan has a religious motivation. In the same volume as Usui, Peter Ackermann sees also Bashō and Saigyō as pilgrims, when he affirms that <<[...] movement from place to place always implies spiritual process, whereby the careful observer comes to understand the essence of, and the reasons for, suffering.>> (2007:4). Following Ackermann’s words, all the tabi, as Okada and Miyamoto recognize them, are spiritual quests. Kitagawa (1987) can help to put this in order. Kitagawa suggests that pilgrimages combine diverse and contradictory features which are both spiritual and mundane. These two poles, which can coexist in the same experience, are filled by a continuum of practices that can be, depending on the individual, more or less religious. Spirituality is not a synonym of religion. <<As a term, spirituality betokens matters of the spirit world, issues of animism, ecstasy, magic and spells [...]. But spirituality does not only relate to supernatural forces; it bears on the recognition and pursuit of matters of ultimate concern that lie beyond the limits of the corporeal and the social>> (Flanagan, 2007:1). Whether religious or not, pilgrimage as a tabi it’s always a spiritual practice, because it involves hardship and endurance, and it leads to a change in the individual. When these features are missing, a pilgrimage can be a religious practice, but it is not a tabi and, by some extents, can be also not spiritual. Tourists that visit the shrines only because of their fame as pilgrimage stops are not pilgrims. Also religious people that do not approach the sacred place in the tabi form, through hardship and endurance, pursuing the idea of a change in their life, are not on a spiritual pilgrimage. Kitagawa (1987) underlines however, that while pilgrimages involves physical hardship and endurance, it has also pleasurable aspects: 86 <<Usually, pilgrims are motivated by religious objectives, such as adoration of the deities or saints who are enshrined at various sacred places, gaining merit for salvation, paying penance for annulment of sin, or praying for the repose of the spirits of the deceased, but these religious motives are often mixed with the desire to acquire healing, good fortune, easy childbirth, prosperity and other this-worldly benefits. [...] the pilgrimage provides welcome relief from the routine of the dull everyday life of the people. Furthermore, seen from a broader perspective, the pilgrimage, which cements the solidarity of religious group, also stimulates trade and commerce, dissemination of ideas, and intercultural exchange>> (Kitagawa, 1987:127) While these are seen as universal, Kitagawa individuates three major types of pilgrimages in Japan that derive from the peculiar social and geographical situation of the country: 1. Pilgrimage to the sacred mountain 2. Pilgrimage to the temples and shrines, based on faith in the divinities enshrined in those sanctuaries 3. Pilgrimage to sacred places based on faith in certain charismatic holy men who are believed to have hallowed those places by their visits Mountain are sacred places in Japan and there is a strong affinity between Japanese and the mountains. Starting from Mt. Fuji, mountains have long been an object of worship for the Japanese. Already before Buddhism and the codification of Shintō 96 , the belief that Kami reside in the mountains and descend on villages on special occasion, was at the basis of different rituals, ideas or artistic productions (see. Suzuki, 2019). Because of their natural features, mountains are the places that most suit the role of residence of kami. Hardly accessible, protected by forests, and the place on Earth closest to the Heaven. Before the construction of shrines, Japanese thought the forest-clad places in these slopes were the kami’s residences. There was also the belief that at their death, people who abandoned their earthly form, would enter into the mountains and become kami, and eventually ujikami that would protect the family97. According to Anesaki (1963) there was not a sharp distinction between a deity of nature and a spirit of the dead: <<The clan deity was usually represented by a symbol and enshrined in a simple sanctuary erected at a spot commending the best view of the locality, and in many cases occupying a strategic 96 The native belief, acquire the name Shintō only with the arrival of Buddhism, as a form of distinguish between the two. <<Shintō is fundamentally not so much a religious system as a complex of ancient beliefs and observances which have remained comparatively unchanged through the vicissitudes of history, despite the impacts of foreign system like Buddhism and Confucianism>> (Anesaki, ,1963:20) 97 Ujikami are the kami protector of the clan. While some kami serves bigger communities, from a village to all the nation, ujikami are tutelary of each single clan, and was possible to find more ujikami in a relatively narrow area. 87 point. The sanctified spot was carefully guarded and kept scrupulously clean. The simple, soberlooking shrine standing in the dim light of the woods inspired the people with the presence of a divine spirit>> (Anesaki, 1963:34-35) Mountains, while being probably the major spot for kami’s presence, were not the only natural shrines. Rivers, waterfalls, the sea, stones or trees of particular shapes, were suitable houses of the kami, and are called yorishiro. When a kami resides in a yorishiro, this is called shintai. The shrines maintain a simple and sober look, which is defined “kamisabi”—where sabi indicates quietness—and were built in wood (there are not stone-made shrines) in wooded areas. They were immersed in nature, without contrasting it. Shrines were not thought as graves for the kami that had to rest forever in that place, but as transient lodges that allow kami to back and go as they wish. That shrines were edified in the woodland, suggests that Japanese were not expecting kami to come to reside in the villages, but required people to travel to them. The area where kami resides, himorogi (神籬), is usually rounded by bamboo fences or sacred trees or a shimenawa, a rope that delimited it98. Himorogi is a sacred space, a space that is a tabu. hence forbidden or too dangerous for people. Franz Steiner argues that, beside their role as social mechanism of obedience with ritual significance, and specific and restrictive behavior in dangerous situations, taboos are also concerned << with the protection of individuals who are in danger and with the protection of society from those endangered—and therefore dangerous—persons>> (Steiner, 1967:20-21). Not only himorogi are tabu as area off-limits for those who are not medium of the power, because too dangerous. They are also enclosure for the kami in to not let their power go out. In Japan, in fact, there is not a clear distinction between good or bad kami. They are ambivalent. Their nature changes as nature, or human beings, does. The kami of the mountain can be benevolent with the village, when they grant food and resources. However, kami of the mountain can also kidnap people, let the rage of the nature strike the village, bring death. Differently from Christian religion, as instance, that build churches as the center of the community, to have God near and present and to let God descend in the community, Shintō tries to confine the power of kami in their place of residence. When kami visit a village, their power is always mediated through yorishiro, or yorimashi—people, usually children or women who most attract kami—which 98 During my visit in Japan, while I was taking a picture of a pond surrounded by a shimenawa, I was explained by a man, that I supposed was a staff of the shrine, that the pond was the residence of a kami and if people surpass the shimenawa the kami would get mad. This underlines that Japanese take seriously the space of the kami and I’m positive that not many people would dare to try to enter in the kami area. In fact, I remember about a woman that was filling bottle with a sacred water from waterfalls of Shiragiku, in Kyōto, which preferred to overstretch her arms holding a really long hishaku (the spoon like object used to ablation in Shintō), rather than draw near the shimenawa. After suggesting me and my tabi mate to drink some of that water of the waterfall, she warned us to keep a proper distance teaching us how to approach the water and use hishaku to drink properly. 88 contains the kami’s power, or people who can talk with the kami, such shamans or miko99. The same people who mediate the power of kami during matsuri in the village or events that engage the community, are often people who acquire and fortify their spiritual power (reiryoku) through ascetic practices. << [...] both the medium and the ascetic are shamans because each in their particular manner of trance acts as a bridge between one world and another>> (Blacker, 1975:5). To acquire reiryoku, both necessary to mediate with the spirits or ward them off, is not a simple task. “Asceticism” in Japanese “禁欲主義” is written with the kanji 禁 欲 kin yoku, which literally means forbidden and desire. Asceticism is a path that brings practitioners away from earthly desires, through austerity, toward a spiritual elevation. Practitioners are called 行者 gyōja, which is commonly translate as ascetic. Among the meaning of the Japanese gyō, there are the Sanskrit words saṃskāra, caryā and gamana. Saṃskāra is the correct mental predisposition, caryā means practicing or observation and gamana means walking or motion100. Gyōja are individual that walk, observing the practices and with the right mental predisposition for acquire enlightenment in their encounter with the sacred. Ascetic practices that requires motion and a disposition to austerity are usually found in Shugendō, in the figures of Yamabushi or shugensha. Shugendō is a sect born from the syncretism of Buddhism and Shintō (see Anesaki, 1963; Kitagawa, 1987; Earhart, 1974). It’s a mountain religion that <<emphasized pilgrimage to the mountains and ascetic retreats within the mountains>> (Earhart, 1974:57). Yamabushi literally means “lie down on the mountain” and refers to the practice of sleeping and living in the mountain. This practice allows an initiated practitioner to enter in close contact with the kami of the mountain and become a medium of the spiritual power. Yamabushi are not only the medium of the kami because of their connection with the spirit of the mountain. They are also considered as exorcists, keepers of the secrets of esoteric Buddhism (see. Earhart, 1974:57-58, 111). By entering the mountain, the shugensha symbolically die and the climbing of the mountain symbolize their reborn. When the shugensha will leave the mountain to their previous life, they do as new individuals, closer to the kami and the enlightenment. The path on the mountain represents a liminal stage in the life of the shugensha. As a result of this practice, Yamabushi can mediate between the human and the kami by entering their realm. The encounter with the divine, with another realm, with the alterity, requires movement and, often, hardship. As the tabi described by Okada, pilgrimages on mountains are practices that involve the five senses. In Shugendō, there are no textbooks that teaches the orthodoxy or the way in which one should experience the pilgrimage. It is the full use of the five senses that allow the individual to 99 The role of miko has changed in time through institutionalization. For an explanation about the miko and their connection with shamanism see Takami Hirotaka (2014) 100 Retrieved from www.weblio.jp and https://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/macdonell/ (2020/08/25). It’s important to underline that concepts that belong to the Sanskrit languages are applicable to Japanese due to the influence of Buddhism 89 correctly practice Shugendō. The search of the self requires a full understanding of the environment, and this could obtain by observing, touching, hearing, smelling and taste. Like a tabibito should do. Pilgrimages, however, have the aim of enter in contact with the divine, and therefore one should experience it in the place where a kami resides. Kami may descend into the community on special occasions, but when the individuals want to find them, they have to make pilgrimages on the mountains. It’s necessary to focus on the path, because it is hard to say preventively where the kami actually are. While shimenawa can mark the yorishiro that other people experienced, and pilgrimages aim for places where is known a kami resides, an individual may experience the divine in a place no one else did before. This kind of pilgrimage is not Japanese exclusive, but it is representative of Japan religious history: it’s a kind of pilgrimage impossible in monotheistic religions. The second and third kind of pilgrimage described by Kitagawa have some different features. In pilgrimages toward a particular temple or shrine, or places famous for charismatic figures, motivation and ways are different. In this case, the pilgrimage is not focused on the discovery of the self or the sacred, but to a confirmation and a confrontation with it. In these pilgrimages, the purposes, even when religious in its aspect, may be mundane at the core. Besides praying for the deceased, pay respects to a determined kami or Buddha or praying for cleansing one spirit from sins, these pilgrimages may have a more secular purpose, such the request for good luck, to receive assistance in love, work or school, ask for an easy childbirth or prosperity. These practices are particularly common in modern times, and shrines and temples edified in cities or villages. Many shrines or temples have a story connected to events or kami particularly apt to grant a determinate wish. Often, people visiting these temples and shrines do not really need any hardship. As an example, people from Ōsaka that wish to pray for love, can visit Tsuyu no Tenjinja 露天神者, commonly known as Ohatsu Tenjinja, from the name of the heroine of the 1703 year bunraku play “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” 101 by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The puppet show wrote by Chikamatsu is based on a real fact which took place in the Tenjin no mori, the forest of the shrine. Because of the success of the dramatization, already in ancient time people started pilgrimages to the shrine to worship, a tradition that continues in modern days. The tragic play that moved to tears many people became a symbol of love and according to the shrine brochure, many people still visit during the memorial service to obtain good results for their love. Here, worshippers do not really need a pilgrimage. Reaching this shrine does not take more than a ten-minute walk from Umeda Station, one of the main train stations in Ōsaka. Not too differently from the case of Tōno also the aura that surrounds Tsuyo no Tenjin was mediated by a media, a bunraku play in this case, that revisited reality. Pilgrimages toward temples or shrine are not always simple tasks. An instance could be the Shikoku hachiju hakkasho, 88 temples of Shikoku (holy spots related to Kobo Daishi) is a 1200Km tour that bring pilgrims to visit 88 temples, with 101 JPN: 曾根崎心中 Sonezaki Shinjū 90 some peaks that reach the 800 or 900 meters above mean sea level, in a period of 30 or 60 days. Many temples are located not too far the one from the other—the first five are in a range of about 10 or 15 Kilometers and without substantial slopes—however there are also some points, such the path between the 37th and 38th temples, that require about a day of walking (80Km about). This pilgrimage shares with mountain pilgrimage the idea that the path itself is sacred and an important part of the spiritual experience. The hardship is not only because of the distance to walk but also for the mental preparation that the pilgrimage requires. During the Shikoku pilgrimage, pilgrims have to possess the right disposition and accept the Jūzenkai (十善戒), ten precepts of Buddhism virtues102: 1) 不殺生 (fu sesshō): do not kill living things 2) 不偸盗 (fu chūtō): do not steal 3) 不邪淫 (fu jain): do not have sexual misconduct (in particular refers to adultery) 4) 不妄語（fu mago）: do not lie 5) 不綺語（fu kigo）: do not embellish your language (do not say what’s not in your heart) 6) 不悪口（fu akkō）: do not speak badly of others 7) 不両舌（fu ryōzetsu）: say nothing that could cause other people to quarrel 8) 不繿貧（fu kendon）: do not have strong desires 9) 不瞋恚（fu shin’i）: do not get angry 10) 不邪見（fu jaken）: do not have false views (do not think wrong) There is not a wide difference between the pilgrimage on mountains and this kind of pilgrimage, despite hardship and the location. Probably the most striking features of the mountain pilgrimages are the possibility of unexpected encounters, the risk of getting lost. Pilgrimages such the 88 temples of Shikoku follow a particular route, while pilgrimages on the mountain, when not taken with expert guides—usually present in nowadays Shugendō—are what can be thought as 遊行 yugyō, which indicates both a monk that walk in ascetic practice or teach, but also walking around aimlessly103. Even when the religious component is virtually missing, a pilgrimage can be a spiritual experience. It’s the case of visit at places where charismatic people lived or practiced. Despite many destinations of pilgrimages are in effect related to religious figure, in Japan even people not directly related with the religious sphere may inherit the role of kami at their death. Actually, as said before, all people who pass away goes in their non-corporeal form to the mountain as kami. Visits to places 102 My source, a dear friend and travel companion who completed the pilgrimage (walking and train), said that he felt the starting difficulty of find the right mental predisposition to vanishing while he was pursuing on the path. According to his view, the more one get closer to the end of the pilgrimage, the more embraces the good sides of the self. 103 Weblio.jp (ret: 2020/08/25) 91 where these charismatic people lived, practiced or taught may be loaded of spiritual significance, even when there is not a direct religious involvement. These may be as example the pilgrimages to Okinawa to see the birthplace of karate and experience the places where the founders of the different disciple learned, practiced and taught. While it’s probable that train in these places could improve the skills of the individual—because of a new master, alternative method, new kata—the impact is minimal. No one can become a master in a week of training. Through pilgrimage, the individual may be touched by the spiritual side of karate, enter in contact with the hidden side of the discipline and its roots. It’s an experience that, when made with the right mental disposition as any pilgrimage, can change the perception of the individual toward the meaning of practice. The journey, in this case, is the training that the individual did before in other places. These last two kinds of pilgrimages, toward temples or shrines or on the traces of charismatic people, may easily become simple tourism. Many people visit places that acquire fame for their prettiness, the particular scenery, historical events or even religious significance, only as tourists. This happened when there is not the mental disposition toward a change of one’s life, when the individuals do not give enough significance to the path, when the arrival to the site, do not coincide with a change, but a coming back to the present condition. This could happen despite the place. Even the journey of the 88 temples of Shikoku can be made by train, taxi and car, only to see the scenery, without seeking for spiritual improvement. Moreover, literary sources like “One hundred famous mountains in Japan” 104 , where the author Fukuda, describe a hundred of mountains among the one he climbed, helped to change the image of pilgrimage sites to site for enjoyment. Many of the mountains depicted in the book are sites of pilgrimage for Shugendō. Mass media <<endorsed the book as a kind of text book for the public to re-discover Japan through the climbing of Fukada’s hundred mountains as a pleasurable pursuit>> (Nakata & Momsen, 2010). Pilgrimages left space to tourism also in method, since as Nakata & Momsen (2010) suggest, also modern tourists climb through the help of a stick, one of the ritual symbols of Buddhism pilgrimages. Literature, but also other arts, are a media between pilgrims or tabibito and other people, who experienced the site before making the real travel, through other people’s experience. This was also the case of authors such Sagyō or Bashō. Saigyō, as a wandering poet, during his pilgrimage to Mutsu province105, thought he was retracing the same path walked by Nōin a century before, as shown in this poetry: << I was on pilgrimage to Michi no kuni for spiritual discipline and stopped at what had been the checkpoint at Shirakawa. Now with a dilapidated roof, the building let the moon’s beam shine right inside—curiously and beautifully so. I recalled the phrase “breezes of autumn” in a poem by the monk Nōin written at this same location. It is a place replete with tokens of the past and many 104 ” 日本百名山、nihon hyaku meizan by Fukada Kyuka, 1964, Tōkyō: Shinchōsha. 105 the Tōhoku area which included nowadays Fukushima, Miyagi, Iwate and Aomori Prefectures 92 memories. I added my own part by writing the following poem and fastening it to a pillar on this structure. 白川の 関屋を月の もる影は 人のこころを とむるなり けり shirakawa no The guardhouse sekiya o tsuki no at famed Shirakawa gate, moru kage wa now ruined, lets the moon hito no kokoro o filter in; its shaft is like tomuru narikeri having another staying here.>>106 Nōin had the fame to be one of the wondering poets that walked his way to Mutsu, however there are doubts about the veracity of this fact (see LaFleur, 2003). Part of the spiritual experience of Saigyō, lied in the fact that Nōin, who he respected much as a poet, walked the same path as he did, and he could compose a verse in the same place as Nōin did. Centuries later, will be Bashō to walk the same “Narrow road to the deep North” on the traces of Saigyō. Poetry become hence a media for pilgrimages, where the poets seeks for the same landscape as their predecessor, creating in their mind the expectation for the scenery and the feeling there are supposed to experience. Nōin, Saigyō and Bashō are three pillars among the wandering poets that walk the same paths. There are surely other wandering poets, that in similar ways retraced the steps of these three figures. These poets made a tradition: transmitted their experience in front of a scenery, and their sensations, creating models that other people can follow, as a reading before, and as a pilgrimage after. 3.4 - Tourism: a mosaic of possibilities with leisure as the core As previously said, tourism is a kind of activity that puts guests in connection with hosts, a different environment and alterity in general, for a defined amount of time. Tourism has not the aim of changing an individual’s mindset and the experience ends at the moment of the return. Tourism 106 <<みちのくにへ修行してまかりけるに、白川の関にとまりて、所がらにや常よりも月おもしろくあはれにて、能因 が、秋風ぞ吹くと申しけむ折、いつなりけむと思ひ出でられて、名残おほくおぼえければ、関屋の柱に書き付けける>> (西行、1957), Engslih translation edited from LaFleur (2003), Michi no kuni (道の奥の国) or michinoku (陸奥) were the ways in which Mutsu province (as in LaFleur translation) was called at the time of Saigyō. The phrase “breezes of autumn” (秋風ぞ吹く) refers to Nōin’s poem <<都をば霞とともに立ちしかど秋風ぞ吹く白河の関>> (miyako oba kasumi totomoni tachishikado akikaze zo fuku shirawawa no seki ). 93 does not take into consideration the path, but only the destinations, and its principal purpose is enjoyment. There are forms of tourism that don’t have the happiness as the primary aim, such tourism for medical or religious purposes, which may be accredited also as pilgrimages. Tourism is not a category with clear boundaries, as much as pilgrimages or tabi. Smith admits that the word tourism is << [...] difficult to define because business travelers and convention goers can combine conferences with tourist-type activities; but, in general, a tourist is a temporarily leisured person who voluntarily visits a place away from home for the purpose of experiencing a change>> (1989:1). In her view, tourism is composed by three key elements that must be simultaneously active, namely ○ A leisure time, ○ B discretionary income and ○ C positive local sanctions. These three key elements make tourism an activity that socially and culturally situated. Leisure time and discretionary income fall under the category of luxury, which socially defines the people who can travel for tourism. While everyone can experience tabi or set for a pilgrimage (in ancient Japan pilgrimage was the only official reason–or an excuse–why farmers could travel), people with a low income, or bounded by working and life routine that do not grant any spare time, are excluded by touristic experience. Local sanctions or cultural perspective on tourism, but also on tabi and pilgrimages, may influence the individual to enterprise a typology of travel. As an example, in Japanese past, pilgrimages on the mountains was considered as a liminal experience for the maturation of young men. Between the 1980 and the 1990, there was also a boom of university graduates who were enterprising trips to foreign countries to do a travel experience that they feared couldn’t have one start a fulltime work. In this case, travel was a liminal experience between the student life and the independent life as worker. Another cultural perspective may be the one based on gender difference. In Japan, there is a shared idea that it is dangerous for women to travel alone. Sadly, often the news appearing on the international newspapers validate this thesis107. An article on the magazine Precious by Nakata Ayami (2019), which lists the nine tips for women to enjoy in safety a solo trip, states that << There is an image that traveling alone by women is dangerous, and in fact, if you underestimate it, you will run in the risk of getting hurt. But if you’re careful not to get squeamish, you’ll enjoy a charm you won’t get on a group trip! Keep the following tips in mind and enjoy your trip alone>>. Among the tips, the author suggests readers to do not reveal to be on a solo travel (to avoid insistent pressure from men), keep attention to the type of bag one is using, especially in foreign countries, and do not answer to foreigner speech with a smile, even when one refuse the approach. These suggestions give a hint about the perception of women solo travel to foreign countries: a lone woman is more vulnerable, there is a higher risk of crimes, the communication style is different and men could behave differently from what one expects with a refusal. This perception creates cultural perspectives on the travel experience. When Japanese women 107 See as instance March, 25th 2019 Megan Specia and Tariro Mzezewa’s article on The New York Times “Adventurous. Alone. Attacked.” (ret. Online on 2020/08/29, https://www.nytimes.com). 94 decided to set for a solo travel—without the risks expected on a tabi — they will use sources for information that may include articles such as Nakata’s one. They create images and expectations of their destinations, or the people they will meet and the situations they may run into. As well, they will standardize their behavior following suggestion about the right way to deal with these (un)expected encounters. These images are based on the information they got from different media. In the 1970s Discover Japan’s campaign, the two women that embark alone on the train, can do it because using the train in Japan was safe. The necessity of women-only cars on commuters’ trains in more recent times, however, shows that that safety is not always granted. As Tōno reacted to a particular situation, recreating a location that could suit tourists, requests of tradition and folklore, also touristic infrastructures, offers, information and advertising reacting to suit what tourists want. Nakata’s article is not a bolt out of the blue. According to a 2019 survey from Jalan108, the percentage of people who travel solo increased from a 10.5% of the total in 2004 to a 18.0% in 2018. In the same time span the couple’s travel between lovers (koibito) were steady decreasing from an 8,1% to a 7.8%, but the couple’s travel between married partners increased from 22.4% to 25.2%. The travel with parents also increased from 7.3% to 8.4%, instead the travel with other familiars (as an example with siblings) decreased from 8.6% to 7.8%. The major decrease was in the travel with friends, from 15.3% to 12.8% and group travel, including the one in working place’s groups, passed from 5,8% to 2.7%. The rest of percentage is given by family trips with children under elementary school age, family trips with children in middle school and up, and other kind of travel109. Data show interesting facts about Japan. The travel between married partner account for a quarter of the total, because honeymoon is one of the few occasions in which Japanese may take a relatively long vacation. Working time often makes hard for friends to organize a travel together, and probably this is one reason for the increase of solo travel. Another reason may the shift toward a more individual society, but that is not understandable from the survey. The only way to verify this hypothesis would be to enquire interviewed by asking them the reason they set for solo travel. The decrease of group travel could be a symptom of this. However, it is correct to acknowledge that it could be also due to the difficulties in organizing time to form groups, or even the willing of the travelers of have more freedom in their destination’s choices. In fact, in year 2014 the package tours were 11,1% of the total, while the personal travel was the 88.9%. In 2018 there was a diminishing of the package tours that accounted only for the 9.5%. Despite the willing of more freedom in the choices, other possible reasons may an easier access to infrastructures—booking flights and hotels, check for the local 108 A monthly magazine about travel publisheb by recruit Recruit Lifestyle. The survey is availabe on https://jrc.jalan.net 109 The survey data does not include overnight trips due to business, return trips to furusato, and school excursions. While it is not state, would be interesting to understand if under the voice “other kind” of travel, are included pilgrimages. 95 transportation information or tickets—, more simplicity to enter in contact with local guides or an enlargement of the international networks, also through the social network’s friendships. The gender and the age also play an important role in the experience’s choice. The data about the year 2018 analyzes the travel preferred by men and women in the age range of 18-34, 35-49 and 50-79. If men aged 18 to 34 prefer solo travel (27.4%) over couple travel with lover (18.7%) or travel with friends (17.1%), women of the same age prefer travel with friends (18.2%), travel with lover (17.2%) and travel with family (15.2%) over solo travel (14.4%). The age range that goes from 35 to 49 years old, show some expectable changes. While for men the solo travel still accounts for a 24,5%, the couple travel with lover (9.0%) leaves space to couple travel with wife110 (12.3% cfr. 9.7% of 1834 age) and even more to travel with children in elementary school age or below (27.7% cfr. 9.8%). For women, the situation reflects the same situation with a diminishing of travel with family (10.8%), travel with friends (10.3%), solo travel (12.1%) and travel with lover (7.2%), to leave space to travel with the husband (19.2) and travel with children in elementary school age or below (28.2%). In an older age’s range, the preferences for travel see an increment for both sexes in travel with the husband or the wife (35% about for both). For man still strong the preference for solo travel (22.1%) with a slight coming back of travel with friends (from 8.4% of age range 35-49 to 10.7%) and travel with other familiars111 (from 2,1% to 8.1%). For women, beside travel with the husband, travel with other familiars (15.7%) and travel with friends (14.1%) still preferable to solo travel (11.9%). It’s interesting also to see how solo travel tendency changed in the span time from 2004 to 2018. In all the age ranges mentioned above, for both male and female, the travel solo had an increment in this span of time. Beside for women aged 50-79, that had an increment of the 33,7% (from 8,9% to 11,9%) all the other categories had a steady increment, that brought the percentage of solo travel in 2018 to be almost double for men and surpass the 100% of increment for women, the value of 2004. In particular, for women aged 35-49 the value passed from 5,8% to 12,1% with an increment of 108,6%. From these percentages, it is possible to see how women’s solo travel are increasing at a faster pace compared to male’s ones and, assuming a steady growth also in the past, the reason we find the percentage of male solo travelers to be in 2018 almost as double as of the women’s one may be that for women started this kind of experience later than men. Conditional, however, it is mandatory because in the past women could already enjoy independent travel as Yamamoto (2010) shows. In Edo period or before, women with a good social status and a strong financial backing could enjoy travel—hardly solo travel, but attended by servants—also because of the discrete number of historical 110 Married partner is indicated as husband-wife only, since Japan as September 2020 do not legally recognize same-sex marriage 111 The survey does not specify what the voice その他の家族旅行 (other family trips) includes, but arguably is parent with adult children and possibly grandsons and granddaughters. 96 source we have. As an instance, Lady Shirashina’s diary (更級日記, Shirashina Nikki) written in the middle of Heian Period, is one of the first work of travel literature, a popular genre in Japan. The work contains the memories of the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue 112 about her travel and her dreams, and became one of the classic books for Japanese students and a masterpiece in the genre. While lacking of geographical accuracy, it is important as a unique piece of Heian literature and for some wonderful passage such as the description of Mount Fuji, when it was still an active volcano: 富士の山はこの国なり。わが生ひ出で Mt. Fuji is a mountain in this Suruga し国にては西面に見えし山なり。その山 country, and it was the one I saw to the west in のさま、いと世に見えぬさまなり。さま the country of Fusa, where I grew up. The ことなる山の姿の、紺青を塗りたるやう mountain’s appearance is something that seems なるに、雪の消ゆる世もなくつもりたれ does not belong to this world. The unusual shape ば、色濃き衣に、白き衵着たらむやうに of the mountain, painted dark blue, with the snow 見えて、山のいただきのすこし平らぎた piling up so thickly that it looked like a white layer るより、煙は立ち上る。夕暮は火の燃え of clothing over a dark purple robe, and smoke たつも見ゆ。113 billowing from the top of the mountain where it was slightly flat. You can even see the fire burning at dusk. The description given by Lady Sarashina has influenced the image of Mount Fuji of many artists and tourists. Sarashina Nikki is just one of the different literature work that fall into the category of travel literature (紀行文, kikōbun), that became quite popular through the Kamakura period to more recent times. While some of these works are written by women, such “The confessions of Lady Nijō” (問わず語り、Towazugatari) written probably around 1306 and the Izayoi Nikki（十 六夜日記） written in 1283114, most of the travel literature, even in Edo period, was written by men. While there was some freedom for some women to travel and write about their journeys, there were also more restrictions compared to the one of men. As an example, women were forbid the access to some temples, there were more problems at the checkpoints and the distance they could travel was shorter. Also, women were less likely to travel alone and in many cases their travel are accounted into male travel literature (see Yamamoto, 2010). This doesn’t exclude women from solo travel. Lady Nijō, as an example, explicitly emulating Saigyō, traveled alone. Kimura (2007) however, argues that 112 Her real name is unknown, but she is known as Lady Sarashina thanks to Ivan Morris’s translation. 113 Source 青空文庫 (www.aozora.gr.jp) 114 Izayoi Nikki narrates the travel of a Nun to Kamakura. The confessions of Ladi Nijō, describe the author travel after being banished from the imperial palace (Shirane, 2012). 97 differently from Saigyō, Lady Nijō may have had no choice in setting for this tabi as she was marginalized at court and exiled, making her tabi less religiously pious than Saigyō’s. This may also suggest that women, or at least some of them, enjoyed less freedom of travel compared to men, as also Anne Walthall suggests: <<Once a mother of a wealthy peasant family became a mother-in-law, she had the leisure to indulge in travel. For rural women, freedom and responsibility were not compatible: only after they had surrendered their authority to their daughters-in-law could they go where they pleased>> (1991:66). Women had occasions of travel and they did, however these occasions were not based on the same freedom as the one enjoyed by men. Most times corresponded to a loss. Also, social status had an enormous influence over their travel possibilities. <<Rural women traveled for three reasons: to go on pilgrimage and see foreign sights, to visit relatives, and to take the waters at hot springs. These activities were also done by men, and they tied both sexes into the local network of interpersonal relations, entertainments, leisure pastimes, and the national culture>> (Walthall, 1991:67). The Confucianism ideology and the advent of modernity changed the image of the ideal woman115 into the ryōsai kenbo 良妻賢母 (good wife, wise mother), who could contribute to the economy of the household, devoting herself to housework and child-rearing. Yamazaki (2009) suggests, however, that the promotion of women’s emancipation created an alternative ideal that was the professional woman, as socially independent. If a “good wife, wise mother” had her realm within the household, the socially independent woman had access to a wider world. A good wife was expecting to take care of the household, raise children and travel was an activity which didn’t suit these priorities. The only suitable period for travel was the period between the end of the studies and the start of the working period or just before marriage. According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) data116, the marriage age grown steadily from 22.9 years in 1908 to 24.9 years in 1976, with a peak of 24,2 to 25 years in the period of war mobilization between 1937 and 1943117. From 1977 to 2017 it has a rapid growth passing from 25 years to 29.4 years. The period from 1990 to 2014, in particular, saw the age of marriage rise from 0.1 to 0.2 each year. These data are proofs of a change in the women’s lifestyle. Surely it is not travel or tourism the cause of this shift in the marriage age, but a change in the self-image of women. University’s education and the chance of career became the desirable options, while the role of good wife and wise mother left some space to individualism. Not an individualism that creates defections against cooperation, but an individualism in terms of personal objectives. An individualism that allowed them to create some space for personal leisure. According to Funck <<[w]omen, who showed an almost 10 percent lower travel intensity 115 Cfr Tamanoi (1990) for a very interesting and, undoubtedly more correct, vision of Japanese women in anthropological and sociological works. Tamanoi, correctly, underlines how some early anthropological theories, born on the wave of feminism, helped to create a “Japanese woman” stereotype, which is not a fair description of the reality. 116 WHLW, Handbook of Health and Welfare Statistics 2018, sec.1, ch.2 table 1-39 (ret. 02/09/2020) 117 Years, 1944-1946 are not present 98 than men in the 1960s, travelled equally frequently in the 1990s, and the tourism industry has had to adjust facilities accordingly>> (2013:78). It may be under the social changes of this period that women started to do more and more solo travel. As always, it is necessary to underline that a trend is never a universal: one of my friend’s wife, a Japanese woman in her 50s, in 1982 when she was eighteen, travelled as backpackers in Thailand. In telling me about this experience, she explained to believe this experience was not that uncommon at the time. It’s in these circumstances that Nakata’s article makes sense. As tourism industry has had to adjust facilities to follow the new trend of women travel—solo travel, or travel with friends—so had to do the market and the media. Also through the changes and evolution of destinations, facilities and infrastructures, it is possible to track the changes in tourists’ habits and behaviors, as much as understanding the social sanctions and cultural perspectives on travelers and tourists. Cultural perspective and social sanctions or restriction are present and important also on the hosts’ side. It’s easy, under an ethnographic aspect, to understand how societies put restrictions on how guests can contact hosts, as in many of these working women are silenced or largely spoken for. It shouldn’t surprise so that the studies about the role of women in hospitality are not so copious, as different authors such Morikoshi (2018) or Nozawa (1995) denounce. Sadly, not so much surprisingly is neither than many of the works that investigate the role of women as workers in hospitality focus on prostitution in sex tourism. Sex tourism in Japan virtually started in the 1960s with the liberalization of travel abroad and the economic boom, a period in which the number of leisure travel in nearby destinations—Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand - surpassed for the first time the one of business trips (Muroi & Sasaki. 1997). The beneficiary of this kind of tourism was mainly middle age men that, as Muroi & Sasaki (1997:184-185) point out, often receive the trip in South East Asia location as a company’s reward for their works. A change of trend happened in the 1980s when the growth of the number of women traveling toward these countries surpassed the men’s one. On one hand, the decreasing presence of male affected sex tourism and led to the increasing of the phenomenon of Japayuki. While Japayuki refers to the foreigners migrating in Japan for work, in this case it indicates an increasing number of women that migrate in Japan to work in local sex industries. On the other hand, this shift in trend opened up the road to new marketing possibilities: << [d]ata shows that young, single women are more consumption oriented than men and that single, working women are twice as likely to go on overseas trips than single working men in the same age group. Young women also spend more money on recreation, accessories, clothing, brand name goods, etc. [...] They made up a very important market segment for overseas travel destinations during the high growth era, due to their propensity to spend>> (Schumann, 2017:14) 99 Hashimoto (2000) individuate young female Japanese tourists in single women aged 18-40118 that embodies six characteristic described by Yamane Kazuma (cit. from Hashimoto) as: 1. Lack of a sense of social participation/conformity, thus values individualism; 2. Lack of sense of internationalization; 3. no political identity/anarchy; 4. childish; 5. places the highest value on monetary wealth; 6. values a well-shaped physique which can increase the commercial value of herself. Many of these features, in particular materialism, the wish for a higher social status and the value of the physical aspect, are important for create new market segments. Outside of tourism, this marketing segment correspond to the so call joshi-boom 女子ブーム, which means “girls boom”. This trend may be easily explained by the tendency of attach the term “joshi” (or the character “woman” 女 jo) to diverse activities, such joshi-kai (girls party, or a girls night out), rekijo (歴女, women experts or deeply interested in history), kamera-joshi (girls passionate about photography), or yama-gaaru (with gaaru being a phonetic form of girl, the compound indicates a girl that climbs mountains in colorful, stylish and functional fashion that overturns the conventional image of mountain-climbing clothes). All these definitions entangle new marketing segments. Also, tourism took advantage of this situation, creating female-tailored tourist packages. As an instance, JAL offers joshi-tabi (女子旅) programs that focus on three keywords: location, hotel and gourmet. Among the key point of the location there are the “power spots” (pawaa supotto), defined as a <<special place where you can expect to get energized and benefit from your visit>>119, natural and photogenic sceneries, places and facilities for relaxing. The packages include “the hotel of your dreams” (憧れホテル, akogare hoteru), or “greedy gourmet” (欲張りグルメ, yokubari gurumet), and goodies, discount coupons and other gifts directed to woman to use in their trip. Other websites such Tabikobo120 list Instagram, gourmet and shopping as the three must-haves for girls’ travel. Surfing the JAL or other website, I didn’t spot a similar offer for men. Among the travel option for women present on the website version of the ladies’ lifestyle magazine OZ Magazine121, it is possible to see suggestions for solo travel (女性の一 人旅, josei no hitoritabi)122, onsen girls party (温泉女子会, onsen joshikai) tailored for three girls to 118 The time span that Hashimoto takes into consideration is 1958-1980, but the definition may suit quite well also more recent trends. 119 <<行くと元気がもらえる、ご利益が期待できる、特別な場所。>> www.jal.co.jp (03/09/2020) 120 www.tabikobo.com 121 www.ozmall.co.jp 122 Just to understand how marketing strategies are dependent and fast to adapt to new trends and situation, on the presentation of this option is written <<もちろん、With コロナの今、旅したいけれど誘いにくいという人にもおすす 100 enjoy spa, or an offer for a mother and daughter’s travel. The suggestions are in line with the recent trend that sees non married women preferences in traveling solo, with friends or with parents. The offers for women are also a testimony of the relation between guests and hosts in tourism. In order to provide an enticing experience, touristic places need to change their offers to meet the guests’ requests. In the same fashion as Tōno, even on a smaller or larger scale, from particular area to entire countries, can create and polish their traditions to present an image of a place in line with tourists’ expectations. Sex tourism could be already an example of adaption of a country to tourists’ requests. Other aspects, less discussed maybe, could show how hosts mediate, create and transmit their traditions and their spaces in the relations with guests in a touristic context. The example ranges from macro changes, which involve entire countries (Palau) to micro changes as could be the change in infrastructures (ryokan), in a continuum passing from cities (Kyōto), towns (Tōno) or areas (Jiǔfèn). 3.4.1– Japanese tourists in Palau: how the hosts accommodate the guests Palau, located in Micronesia, is an independent country since 1994, in free association with the United States—provider of defense, funding and social services, that consists in eight main islands and other 250 smaller island about. The country experienced a past of occupation by Japanese military forces in the period of nationalism, which ended in 1944 when U.S. Army banished the Japanese forces and set the territories under their jurisdiction. Japanese were not the first foreigner forces to claim dominion over Palau. The country experienced colonization from western countries (Spain and Germany) in the nineteenth century. Japanese occupation however, because of the historical moment and the socio-economic context, still counts as an important factor over the relations between the Micronesian country and Japan. The advancement into the Southern regions was supported by the idea that Japan had the moral role to develop the Southern regions’ underdeveloped countries. According to Yamashita (2000), << [...] advancement into the southern regions can be seen as a method of establishing itself as a civilized country compared to the underdeveloped and backward southern regions. In this sense it was linked with the expansionism adopted in response to changing international circumstances after the Meiji Restoration>> to escape the Eastern and Western duality. The development led to a period of Japanization of the islands, which included an increment of Japanese immigrants, establishment of Japanese companies’ branches and also the construction of Shintō shrines such as Nan’yō Shinto Shrine, in Koror. In this period, Japanese formed their image of Palau as a Southern Paradise, an image that still living in modern tourism. Palau is popular among め>> (Of course, With Corona is also recommended for those who want to travel but are reluctant to invite others!) https://www.ozmall.co.jp/travel/stay/onsen/feature/35/ (ret. 03/09/2020) 101 Japanese tourists as a diving spot, in the same fashion as other Pacific islands such as Guam, Rota or Saipan. Yamashita suggests that apart from tourists, there are also veterans that visit the country for memorial services, through the help of local Japanese-Palauan associations. The generation gap sees two distinct realities. On one hand Japanese guests of older generations that visit Palau because of its colonial past. On the other Japanese guests’ younger generation that, as Yamashita explains, << [...] are often unaware that Palau was once a Japanese colony>> (2000). The images that Japanese tourists have of Palau are different, as different are their requests and how hosts need to relate to these. Tourists separate in two segments: one, the older generation, that is vanishing, and the other, the younger generations, that are becoming more and more present. Mita (2008) suggests that locals have a mixed feeling toward Japan. Some show affinity and seem to have welcomed Japanese rule and the development that brought with it, while other remember that the development was the consequence of discrimination. As strange as it may sound, I found a similar situation in Kaohsiung, in the Southern part of Taiwan, when I was working for a local company. Several times I had occasion to travel around Kaohsiung or south Taiwan with locals. During these occasions, many narrated about the Japanese colonial period—that many of them didn’t live personally—while showing me the infrastructure build by Japanese, such schools, hospital, railways, etc. The way in which they talked about Japanese colonial period with a sense of admiration, made me want to question them about their knowledge on the fact that Taiwan was a colony. With time, I understood that it probably was my idea of colonization that had to be questioned. One word that often appears in Mita’s work is “brain wash”. The case of Taiwan is particular, because it was the first land Japanese colonized, and it worked as a benchmark for their expansionist aims. Palau certainly shared some features as the transformation of the locals into “imperial people”, through the imposition of the education in Japanese language or the Japanese manners and customs. In Abels’s words <<[i]n their efforts to “assimilate” the islanders toward Japanese values, they [the Japanese] concentrated on the schooling and organization of the Micronesian youth, the demonstration of religious zeal for Shinto, and the acquainting of high-ranking indigenous community members with Japanese reality (by arranging group travel to Japan)>> (2008:35). It’s hard to say if Japanese imperialism had brain washed local people at the point that some of them seem to have appreciate the period of colonization, and the discussion is too complex to be a simple note on a work like this. Higuchi (1991) explains that while around the end of the war, when Japanese army felt the pressure of the advancing U.S. forces, there was a radical change in the Japanese’s behavior toward the locals, which led to some anti-Japanese feelings 123 . However, the same author explains that <<[a]fter the war groups of Korean and Taiwanese laborers rioted against the Japanese, but a friendly relationship between the Japanese and 123 It’s interesting in this aspect the confrontation of Japanese troops with the figure of the Captain Morikawa Yoshiyasu, described by the author, which become a sort of mythological hero in Palau, due to his composure and aptitude even during U.S. attacks. 102 the Palauans remained>> (1991:149). Through the sources I could find, it seems that there is not a hostile attitude toward Japan in Palau, at least in comparison with some other ex-colonies. Whether this is true or not, it is important to acknowledge that tourism played a key role in deleting or obfuscating—at least on the surface—the reminiscence of the discrimination of the colonial period on the island. Today the relationships between the two countries are positive in these terms. It is evidenced by infrastructures such as the bridge that connects Koror to Badeldaob, constructed in 2002 by the Japanese Kajima Construction, with Japanese aid in OAD, after the previous bridge collapsed. At the inauguration ceremony, the bridge was named “Japan-Palau Friendship Bridge” 124. Also the presence of associations for the cooperation between the two countries shows that the relations between Japan and Palau are for the most positive. Palau, and Japanese promotions of Palau, virtually deleted any reference to the colonial past for the sake of tourism. According to World Data125 in 2018 the tourism income was $123 million, equal to the 43.31% of the GDP, with 106,000 tourists (5.1 per resident). These number put Palau in the 12th position in world rank for tourist/residents and at the 3rd place among the countries in Micronesia only after Guam (9.1 tourists/resident) and Northen Mariana (9.0 tourists/resident). These data alone should explain the importance of tourism over the local economy. Palauans need (also) Japanese tourists. As hosts, Palausans need to provide an attractive destination, which suits the Japanese ideal of Southern Paradise. If hosts can overlook the colonial period of which the new generations of guests are unaware, there is no need to open Pandora’s box. In tourists’ brochures, as Yamashita explains, there is no reference to this past. The real problem that Palau needs to face due to these numbers in tourism seems to be of an ecological nature. In Palau’s history the relation between men and environment was based on “ethics of conservation”, which is << [t]he ethic of taking only what one needs and not wasting what one has>> (Ueki & Clayton, 1999). This relation involved a comprehension of natural symbols, the emission of a bul (a fine) for harvesting a determined resource in years in which the level of production was dangerously low to give it time to re-establish itself without the human impact, sustainable harvesting and cultivating that had to answer to the community and to the supernatural. They used to follow the rhythms of the land and the sea, following cycles that were the natural cycles with the idea of giving back to nature and to avoid wastes (Ueki & Clayton, 1999). The impact with the western powers in the 1800s and the Japanese successively, reshaped the relation between the local and the place, through the development of plantations, factories and settlements. With the administration of U.S. in postwar, the traditional patterns of life were destroyed and the eco-consciousness that shaped Palauans’ behaviors had vanished from their cultural mind (Ueki & Clayton, 1999). Losing traditional symbolism and relations 124 https://www.japan.go.jp/tomodachi/2014/autumn2014/japan-palau_friendship_bridge.html (ret. 03/09/2020) 125 https://www.worlddata.info/oceania/palau/tourism.php (ret. 03/09/2020) 103 with nature as a subject is a common feature of development that accounts also a commodification of nature as an object, one of the western cultural heritages (see Van Aken, 2020). Ueki & Clayton (1999) acknowledge that “development” is the catchword of the day. Development, however, among hidden political motivations and to-be-quickly-forgotten failures, never comes without a blowback. One of the arenas of development, with the more classic agriculture and fishery, was tourism. To have a higher income of foreign tourists, money was invested in infrastructure that have little if anything to do with the local culture, such as the construction of luxury hotels, condominiums, restaurants and private artificial beaches. Ueki & Clayton suggest that the feelings toward tourism’s development are mixed among Palauans: <<Many Palauans feel that development, especially in tourism, agriculture and fisheries, poses the greatest threat to the environment. Others hope to promote development in a manner that will provide people the economic wherewithal they need without destroying the balance of nature. Still others believe that the environment must be sacrificed to a certain extent in order to achieve muchneeded development>> (1999) Tourism development has caused ecological problems, as development and consumerism always do. To deal with the ecological disasters of the high volume of tourists that the environment cannot sustain, Palau had to switch to the promotion of a sustainable and resilient tourism’s policy that could safeguard the natural eco-system while taking advantage of it. To do so, the first step was to convince tourists to respect the local environment. As an example, requesting tourists to sign an eco-pledge stamped on their passports at the arrival on the island as a promise of adopting a pro-environmental behavior during their stay. Another policy saw the creation of a 500,000 Km2 marine sanctuary for protecting dive tourism and marine eco-system. Although these policies are a clear step forward, the underlying problem is that they seek to undo the damage done by development through other development actions. Taking as example Japanese tourists which, as it previously said, are nowadays mainly interested in diving, the development of this marine sanctuary is in part a reaction to their increasing presence in Palau. Japanese tourists in fact, choose Palau as destination in their attempt of escaping the Japanese life-style routine. Yamashita (2000) explains that brochures and magazines about Palau << [...] emphasize free and easy relaxation, the opposite of the busy and highly developed urban life in Japan, using words such as nonki (easy), nonbiri (unhurriedly), and kiraku (optimistic)>>. If tourists are looking for comfort in their leisure time, Palau still needs to offer comforts to attract tourists, even in the marine sanctuary. Tourism, as a product of consumerism (see Sklair,2002; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2010) has a powerful impact on environment, even in ways we do not see—or we choose to do not see—, or when we deny it. The solution of the consumerism environmental impact, as Van Aken (2020) suggest, it cannot be only a “de-carbonization” of the 104 environment, but must be a “de-carbonization” of the mind, and in particular of the consumerist mind, as the environmental problems are of cultural nature. Environment is hence an arena of development debate between tourists and locals, which however generate conflict between the traditional cultural mindset of environmental respect of some Palauans, and the view of tourism as an economic necessity of others. As the development vocabulary values more the word “profit” over the word “environment”, and gives more credibility to the word “modernity” over the word “tradition”, the only way to recover from environmental damages seems to be a modern approach that still ensure profits obfuscating, whenever necessary, the local knowledge and the relations with nature. All the effort, in this way, seems to be on the shoulder of the local to adapt their environmental view to the developmental packages—and tourists requests and necessities—, and not instead to ask tourists to change their cultural mindset to approach the local and traditional visions of respect for nature and environment, in a relationship of no waste under the “ethic of conservation”. 3.4.2 - Ecotourism: a form of sustainability or a way to hide the crisis in the green? By some extent, we are all aware that our time is characterized by climate changes and ecological crisis, and we cause it. We are not all aware, or we pretend not to be, on the impact that we have with our daily actions. Tourism included. In Japan, as in Palau and many other countries, the necessity of protect the ecosystem become a recurrent theme in the agenda, and various efforts are made to move toward these results. Among these efforts there are the promotion and adoption of what Fennel (2007) defines as alternative tourism, as an alternative approach to mass tourism. Alternative tourism is an umbrella term that encompass all those tourism strategies that, at least in the theory, should focus on offer a sustainable, eco-friendly, person-to-person, local-friendly alternative to mass tourism. Ecotourism is a form of tourism that try to minimize the impact of the tourists on the local natural environment and community’s life, by making the natural and cultural attraction the primary object of the visit, and not a mere background to the entertainment and comfort. An important feature of ecotourism, not present in mass tourism, is the education of the guests and the hosts. Yamada (2011) explains that << [...] a central pillar of ecotourism is sustainable resource use on site. Ecotourism involves a wide range of resources, such as natural and cultural artifacts, events/festivals, and natural environment, and strives to achieve ecologically and socially sustainable development>>. Education is at the base of the knowledge and the socialization with the natural and cultural artifacts as Miyamoto (2002) explains (see chapter 2). Differently from mass tourism that often sees the encounter between hosts and guests as an arena of conflict, ecotourism has the aim of stimulate the interactions and cooperation between the actors. Mass tourism and ecotourism, or any kind of other alternative tourism, share the same arena. What it changes is the relationships between the subjects and the relations between guests and environment. In mass tourism, the natural and cultural features of the locality, become an object that can be modified, 105 interpreted, hidden or created, to suite the request of the guests. In ecotourism—at least in its theory–, the same features are preserved by the hosts to educate the guests about different cultural mindsets and biodiversity. Satoyama and furusato are among the most important media of encounter between urban guests and rural hosts, hence among the best locations for ecotourism. Satoyama and furusato are appreciated, as previously explained, for the nostalgic feeling they evoke, but also for the possibility to enter in contact with the nature. This gives a chance to what could be defined as an ecotourism that focus on relations with nature: green tourism126. An important note to make is that also green tourism is culturally bounded. Green tourism focus on the notion of nature, which is culturally derived. As Doshita (2009) correctly points out, green tourism is idealized as a visit to the uncultivated, untamed and unexploited nature. This view derives from the western ontology of nature as an uncivilized object that the human civilization can tame. Escaping from civilization it means enter in contact with a pure nature that knows not human control and touch. Doshita suggests also that Japanese people instead, appreciate domesticated forms nature, such satoyama. Japanese traditionally do not see nature as an object to control, but as a subject to relate with. Instead of speaking of satoyama as a domesticated form of nature, an idea that still linked to the western ontology of control over nature, I rather consider satoyama as a cultured nature or mediated nature, formed by the cooperation of two subjects, namely human and non-human. This it is because, as explained in chapter two, human hands are necessary for the survival of satoyama, but at the same time nature is the material form of kami, so it possess its own agency. The ontology of Japanese nature is animistic— such as the one that Viveiros de Castro (2004) recognizes in Amerindian cultures—and seen as a multi-naturalism. Kami can reside in nature or in human, as human become kami when they lose their habitus—the cloth they wear. Nature is the habitus of kami, subjects as human are, and so there is not a real untamed, uncultivated nature, since where there is not human presence, simply there is the design made of relations between similar subjects with different habitus127. By understanding green tourism as culturally derived from the nation of nature, it is possible to focalize on some ways Japanese perceive it. Remembering that Japanese in itself is a term which embeds multiculturalism. Doshita (2009) explains that satoyama was chosen as a destination into the Ministry of Environment’s discussion on environmental tourism. Different articles examine the development of ecotourism in Japan (Soshiroda, 2005; Doshita, 2009; Take & Saitō, 2011), however, still fundamental to understand how the relations between guests and hosts are produced in the 126 There are different definitions of environmental tourism, green tourism, ecotourism, sustainable tourism, etc. in literature, which makes it hard to understand what is what. For the sake of simplicity, I use ecotourism as an umbrella term as explained in the text, green tourism is tourism that focus on nature, environmental and others will be defined when necessity occurs. I invite however in not give too much importance to labels. 127 Cfr. Doshita (2009) which offers a valid view of nature, seen as purified wilderness through aesthetic forms of it. 106 encounter. Green tourism born from the desire of an escape from the cities’ fast-paced life and stress, in search of iyashi (癒し, emotional/mental healing), and leisure activities (余暇活動). Nature is seen and promoted as a symbol of quietness and relaxation and, as in Palau, it attracts many Japanese people. Ecotourism may be alternative to mass tourism, but is tourism, a leisure activity, at heart. Togashi & Yonehara (1997) suggests that the main actors, or subjects, ( 主体) of these leisure activities are urban dwellers, and people living in rural areas are the recipients (受け手). Green tourism is difficult to be realized unless the demand of urban residents and the supply of rural residents are well matched. Setting (correctly) the urban dwellers—or the guests’ side to enlarge the view—as the main actors or subjects, it means to admit that the relation between guests and hosts, and the demand and supply always depends on the guests’ point of view. This is easy to understand. Tourists in every setting of tourism request a particular natural or cultural artefact (ocean, resort, city, culture, historical site, etc.) and they need infrastructures to experience these artifacts. Hosts, also when the presence of artifacts is already a feature of the territory, need to supply the experience. As an example, when eco-tourists want to experience the agricultural lifestyle, living in a rural home and try to cultivate the land, or they want to experience the silence and quietness of a Buddhist temple, they need to find hosts that supply those infrastructures. Even when a territory presents fertile lands, tourists cannot simply enter and occupy a house and cultivate the fields around without hosts’ permission and probably also assistance. Hosts need to conform to what are the requests and the ideals of the guests, and not the way round. When hosts do not conform to this view they are not hosts anymore, as no one is (should be) forced to open their home to guests or participate in green tourism development projects. Being a host in eco-tourism should be a choice. Eco-tourists still have the freedom to visit natural landscapes that are not private lands, even when the hosts do not want them. However, since ecotourism is the eco-friendly, person-to-person, local-friendly alternative to mass tourism, visit a place in which locals do not want tourists, violates the hosts’ will and, by definition, is not ecotourism. Find a balance between the two poles is the only way to obtain ecotourism, and this balance usually leans slightly toward the guests’ subjectivity. The very presence of hosts, however, suggests that there are benefits also from their side, one of which is surely revitalization of the rural areas, such as satoyama. Satoyama is not socialized as a touristic place, but for guests can be a positive ideal of ecotourism destination, while for hosts can be a good media for educate guests on their lifestyle, on their point of views and on the necessities of create a strong bound between the local and the urban realities. There are of course also economic benefits. Satoyama is an arena where the actors of the demand and the supply can interact with a sharper awareness of their encounter or confrontation. In Olivier de Sardan’s words << [a]n arena, as we understand it, is a space in which real conflicts between interacting social actors occur around common stakes>> (2005:190). Hosts have the hard role of supplying a double version of the ideal satoyama in terms of guests’ idealization and in the way they want satoyama is understood. Guests, at the same time, need to be educated on 107 what satoyama really is, in the way they can contribute to the revitalization of it. To do so, it is necessary that they do not hold on to their preconception and stereotypes of “nature” and they have an open mind ready to be educated. It also requires hosts to do not think in terms of profits by presenting an alluring version of satoyama, distant from reality, only to acquire more guests. Surely, this way of doing will be less profitable, as a lower number of guests correspond with a lower income. However, it is only with this kind of guest-host cooperation that ecotourism could become more “eco” and less tourism. As ecotourism becomes a keyword in academic fields such tourism anthropology, rural studies, cultural geography, different Japanese authors proposed case studies of rural localities active in green tourism (e.g. Makimura, 1996; Togashi & Yonehara, 1997; Takahashi & al., 1998; Iwamatsu, 1999: Nishida, 1999; Watanabe, 2010; Kobayashi & al., 2016). In many of the works it emerges the view of green tourism as a form of development. Improvement of the infrastructure and new chances of employment are accounted among the effects of the green tourism. On the other hand, there is a constant underlining of the necessity of been more engage in agriculture and use traditional knowledge as a media to transmit different life styles. This reflects Miyamoto’s idea to educate the children to the rural knowledge, to allow them to socialize with nature. In fact, Japan’s school system promotes school field trips to rural areas to teach children about the importance of the relation with environment. On the hosts side, green tourism become also a mean to foster local cooperation. As Iwamatsu (1999) shows in her case study in Miyama-chō (Kyōto-fu) when the restoration and development projects started, government was active in its management. However, with time, local associations took over and continued to manage and improve the rural features of the area to attract more tourists and diminish the rate of migrations of young people outside the area. Iwamatsu suggests that locally, green tourism is supported by the shared awareness of local resources, the participation of residents in joint labor, and the linkage of organized activities with the local self-governance. With the progress of green tourism, also people’s awareness of the village changed. This means that green tourism has an impact also on the identity of local people. Plus, with the establishment of a society for the preservation of the rural area, it was possible to establish a mechanism for independent community planning, the management of projects, and the control of local resources. Green tourism is hence an important media to rural revitalization, and its promotion is a fundamental aspect of rural economy. It comes, however, with its dark sides. First, the preservation of the rural area as it is, become virtually impossible. At the moment that an agricultural area is “modernized” for accommodate eco-tourists, it already changes. This is not necessarily a bad impact. As seen before, satoyama are the creation of the interactions between human and non-human actors, and are dynamic in their histories. Nevertheless, when the impact of green tourism over the local community is too strong, and development projects are thought as scalable pre-made packages to export and import from locality to locality, this impact may destroy the local ecosystem. The balance between guests’ request and the preservation of the local ecosystem as it is, it is too hard to obtain. When the hosts 108 preserve the area as it is, without providing structure for ecotourism, there are no chance (or at least too few) to create an ecotourism destination that can help with the revitalization of the local area. On the other side, when hosts provide enough structures to accommodate eco-tourists and incentive the green tourism in the area for revitalize the land, they risk falling into the trap of a development that turns rural area in small urban areas that accommodate more and more guests, transforming ecotourism in small-scale mass tourism. The example of Palau may illuminate: is the creation of a marine sanctuary for ecosystem and diving the right answer to the ecosystem damages create by tourism? There is nothing natural in creating a marine sanctuary, moreover when this is for a cultural activity such diving. While I’m not a biologist and I cannot advocate for the problems that the encounter the marine ecosystem may have with human beings, an increase of “divers” in the sanctuary, means more pollution caused by the boats, the plastic that may accidentally fall into the water, the noise, etc. It seems enough to state that ecotourism, being tourism, is only a palliative on the bigger problem that is the relation between hosts and guests and the consequent bind of the mise-en-scène of the groups’ identities, in which guests, somehow, seems to have the most influential point of view. 3.4.3 - Cultural Tourism: guests’ idealization of cultures and the hosts’ representations of them Another important media between the guests and hosts encounter are culture and traditions. The cultures and traditions that become objects of the guests’ demands and the hosts’ supply, are not to be intended in their anthropological meaning, as guests and hosts are not for sure in possess of technical knowledge. They should be intended, with a dictionary definition, as <<the arts of describing, showing, or performing that represent the traditions or the way of life of a particular people or group; literature, art, music, dance, theater, etc.>>128. The reason why it is important to use this dictionary-style definition, which may make some anthropologists to wince, is because cultural tourism is not based on a deep knowledge of culture, but on the idea of culture that guests and hosts possess and display. Cultural tourism is another example of alternative tourism. As for ecotourism, it is hard to define precisely what cultural tourism is because, to put it in du Cros and McKercher’s words << [...] there are almost as many variations of definitions as there are tourists>> (2015:4). Differently from ecotourism, it does not target natural places—in the western sense of the term—but locality in which the traditions, arts and lifestyle of the hosts are put on display. Du Cros and McKercher (2015) individuate four fundamental features that can help to identify cultural tourism which are (a) tourism, (b) use of cultural assets, (c) consumption of experiences and products and (d) the tourist. Tourism, consumption of experience and products and the tourist are feature present in any kind of tourism, ecotourism and mass tourism included. It is the use of cultural assets 128 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ja/dictionary/english/culture (ret. 20/09/2020). 109 that make the tourism cultural. This kind of touristic experience is exemplified by the town of Tōno, where guests’ visits are mainly based on the representation of the Japanese folklore displayed by the hosts. While nature plays a key role in the revitalization of rural areas, where nature is more abundant than in cities, culture and traditions can be a media for revitalization in any place with human presence. Festivals, traditional buildings, shrines and temples, ryokan, arts and lifestyles can an attraction for guests, which see in the peculiarity of these elements a glimpse of authenticity. These are also the features in which it is easier to find invented traditions, as Hobsbawn (1983) intends them. There are in fact traditions <<actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period - a matter of a few years perhaps - and establishing themselves with great rapidity>> (Hobsbawn, 1983:1). As an example, Guichard-Anguis (2009b) shows that ryokan, the Japanese-style inns, are considered an attraction for the never-ending fostering of “invented traditions”. MHLW’s statute about ryokan states that there are four types of accommodation in hospitality industry: hotel business, ryokan business, inn business and boarding house business.  Hotel Business: A business that establishes facilities mainly of Western-style structures and equipment.  Ryokan business: A business that establishes facilities mainly of Japanese-style structures and equipment. Besides so-called ryokan in front of the station, hot spring ryokan, and sightseeing ryokan, also kappo ryokan are included in this category. Minshuku may also fall under this category.  Short-stay inn business: A business in which facilities are shared by more people. For example, bedhouses, mountain lodges, ski lodges, youth hostels, and capsule hotels are examples of such businesses.  Boarding house business: It is a business that allows people to stay overnight for a period of one month or more. 129 By statute, what differentiate a ryokan from a hotel are the traditional versus western style structures. As first impact, it’s possible to state that ryokan are traditional lodges only in presence of a western (foreigner, modern) style of lodging. However, this image of traditionalism springs from, and is supported by, the imaginary linked to the ryokan and proposed by media such as television and travel magazines. In an interesting research about the way media influenced the idea of ryokan, Okubo (2003) explains how from the Meiji period, when the term became popular, to the period just 129 Ryokan Business Act, 1948, art.2 (ret. From: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/bunya/kenkou/seikatsu-eisei04/03.html, 20/09/2020). Kappo ryokan (割烹旅館) are ryokan which main function is serving food or are valued for their food, minshuku are similar to guesthouses 110 after World War II, the media provided the first information about ryokan and created a longing for them. In the period after WWII, when travelling become a popular activity, people could experience ryokan and confirmed through that experience that ryokan and the image created by media match. However, the more people travel, the more the image offered by media was constructed following a certain pattern that re-emphasized the idea of ryokan based on commonality such as gourmet food, hot spring or outdoor baths, and omotenashi (hospitality). Hence, the modern image of ryokan given by media, it is an image built on the image that the users create through the experience that confirms the image that media preventively provided them and that creates the expectation of the experience itself. It is the hyper-image of a hyper-reality, because there is a gap between the image that precedes the reality and the image that follows the reality. Okubo (2003) suggests that nowadays, the hyperimage of the ryokan which is the dominant image of the ryokan, and the reality of ryokan which do not fit the categories proposed by media which are the majority of the structures, are divergent. Media images of ryokan emphasize the aesthetic sense of nihon no bi (Japanese beauty) that GuichardAnguis defines as a << [...] powerful concept which stresses the ability of Japanese culture to invent what is supposed to be perfection and at the core of Japanese identity>> (2009b:80). This aesthetic is an important part of Japanese culture and tradition, as the “traditional arts”, such sadō (tea ceremony), ikebana (flower arrangement), shodō (calligraphy) show. Japanese sense of beauty is surely different from the western standards. It is not the beauty of the substance created by a subject who sees an object, but is the beauty of the situation, in which is the experience of the object, of which the subject is an active part, that create the sense of beauty. Ryokan image is not only about the structure, the scenery, the food, but about the people immersed in this experience. Tea ceremony exemplify this sense of aesthetic: <<To make “good tea,” the participants must transform the ceremony’s unnatural ritualized procedures into an unaffected social stream, achieved by engaging aesthetic sensitivities and social awareness charged with national resonances—the restrained grace of comportment, the temporal articulations of ma, and a subtle consideration of others. These distill qualities from everyday existence into a refined variant and transplant them into new surroundings, enabling juxtapositions with the everyday to spotlight their clarified Japanese significations>> (Surak, 2013:53) The aesthetic value of tea ceremony is in the ceremony itself, in the gestures, in the subject involvement. It’s a dynamic aesthetic, beautifulness in movement. At the same time, however, is advertised as static. Because to promote the aesthetic value linked to this particular aspect of the culture, media require images. Images do not move and never change. Ryokan may be elevated as one promoter of this aesthetic, but they are fundamentally business. As hosts, they need to conform to guests’ ideals, because without guests there are no hosts. Ryokan need a continuous re-construction 111 of authenticity and aesthetic. At the need of maintain an idea of tradition and authenticity, correspond the necessity of modernize the omotenashi and the aesthetic according to the guests’ dynamism. Media has a key role in this because, as Okubo shows, they have the power to modify the image that guests have a priori about ryokan. This kind of dynamism is not related only to infrastructures, but also cities or entire areas that are the destinations of cultural tourism need to be dynamic while maintaining an appearance of authenticity and tradition. It is the case of towns such as Tōno or cities such as Kyōto. Kyōto can be seen as a female city under the point of view of tourism. It was already said that in the Japanese tourism the gender has been often analyzed focusing on women as hosts for male guests. Kyōto is the city of maiko and geisha, of the ladies working in shops wearing kimono, of the motenasu-josei (host women) and the motenasareru dansei (men who receive hospitality). This idea has been the focus of academic literature as well, and would be wrong to state that this idea does not reflect the truth. However, it is only a partial truth, because the interaction between female guests and female hosts has helped to shape the image of the city, showing a powerful agency of women tourists (Kudo, 2003). In the 1970s, Discovery Japan’s campaign, Anan magazine or Non・no (two lifestyle magazines addressing women) started to promote new idea of women and travel. Kyōto started to become a destination for so called annon-zoku (アンノン族)130, fashion-conscious young women, with a strong aesthetical value and a clear point of view about fashion and lifestyle—different from those of previous fashion magazines readers—, and who travel solo or in small groups in a period when women were still hesitant to travel alone. Annon-zoku’s women can be considered as the forerunners of the joshi- boom. The aesthetic they were looking for was the gourmet food, beautiful scenery, historical townscapes, etc. Features that brought many annon girls to target cities such as Kyōto and Kōbe. Kōbe is famous for its western style, sophisticated fashion sensibility, that comes from the elite women of Yamate area and emerged in the Kōbe-kei fashion. A must for women life-style magazines. Kyōto instead, as Ogawa (2008) explains, become a luxury brand because of its history and culture. This image of Kyōto was promoted and supported both by guests’ demands and hosts’ supplies. With tourism Kyōto became a commodity to sell. As a city, Kyōto couldn’t escape the process of modernization that was shaping Japan, as the Kyōto tower or the modern layout of Kyōto Station show, but this modernization was greeted with criticism. In the 1990s, the city gave life to a machiya- boom (町屋ブーム), a revaluation of Kyōto traditional architecture for private housing and shops, to conserve the traditional cityscape in the search of a Kyōto-rashisa (Kyōto-ness). In the meantime, the image of Kyōto as a city for women’s tourism increased. According to a survey by the Bureau of Industry and Tourism of Kyōto City (2018), in 2018 the 67.4% of Kyōto inbound tourism was 130 A compound word formed by the [an] of Anan magazine and the [non] of Non・no, plus the suffix zoku 族 that means tribe. Literally is the “Anan and Non・no (readers’) tribe”. 112 performed by women, most of which were over 50 years old. Like for ryokan, the image of Kyōto created expectations in guests, based mainly on the cultural and traditional aspects of the city, its Japanese-ness. Kudo (2003) point out that the tourist resources, the natural and cultural resource of Kyōto131, are not gender related. However, Kyōto is often associated with the feminine image of the Heian period, when the elegant world of the court was represented by women. Active in shaping the culture and the symbolism of that period. Media often depicts Kyōto with the presence of women wearing kimono or elegant western clothing, or engaged in artistic experience or elegant and relaxing moments. This helped to create a feminine image of the city. In return the city gave back an image of the ideal woman, the kyōonna (京女, the woman from Kyōto), a word that comes to indicate someone considerate elegant and beautiful (みやびていて美しいとされる)132, a woman to longing for (憧れ、 akogare). This image is also associated with the image of an old-fashioned woman, that wears kimono, speaks Kyōto-ben (Kyōto dialect), and pays attention to her manner and behavior. An article on a women’s lifestyle website133, explains which are the three key points to learn from Kyōonna. 1. Speak slowly and with soft nuances: in particular, the emphasis in on the tendency of Kyōto dialect to extend the final sound of words and omitting particles. This gives a relaxes nuance and a not definite image of what is saying, keeping an aura of poetic mystery that helps to soften the tone of the message to convey. 2. Choose kind words to assert one’s thinking: the image of Kyōonna is the one of a lady which can firmly convey her own arguments, without making the listener having negative feelings. To do so, it is important to have a good sense in choosing the words to use, words that need to maintain a refined aura, even when convey a message that may be not pleasant for the listener. 3. Value courtesy and hospitality Other features that help to create this image of a Kyōto lady. From properly wearing a yukata or a kimono, to laugh properly, passing by the learning of traditional arts. Jalan website as example, offer access to sensei Fujimura Michiyo’s “Yamato Nadeshiko lectureship”134, where guests can learn manners that have been protected and refined in Kyōto over a long period and are still alive in the city today, to “polish” the self. To offer access to the secrets beyond the kyōonna’s manners it is another way to sustain Kyōto as a luxury brand. Tourists, obviously not people from Kyōto, have 131 While in this case I use Kyōto as an example of cultural tourism, due to its association with culture and tradition, Kyōto has wonderful natural scenery, such Arashiyama or the less famous Ponponyama, that represent a good part of tourists interests. 132 https://www.weblio.jp/content/京女 (ret.. 21/09/2020) 133 http://sp.lalu.jp/article/show/aid/782.html 134 藤村道代の大和撫子講座 at Kyōto Suidenan. Yamato Nadeshiko is an euphemism for a well-mannered and beautiful Japanese woman. 113 access to an image that has been polished and advertised profitably, a brand that end to characterize the identity of a city. Hosts are not only suppliers of this image and this brand, they become also teacher of this aesthetic and the culture related to it. It is a part of their identities. They are the media of the city traditions that convey a sense of the Japanese authenticity through the old-fashioned woman in an old-fashion city, but it is a product of modern ideal and desires. As said, beautifulness in Japan is meant as a dynamic experience. Guests that go to Kyōto do not want only see kyōonna wearing kimono in the streets, they often want to try it. Annon-zoku not only want to be readers of the city, they want to experience it. The city offers access to places where it is possible to rent kimono, places where it is possible to learn the local manner, or even dress as a Maiko or a Geisha for one day. All these things are not traditional features of the city, but are actions that the hosts are using to react to guests’ requests. Hosts become teachers, because there are guests that want to learn. In this it is possible to see the latent power of cultural tourism. While it may be not too hard imagining a relatively small town such Tōno to conform to a literary work that shape the guests’ demands, with Kyōto, the image that guests have of the city and the image that hosts want to provide about themselves, shaped an entire city. I think that few cities of the size of Kyōto in the world, if any, can convey such a uniform image of itself and shape the perception of the guests with a local identity that seems uniform and in harmony with the hyper-image of the cityscape, its history, its imagined authenticity. It is almost like all people in Kyōto cooperate in a magnificent theatrical play, in which each actor has his own role as host, and all actors know exactly what the audience is expecting from them, so they know how to react together, how to market their play, how to adapt to answer these requests. All without losing the fascinating traditional-like soul and cityscape. The only difference is that the Kyōto seen by tourists, as I had the pleasure, it is not a play, but a magnificent reality. 3.4.4 - Content tourism: experience the location before experience it Tourism proven to be a dynamic continuum in which guests and hosts can display their identities and through these shapes and modify the objects they use as a medium in the tourism’s arena, being it a city, rural landscape, culture or even each other identities. We saw how Tōno reacted to guests’ expectations, at the point in which local had to recite monogatari as Yanagita wrote and not as they heard from their grandparents. We saw how Palauans had to change their relationship with nature, creating a “natural” (artificial) marine sanctuary, that suits tourists’ needs. We saw how Kyōto successfully branded an image of the city, through a strong agency of women, and create ideals to be taught to guests who have a clear image of this city. Again we saw how ryokan adapt themselves on the preference of guests passing through the mediation of media. In all the cases, hosts show to possess a great dose of resilience, with the ability of create authenticity, often linked with traditions, as a modern answer to the interaction with guests. The objects of tourism, in all the declination seen until here, are creation, recreation or alteration of the hosts which need to react to guests’ requests. 114 Just to be clear, a church or a temple that become the object of tourists visits, it’s a hosts’ alteration of the object itself: to make temples or churches as tourists’ attractions, hosts alter the original functions with entrance fees, souvenir stands, fee to pay to take picture or an alteration of the original activities of the sacred places. An example could be to allow guests to ring the bell used to call kami in Japanese shrines, at the only purpose of taking a picture. This may be a symptom of the adaption of the hosts to the tourists’ requests or even, as I witnessed in at least one case, in the incapability of hosts to deal with the shameless intrusiveness of guests135. This last fact is particularly evident in content tourism. In a document edited in 2005 by the MILT136, “contents” has been positioned as one of the “advanced new industrial fields” and is regarded as an industrial field for regional regeneration (art. 1.3). According to the document: <<the basis of content tourism is to add a “narrative” and “thematic nature” as “the atmosphere and image peculiar to the region created through the content” to the region, and to utilize the narrative as a tourism resource. [...] In order to utilize the contents as a tourism resource, various efforts are being made in each region, such as maintenance of exhibition facilities related to the contents, preservation and formation of scenery that contributes to the utilization of the contents, holding events related to the contents, staging for enjoying the contents, development and branding of local products that use the contents, information transmission, and human resource development. These efforts are divided into (1) movies, TV dramas and novels, and (2) comics, animation and games. >> (art.3.1.1:49)137. 135 In the case I witnessed, the impossibility for the staff of a temple to take video of a kagura dance – even there was an explicit request of not filming or taking picture – due to the high number of tourism present that simultaneously violated the hosts’ requests. 136 The document is officially written by 国土交通省総合政策局観光地域振興課 (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MILT) - Policy Bureau Tourism and Regional Development Division), 経済産業省商務情報政策 局文化情報関連産業課 (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry - Culture and Information Related Industries Division, Commerce and Information Policy Bureau,) and 文化庁文化部芸術文化課 (Agency for Cultural Affairs - Arts and Culture Division, Cultural Affairs Department). Since is retrieved from MILT website, I will refer to MILT as the author in the text. 137 <<コンテンツツーリズムの根幹は、地域に「コンテンツを通して醸成された地域固有の雰囲気・イメージ」として の「物語性」 「テーマ性」を付加し、その物語性を観光資源として活用することである。[...]コンテンツの観光資源とし ての活かし方は、各地域で、コンテンツに関する展示施設の整備、コンテンツの活用に資する景観の保全・形成、コン テンツに関するイベントの開催、コンテンツを楽しむための演出、コンテンツを活かした特産品開発・ブランド形成、 情報発信、人材育成等、様々な取組が展開されている。 こうした取組を、①映画・テレビドラマ・小説、②まんが・アニメ・ゲームに分けて整理したのが次表である>> (第３ 章.1.1). 115 Content tourism consist of using media contents, some of which are particularly famous to be part of Japanese pop-culture and sub-cultures, to promote the revitalization of a particular region. The importance of these popular and sub-cultures in Japan’s imaginary is so strong that in Japanese, contents tourism is often refereed as suichi junrei ( 聖地巡礼, pilgrimage). The “Anime Tourism Association”, following the Shikoku’s 88 temple example, individuated 88 places that will be considered the sacred spot for anime tourism138, giving the phenomenon an important cultural value that become a form of syncretism between the sacred and the secular world. Beside this cultural value, contents tourism plays an important role in both Japan’s inbound and outbound tourism. Jiǔfèn (九 份) a little town in Taiwan, may be an example of the power of the cultural tourism. Jiǔfèn is a mountain small village in the Ruifang District (New Taipei City), which used to be a miner village during the Japanese rule period. The town consists mainly in an old narrow street, surrounded by shops of traditional sweets and products, some tea houses and local restaurants. Besides being the location of Taiwanese oldest movie theater, created in 1914 for entertain the miners, a fact that seems few Taiwanese know, the major attraction of this town for Japanese tourists is the A-Mei tea house, an old tea house well preserved. This tea house became particularly famous because of the resemblance of the building with the bathhouse of Yu Baba featured in 2004 Ghibli studio’s anime Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (千と千尋の神隠し, Eng.: Spirited away) by the famous director Miyazaki Hayao. Albeit in an interview the artist affirmed that the town of Jiǔfèn was not the model for the environment of the story, the link between the anime and the tea house is endorsed both by tourists and the local people who define this tea house as the “Yu baba bathhouse” from the movie. By some extent is the same situation visible in Tōno with an hyperreality constructed on Yanagita’s work. The slight difference is that Tōno based its tourism not on a fictional work, but on folkloristic and academic studies. Tōno is not the setting of a fictional work, but it is the setting of the legends transmitted in generation, which Yanagita interpreted in a determined (correctly of mistakenly) way, and Tōno as host has conscientiously manipulate and reshaped to attract the guests. Folklore and legend however are part of the soul of Tōno, which exists independently from Yanagita’s Tōno monogatari, and for this reason I do not consider it content tourism. Content tourism is based on fictional works that are not originally part of the location, but are used to promote it after the location become part of a fictional creation. As New Zealand wasn’t linked with Tolkien’s masterpiece “The Lord of the Rings” before the movie became a colossal, and tourists mostly visited King’s Cross Station in London just for embark on a train, before Harry Potter’s saga, Jiǔfèn was only a miners’ village whit a well preserved old street and a splendid view on the ocean, before Miyazaki’s movie. An issued shared both by the cultural tourism performed in Tōno and the content tourism, is the problem of authenticity. It was said that the authenticity of Tōno is judged on the academic work of Yanagita, an 138 https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2016/09/23/anime-tourism-88_n_12157680.html (ret.22/09/2020) 116 authority strong enough to makes it not a fictional creation. Tourists expect to hear the legends as Yanagita wrote them, not as the local have been narrated by their grandparents. However, there is no need to question the authenticity of Tōno as the minzoku no furusato, the hometown of folklore. In the interaction with the guests, hosts still have the agency to modify and shape the guests’ opinion on the authenticity. Guests can experience the location and been influenced by the hosts’ representation: even if they want to hear the legends in the way Yanagita wrote them, they still have the desire to learn by experience, in the same way as some women hosts do in Kyōto. Interaction is hence an exchange based on the experience. In content tourism, the interaction is not of mutual understanding. Guests are the only authority that can confirm the value of the representation. They experience the location not on-situ, but far from it, when they become users of the content. In that occasion they create their expectations and emotions toward the object, and tourism has the only aim of adding more value to it. The Hosts have the only role of recreating the location based on the fiction’s depiction of it, to make it an “authentic re-production” that match the guests’ expectations. Bruner (2004) explains how the term authentic reproduction conveys the knowledge that the “object” is not an original, and its authenticity is meant in the sense of giving the appearance of the expectation on the original, through mimetic credibility. Bruner, in particular, sees authenticity under four labels: verisimilitude, genuineness, originality, and authority. Is Jiǔfèn’s AMei tea house an “authentic reproduction” of the contents of Miyazaki’s work? Although Miyazaki, who as the creator of the content should be the real authority, said that the teahouse is not the model on which the content is based, the guests, the hosts, touristic guides and media have entrusted themselves with necessary authority to confirm the relationship between the content of the anime and the building on site. Originality here seems to be out of the question, since the tea house was built many years before the creation of the anime, so—leaving aside Miyazaki’s words—it is the original model. However, the truth is not so smooth. The content tourist experiences the object not in the location, but in their own homes. The first contact, the object that works as the prototypical image, is not the object on site, but the object they see in the anime. As an example, when during a visit in Jiǔfèn I asked a Japanese friend what she thought about the tea house, she replied that it was “a bit different from the anime”, where she should have said that the anime is a bit different from the original. The semantics in this answer is just to emphasize that the expectations of originality, especially in content tourism, are not based on the authenticity of the reproduction, but on authentication of the original. The experience in the location has not the aim of confirm that the content offers a good reproduction of the original, but that the original on site could work as a good “model” for what is the content. The ironic side is that in their effort to please the guests, hosts alter the original in the way they expect the guests expect to see it, using the content media as a reference. Basically, if we consider the content media as a hyper-reality of the location, content tourism asks for 117 a hyper-reality based on that hyper-reality. The content tourist is first and foremost a fan of a product, such as a movie, anime or video game. In all these products, the locations are not a random choice, but they are supposed to include all the features necessary for the landscape to be the perfect background for the plot. The users of the contents, who enjoy the plot into a certain scenery, expect to find the same scenery in the place they visit. The “Middle-earth” of the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, to possess that verisimilitude that could give it authenticity, had to be the set in a place that could be similar to the medieval-fantasy, to reflect the scenario described by Tolkien. <<The surrounding areas were untouched; no power lines, no buildings and no roads in sight. This meant that Sir Peter Jackson could leave the 20th century behind, and fully submerge himself in the fantasy world of Middle-earth>> cites the website of “Hobbiton” 139, the place that we can see on the screen and that became a famous content tourism destination140. Hosts have the only role of make the location to fit guests’ idealization. Even when this means to take a role similar to the one of actors in the fictionalized recreation of the content. There is an economic reason behind their choice of taking part in this big masquerade. <<From the late 2000s, anime producers and local communities developed various collaborative approaches, mainly through trial and error, to create mutually beneficial tie-ups. For anime producers, incorporating a region’s landscape, history, and culture into their works enhanced the authenticity and realism of the contents. For regions, if their local resources were attractively presented in stories, fans obtained positive impressions of the area and the regional brand was strengthened. Many anime fans are extremely loyal to their favorite works. Such customers with high brand loyalty are valuable not only to producers but also to regions>> (Seaton & al., 2017:212) This interaction between local authorities, media and users, is a perfect example of the Japanese Sanpō Yoshi (三方良し, lit. three parties’ benefits) in which buyer (user), seller (media) and society (local authorities, which by some extents are also sellers, but more in specific the community) all have advantages. However, not always the interaction between hosts and guests is positive. In Japan, content tourism is often associated with the idea of meiwaku (迷惑、nuisance). Hosts may find the continue interactions with guests are anything but pleasant. Guests, in search of a particular shoot or in the willing of visiting a particular place of experience in the media, violate the privacy of the hosts. This behavior is not only a prerogative of content tourism, but it is highlighted by the insistence with which is perpetuated in this form of experience. Being that seeing the object watched in the media the primary aim of the experience, often tourists act in an illegal way to reach their purposes. However, 139 140 https://www.hobbitontours.com/en/our-story (ret. 22/09/2020) Important to note that in the case of The Lord of the Ring, content tourism is not based on the book (which is more likely to retrace Europe), but on the movie. In the website page cited, there is no reference to Tolkien. 118 also guests may have hard feelings toward the hosts, at the point of considering the very presence of the hosts as a disturbance. Not only the ostracism and the prohibition they find. but also the very presence of locals may be a problem, when they do not fit the ideal of the guests. Okamoto (2015) explains that content tourism may be associated with six particular kinds of behavior, not always present simultaneously, but all part of the experience: 1. The first behavior is that fans often take pictures of the scenarios seen in the media, by the same angle as shown on media, that include spots that are not considered as “tourist attraction” and hence pass unseen to people who are not followers of the content. This is part of the consuming of the experience before coming in the location: as they may seek and see places overseen by the hosts which are not familiar with the content, guests can also oversee places of common touristic interest which are not part of the content experienced. 2. The second behavior is to leave a trace of the “pilgrimage” to the location. This includes votive ema in shrines or phrases and draws on guest books offered by the hosts or created by the guests themselves. While in many cases these traces may be part of the interaction hosts-guests, in other cases—as the case of many tourists that used to go to see Giulietta’s balcony in Verona and left a written or worse a chewinggum on the wall at the entrance—such act may be a nuance for the community. 3. The third behavior is the live update of the pilgrimages through laptops or smartphone, that in part clashes with the classic triphasic division of tourism (preparation-experience-return), in which narration comes at the moment of the return. This kind of behavior is in a middle way between the Saigyō’s poem written as a testimony of the feeling of the moment, and the share of the experience that usually comes after the travel, in which the personal experience become public. A live update is also a proof of the subjectivity of the experience in which the guest passes from be a user to be a subject of the location. 4. The fourth behavior is one of the most iconic. Comprise decorating cars, bikes or other transportation means with anime stickers and illustrations. Even if the phenomenon called itasha 痛車 emphasizes the customization of personal cars, also trains or public transportation means can be customized as the same way as the promotional material. Itasha are a way to both make public one’s identity as a user of a content and to make this identity itinerant. Non less important, represent an itinerant marketing campaing for the contents. 5. The fifth behavior is cosplay. The phenomenon is usually linked to the dressing-up as anime or video game characters, but in tourism, it may be intended as a wider range of phenomena. When tourists wear kimono in Kyōto, they are doing cosplay, as much as the staff of restaurants that dress in traditional clothing as a mean to 119 underline the traditional spirit of the place. Cosplay is another kind of interaction between guest and hosts, and a way to authorize the authenticity of the “object” of the content. 6. The sixth behavior is the acceptance of interaction between host and guest, which is embedded in almost all the kind of behaviors. The interaction may occur also between fellowship travelers since, with content tourism, tourists do not share just spaces and time, but also explicitly share interests. The shared experience allows the formation of temporary “itinerant” communities created around a content object which gains a “sacred” significance. These behaviors may enter into conflict with the daily lives of the local. Between the actions that can be considered as meiwaku, there are trespassing of prohibited locations or invasion of privacy even when taking and showing pictures, obstruction in daily lives of the locals, damages to the community heritage even if unintended. Between these actions there are also trespassing in schools, even during the normal lesson time, that served as a location for an anime, as reported by Okamoto (2015). This kind of conflicting interaction between guests and hosts is not a content tourism’s only problem, but it is a possibility in any kind of tourism. Barberani (2006) explains that sometimes the hosts use some “strategies of resistance” to deal with the cultural and social changes that comes from the interaction with the guests. Among these strategies Barberani lists passive resistance strategies (as Boissevain’s “secret defenses”) like the refusal of change the daily life’s time to fit the tourists’ necessities, concealment of some aspects of their own culture or lives, such rituals or ceremonies, the fencing of events or places both real and symbolic, organized protests such objections moved against the local authorities or directly against the tourists, which can become also a form of aggression. 3.5 - Fantasy tourism to digital narcissisms: the breaking of the relations between the guests and the hosts or the locations In all the travel experience, from tabi to content tourism, there are two fundamental features, the host/guest relation and the experience of the object or the location. This work presented different typologies of travel, in a continuum that sees tabi as one extreme and content tourism as the other, with some other form of travel in the middle. These are not defined categories and in a single travel experience, often they mix. What it is thought as a tabi at the start, can become mass tourism in the end or vice versa. A pilgrimage can be a form of content tourism, as much as content tourism can be idealized as a pilgrimage. What it changes in these typologies is the kind of relationship between the 120 guests and the hosts and the way of experience the location. In tabi the experience is not at the destination, but in the whole path. The guests as subject have not preconceptions about the destination or about the hosts. Tabibito goal is to optimize the relations with the hosts by accepting and learn from their culture as it is, without demands. It is not tourism because is not based on leisure. Also, pilgrimages are not tourism because there is no leisure. Religious tourism is similar to pilgrimage, but is not the same thing, do not value the path enough. On a pilgrimage the guests have a defined view about the location they want to visit and they have hopes and some expectations about the experience. However, the experience is not only in the destination. As tabi, pilgrimage puts much emphasis on the path. The hosts, which in this case is also the sacred and the divine, have a powerful influence on the guests. The guests set for a pilgrimage with the expectations to be changed by the hosts and back from the experience with a new self. In the same fashion of tabi, and differently from tourism, the pilgrimage does not conceive a return to the previous condition, but a change of the identity of the guests. Without this change, pilgrimage fails. Tourism in its different forms gives different values to the hosts/guests’ relation and the experience, but in all these forms in based on leisure. Ecotourism is based on an ideal of the location that has to be conform to the idea of nature of the guests, but in the intention of sustainability, guests seek for locations that are as more than possible as hosts live them. Even when this nature is constructed to match the guests’ expectation, how hosts can modify the nature is limited. When the hosts’ interventions tend to be too much to comply with the necessities of tourists, creating urban-like infrastructures at the sole purpose of attire more guests, then the landscape loses its natural features and ecotourism become mass tourism. Ecotourism is a form of tourism in which leisure can be mixed with a fair interaction between hosts and guests, since guests often search for a kind of knowledge or artifacts that they only can experience in that location through hosts’ mediations. However, there is always a preconception of what the tourists consider nature, rural or traditional knowledge, and hosts must adapt to it, even at the cost of changing their lifestyle. Hosts can decide to not adapt to guests’ requests and maintain their lifestyle unchanged without considering the guests’ needs. Guests can both accept or refuse the hosts’ will to not conform to their requests. In case they accept, they can have an experience more similar to tabi than ecotourism, in which the staying at the hosts’ places will be a learning experience, not a leisure one. In case they insist to force hosts to conform to their requests, ecotourism betray its own premises of a person-to-person and community-friendly experience and ecotourism turns into mass tourism. Nevertheless, ecotourism is the form of tourism which represents the best compromise for hosts to interact with guests at the purpose of revitalize their spaces, by drawing guests near their lifestyle. At least in intentions, this form of tourism take into consideration the hosts’ subjectivity as much as the guests’ one. The practice, however, often ends to be contrary to the expectation and ecotourism end to transform radically the location in which is undertaken. It is about the same with 121 cultural tourism. The experience of cultural tourism is about what guests perceive to be culture, the lifestyle, the art, the history of another group. The major difference between ecotourism and cultural tourism, besides the obvious different objects and locations, is that culture is easily transmitted through media and being particular of a group, hosts have more power to create authenticity. It’s easy for hosts to create cultural events, rituals, representation of the lifestyle at the purpose of attract guests. Kyōto was branded as the city of elegance and culture thanks to the image that magazine gave of it, at the point that both the city and magazine could target an audience through the idealization of Kyōto’s women. This shaped the imagine that guests have of the city, but also had influence on the hosts’ identity and their way to perceive their own culture. In cultural tourism culture emerges in its dynamism, thanks to the interaction hosts/guests. In the case of Japan however, guests want not only to see the culture, they want to make a subjective experience of it. Cultural tourism in some of its forms, become an occasion to guests to change, at least temporarily, their identity, and for hosts become the perfect occasion to transmit their traditions, even if sometimes these traditions are created deliberately for the guests’ enjoyment. The relation hosts/guests and the experience of the object or location change completely with content tourism. In this case guests make the experience of the object before the travel on the site, and that experience will determine their perception of the object. In case of content tourism, the hosts have the only role of re-create the space experienced by the guests through other media. Their actions must conform totally to the expectations of the guests and the only purpose of these actions are economic. Revitalization and marketing are the keyword of content tourism. It is the form of tourism in which the experience is totally focus on the place: not all the spaces in which hosts live, but those determined spaces that were featured in the product they consumed. Their behaviors are totally devoted at their presence in the locations they target. The hosts not only see their point of view muted but also become secondary, if not completely obscured or considered a nuisance in the experience. The guests’ subjectivity become the only point of view taken into consideration, and the only important presence in the location’s experience. If a subject was not present in the content experienced, it will end to be a disturbance. However, instead of the presence of hosts, to make the scene livelier, guests can use application of augmented reality to take picture having their anime 122 character as subjects of the scene. These apps simply overlap with the image of a character featured in anime or videogames in the landscape’s picture. In a form of digital narcissism, guests may also recreate the scenes experienced in the content by taking picture of themselves in the same poses of the characters of the content. In this case, they not only become subjects as viewer, but become also the main object of the picture, making the location as a background, in the same way as it was in the content. Is a way to fictionalize the self. These kinds of travel have usual shades according to the individual involved. [Discover Japan] as example, promoted the discovery of furusato in a way that can be a crossover between ecotourism—the discover of rural life-style—and cultural tourism—the discover of the true Japanese culture --, with a strategy marketing similar to the one of content tourism—gives people in the city the experience of the countryside through images and pamphlets -, but with modalities similar to the one of tabi—not giving importance to the destination, but on the travel by train (it was JR that create the campaign). Much depends also on how destinations are created: the idealization of the guests and the promotion from the hosts through the help of the media. Again, the feelings at the departure and the moment of the return are important in determine the travel. Nostalgia push toward discovery and self-discovery tabi, the necessity of enjoyment calls for leisure, the two things are not mutually exclusive. [Discover Japan] was built over the idea that the rediscover of real Japan, was in fact a fun activity which allow everyone to take a break from the city’s stress—an image to which trains were linked–and enjoy the good-old furusato. Idealization and identity exist in the traveler’s idea, so the travel experience is not only a way to enter in contact with the alterity but also with the self. There may be features of travel that transform the experience by breaking the guest/host’s and the subject/object’s relationship, and both are connected in a more or less deep way to virtual experiences. Internet become a way to experience travel. In Japan this kind of experience is defined as takujō ryokō (卓上旅行), tabletop travel, and is becoming popular, moreover, with the travel limitations cause by 2020s COVID pandemic. Tabletop travel is a mix between what could be called a fantasy travel and the first phase of tourism. It is far from be a modern travel experience, since people could imagine, plan and experience some forms of fantasy travel already in ancient time, at least since when traveler started to draw maps, writing travel reports, describing scenery, that other people could read in their homes (see Paul, 2011). Internet gives the experience a visual power that other media have not. Cartography can delimitate the cities or the areas, pictures offer static visuals, articles in the books or magazine can give descriptions and curiosities about the location, through these media, however, the experience requires a great effort of the imagination to make the user have the feeling to be a subject of the scene, an ability that maybe we are losing. Already in a 1995 article, Cheong talked about the impact that virtual reality could have on travel, explaining how VR << [...] 123 is able to offer a wide range of travel options in a controlled and safe environment>>, but also pointing out the different problems it could bring to tourism and users. Two of the major problems suggested by the author are the economic damage to the tourism locations, and the risk of dissociation from reality of the users. While takujō ryokō is often advertised as a way to plan a real travel—that’s what I found in different blogs and friends’ explanations–, it can be also considered as a real substitute of the travel. Not only software like “google maps” or “street view”, but also virtual visits to museums or webcams that allow users to see a city live streaming, are techniques by which the users can immerse themselves in the scene, without leaving the desk. It lacks important features of travel that Okada (1975) pointed out to be fundamental features of travel, which are the involvement of the five senses. While sight is used also in this kind of experience, and also hearing may be involved, at the current state of technology, there is no way to involve the other senses. In this way, the relation between the guests and the location is not exhaustive. Guests cannot make a full experience of the location, and this makes takujō ryokō a non-travel. The relation between the guests and the hosts is damages as well. Different from the most extreme form of content tourism in which hosts may be obscured, not taken into consideration or becoming a disturbance for the guests, but are present, in takujō ryokō the relation with the hosts doesn’t exist from the start. Hence the tourist is not a guest. Once a “virtual host”, which can also be not a member of the group living in the location, as example google maps engineers, set up the virtual tour, there are no other interactions with the hosts. People appear in the picture, may be hosts as much as other guests, but they become part of the landscapeobject, and are not subjects of the experience. If it’s used as a substitute of travel, takujō ryokō, is only a pastime. What I think would be interesting to investigate, since I didn’t find much literature about it, it’s the consequence of this experience taken as a preparation for real travel. Since preparation creates expectations, once the user experience a landscape without subjects on the hosts side, and all the person of the virtual experience are part of the object, to back on the problems that Cheung pointed out, it’s important to understand if << [...] in extended periods of such exposures, virtual reality could inadvertently harm the user’s mental health and leave him/her in a disorientated state, unable to function or deal with reality>> (1995). In short, will be the user able to conceive the hosts as subject during travel, or will be they seen as objects? Another factor that creates a distance between hosts and guests, and guests and location, is digital narcissism. Digital narcissism is not only related to tourism, but it has a big impact on it, moreover, in the third phase of tourism, the coming back and the moment of narration. Weiss (2017) point out that social media are “self-esteem narcotics”: 124 <<people thrive on how many “likes” they get. They stage the best photos and curate the glamorous moments of their lives. [...] for some people, the vacation didn’t happen and the charitable work doesn’t count unless it’s on social media. It has to be uploaded, seen and liked to matter. [...] People only portray the cool stuff. The coffee shop photos or selfies in the gym, where they’re showing up their sedentary friends. They share this stuff because it reflects well on them. They know it will garner lots of likes. And that makes them feel good>>. This digital narcissism, as a “disease” spreads also in the tourist world. Being part of the individual identity, guests bring this narcissism together with them in their travel, and it emerges in the relationship with the hosts and with the location. However, its present also at the end of the tourism experience, at the moment of the narration. This narcissism becomes digital because in mediated through the lenses of the anonymity. Want to be the center of a photography that will be upload in a social media, a network in which even strangers can access to the uploader’s image, As Baba (2018) explains is a way to say to an unidentified numbers of strangers “look at me” and explain that “my life has also these aspects”. This narcissism is not only a way to show the self, to get other people’s likes as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. It’s also a way to search for a position inside a community, to find one place in the world. The way to do it is to show the aspect of our life that we find more valuable, what we appreciate of us and what we feel that other people will appreciate of us by consequence. That the digital world became the easiest way to promote ourselves, gave life to this disease that is digital narcissism, which emerges also as egotism. Egotism is the tendency of act in ways that show the self in the best possible light. Travel is a perfect background for the individual egotism to emerge. Not only travel can make other people envy us and want to be like us. A picture gives the guests the occasion to be both the subject and the object of wonderful landscapes. It is easy to notice how social media are filled with “artistic-like” pictures of tourists—if they can still be called like that — in which the place, the object that should be focal in the travel experience, is nothing more than a blurred background. The subject of the travel, the guest, become also the primary object to show. In this way, the guests have a total dissociation both with the place, and the hosts, which are as most as possible absent from the experience. A figure passing in the background may be a nuisance for the harmony of the shot. The subject who takes the picture — which can be or not a selfie (asking someone to take our picture, explaining well how to take it and in the pose we decided, is equal to a selfie as we use the photographer as a sort of auto-shooting function) — is not looking at the location anymore. They look at the self in the location. It is a subject that sees the self as the principal object to watch. This makes the travel, the hosts, the location, the experience as something existent in the self’s background. Picture are also selected for their aesthetic value, since in the egotistic value we assign to them, we want to look as best as possible. The aesthetic value of the location emphasizes the 125 aesthetic value of the picture. There are landscapes that have a prettiness which is almost universal. We all thought some places are wonderful just by watching an excellent picture. Being part of this attractiveness gives the subject/object at the center of the scene an aesthetic value. It can be thought as a [Look, I’m the main subject of this wonderful picture, it means I’m wonderful] kind of idea. Not only the hosts are completely absent from the travel experience, but also the location is only a stage for performing the self. What we show when we post our “artistic-like” pictures of the places in which we travel, is in truth a narcissistic exposition of a highly idealized image of ourselves. If we take this as content tourism, digital narcissism can be the realization of the fictional identity we experienced in our home—maybe by imagining ourselves in a landscape view on a magazine, or as substitute of the model of a wonderful picture—and we need to realize through tourism. The only reason of the travel is the picture of ourselves in that place. The travel–or vacation as Weiss (2017) suggested must be on social media to matter. What matters for these digital narcissist guests is not the travel experience, but only themselves. Travel is made not only of wonderful sceneries but also of runs to catch the right train, sweating in clothes we wrong to select during the preparation and the striving to find a public toilet, the queue to enter a museum and the sandwich bought at the bus station, contract for a traditional like object bought at the souvenir stand and talking asking the hosts what we are eating with a mix of curiosity and fear. All these features that make the travel interesting and fun experiences — if you never experienced any of those, you have never really travelled—, are deleted from the last report, the act of showing the travel, in which the self is the only important thing. These features are obscured by the mirror that reflects only the idealization of the self. It is a break of the relations with the other and with the environment, which is a break with the organic that Miyamoto (2002) suggested to be at the base of the survival of the environment, but also of the individuals. 126 Arrival at the bridge... yet not a conclusion 4.1 - The arrival in the midst of a bridge... To set for a tabi is something special. There is not a real departure point, there is not an actual arrival. There is just the path. This path, however, should have to start from somewhere, from something, and in anthropology that something is theory. It does not mean theory as a theoretical model to approach the discipline. It simply means the set of knowledge that we possess when we decide to leave. In the same fashion as we can decide how to travel—backpacking, tourism, pilgrimage—we can decide to stick to a research methodology. Or even not. What we cannot decide is to obfuscate the knowledge that for causal encounters, casual speech, books we read, documentary we saw. It’s already a part of our background. In my case, this theory, which of course includes some working methodology, is what I collect during the years of study, the period of work and study in Taiwan, the visits to Japan, the words of my teachers and their models of research, the talk with Japanese friends and, should be useless to underline it, to the quantity of books on Japan, about Japan and from Japan that I had read in the past. This theory is how I perceived and I imagined furusato and Japanese traditions, the culture and the people of this country I love. The path showed me I knew so few, and many things I thought were wrong. That theory can be considered as the backpack in which as a traveler I have put the things I thought to be necessary to start the journey. Not to finish it, only for start it. Since the goal and the path are unknown, it is more than possible that this backpack will contain a lot of wrong choices. Who never brings on a vacation a shirt that is simply useless for the location? Tourism, moreover, in his extreme form as content tourism, is the confirmation of the theory that was constructed before, departing with the necessary to confirm our ideas or, in the worst of the cases, to negate it completely. The destination is not only clear; it is also selected because of its characteristics. The backpack for content tourism will be filled only with the indispensable for this purpose. The things that the content tourist brings on the travel may be even the possible worst choice for the location, for its climate. However, content tourists have the experience in their mind already before the start, because they already did. They know what kind of objects they need there, because the location is made to suit their backpack. The backpack is prepared to complete the visit and go back, without space for nothing else or something new. In case something is missing or something is different from what they prepared, it is only because the hosts made mistakes. They are not authentic enough. 127 I could have done this kind of travel by creating an index, selecting the books in advance and stick from the start to the end to this idea. Anthropology works also in these terms. But it is not how I like to travel. I like tabi and tabi is research. On the way here, I found some objects that made the ones I preventively prepared—thinking to be smart enough to be prepared to everything—completely useless. At the point that I arrived here with a backpack completely different from the initial one. I do not consider this as the conclusion of my tabi, it’s merely the first step, maybe the first station. And I’ve already filled my bag with many concepts and books that I would have not thought about at the start of it. My hope in this moment is that this difference between being a tourist or a tabibito emerged in this work. And I hope I could do anthropology as a tabibito. It’s a hope. Nothing more. In the worst of cases, will be for me the hint that I need a detour, or a stay in a particular place, to improve, to communicate better, to do better research. When a tourist misses a train, the vacation is ruined. When a tabibito misses a train, the journey becomes only more interesting and challenging. In the end, the last train never depart. There will be always a next train to somewhere. And when a tabibito is on a tabi, any “somewhere” worth a visit. To be honest, I already written a paper with the idea of showing the difference between tourism and a tabi, and I had a good feedback. However, this path is different. In a tabi there is no turning back or return, even in walking the same path. This work is different, because I’m different, I have a different knowledge than before. Hardly I can define myself as an anthropologist, but as a student, I’m confident in affirming that an anthropologist that keeps the same idea about something his entire life, basically has never made progress. Cultures are dynamic, people are dynamic, the discipline is dynamic. If the anthropologist is static on his thoughts, it simply means that he or she failed at something. This work represents for me a tabi because it started with some theories and ideas, that however, during the writing turned into a dead end. I had to leave the train at the last moment to avoid ending in dangerous places from where probably I couldn’t come back. Other times I embarked on trains I found interesting, but that led me into other tracks. At the point that I had to remake my journey on the path. I don’t even want to think about the train I missed that could have led me to a better journey, but in that moment I choose not to take it. Do I think is a pity to have missed those trains? Yes. I do like research and I like to learn new things, so I think it would have been interesting to expand my horizons. Do I regret I took the trains that led me here? No. If I didn’t embark on these trains, these would have been missed trains as well. The good thing is that all the train I missed departed from a station I have been in. I need only to follow the path I walked here to that station and be careful to take the train I’ve missed before. In case I will wrong train, will be anyway another interesting tabi. Right now, I’m only arrived in the central part of a bridge: my path has to be continued 128 4.2 – What I got from this tabi This work should need a conclusion. I do not really have it. It is the reason why conclusion is the shortest among the chapters of this work. The reason why I do not have a conclusion is that I think I didn’t finish anything yet. Graduation thesis in our University is defined as the “prova finale” the last assignment for the conclusion of the course. I’m still a student at this moment. I’m not an anthropologist. Shouldn’t be the prova finale only the first step on the way of becoming an anthropologist? This work is not the conclusion of a path for me, it’s merely the start. Maybe even not the first step, but only the selection of the possible departure points. To articulate, I’m barely approaching the step that will sign the start of my anthropological start. Instead of giving conclusion such “Japan is” and “Japanese are”, I only want to offer a view on what I understand by writing this work. In the first chapter, I started with Ivy’s idea of the vanishing Japan. I always found this image fascinating, since I am deeply interested in Japanese ghosts and yōkai. I try to understand what this vanishing Japan may be. In all the courses I took, every time the word “tradition” in relation to “vanishing” appears, lead together the word “modernity”. Having a particular interest in the form of education in Japan, I wondered if the modernization of Japanese education could be one cause of the vanishing of the tradition. I connected to anxiety, nostalgia, that are sicknesses of the modern times and require a cure. The cure was an idealization of the lost authentic Japan, the vanishing traditions. It was easy to think about Mishima, an author I love, and its appreciation for Tōno monogatari. I understood that literature is a powerful means to convey prototypes. Literature freezes in time what time’s dynamic change. Tradition, history, culture. A book written 100 years ago is not only a picture, but a dense description of something that does not exist anymore. Because time doesn’t leave nothing outside its course. These prototypes, or ideals, not only remind Japanese about their vanishing traditions, but it also the image that the anthropologists have. If Japanese idealize themselves through these ideals, through these prototypes, anthropology will unavoidably enter in contact with these realities. Among the sources I used, there are some from the 1990s or earlier. Sources that describe what for me in this work was Japan. However, Japan is already vanishing, since 20-30 years are enough for a change of generation. The landscape of Japan changes, the lifestyle of the Japanese change, their identity changed. Still, the Japan I enter in contact with was in large part not something I witnessed, not something that my current friends told me, but information that people for the most I do not know personally shared about Japan. These sources come from professors, authorities in their fields, and I do not have reason to do not believe them. But these are also interpretation of what I was 129 researching about. Doing anthropological researches we need to be aware that every cultural aspect, every tradition may be an interpretation derived from the prototypical image that Japanese construct about themselves, using as sources literature or media, that are already prototype of Japan. In this way, prototype over prototype, we may find a standard version of what instead is a multicultural country. Tōno, the prototypical version of the Japanese furusato, is a creation of the interaction between a prototype created by Yanagita, and the prototype that Japanese guests created using Yanagita’s work as a source. It is also important to keep in mind that all the locations and traditions are dynamic because they change in time, and they belong to a network which is too large to be bounded in a prototype. There is not a prototypical Japanese village that suits a description of all Japanese villages. Each one has its own peculiarities, traditions, and cultures. Always in the plural. We saw in in Kyōto that is possible to have a prototypical Kyōto woman, that is also a prototype of how a Japanese woman should be. But it’s even hard to imagine how someone could defend the thesis that Kyōonna represent all the women in Kyōto. Each woman is unique, and only a few really suit this ideal. And maybe only on the surface. It’s the interaction with a larger network that creates this prototype and if as an anthropologist we really want to understand Kyōto women, won’t be that wrong to start our research, let’s say, in Tōkyō. Also the development of satoyama shows this reality. There is not a satoyama that doesn’t have the human touch in it. Disturbance, are not a defection when we analyze traditions, but are only the sign that these traditions are dynamics. The human touch, the changes of modernity, are not a sign that the culture is dying, but a sign that the culture and its users are changing. To analyze them will make the surrounding networks to emerge. If we understand how and why a tradition or an artefact changed in time, we can understand what was the necessities that bring to this change, the form of resilience of the individuals, their relationship with the environment. And maybe, like in the satoyama’s case, as anthropologists we could give traditional knowledges the role they deserve in the fight to climate change. Anthropology shouldn’t be only about telling how other people live, but also explain why the alterity is not only a different lifestyle, but maybe a better model. Instead, to think that they are different from us, that they have their irrationalities that do not conform with scientific science, we may start to admit that their lifestyle may be a better model. Satoyama is a system that lasted for centuries, providing Japanese all they need. Replacing a fully working system with a scientific model that often proved to make more damages than good. It is really rational? As I said I wanted to face this work as a tabibito, because I think anthropologist shouldn’t be anything different. My work here is nothing more than a simulacrum of a tabi that tries to hide a fantasy travel. I have been to Japan; I have contact with the hosts, nevertheless this work was fully made in Italy. The various kind of travel discussed here, which are not even half of the possibilities, correspond to various kinds of possible anthropological approaches. Anthropologists for 130 the most are tourists. Some go on pilgrimages in those places where they know they can find illumination and back as better anthropologists. Some try to follow the track beaten by their teachers in order to improve. They care about the words of the hosts; they keep much attention to the landscapes and they come back home with something new to say. Maybe they found what they were looking for, but this ended to change so much their perception of the object, that ended to change their approaches, their mindsets. As eco-tourists, anthropologists think to go to a location where they think their presence is not in contrast with the locals’ lifestyle. They think they are not changing the ecosystem, or maybe they even think they are preserving it. But at the end of the day, they are put in front of a nature that is already changed for the sake of their researches. A nature that maybe is preserved in that way because the locals think that that is the nature the anthropologist is looking for. Like the marine sanctuary in Palau, to recreate a “natural” ecosystem, it means that the ecosystem is already artificial. The same is for cultural tourism. Anthropologists may want to learn about the local traditions, but they often fail to understand that their interlocutors are aware of their tradition through the anthropologists’ requests. If the anthropologists ask a Japanese the way they bow in front of their superior, Japanese may show them the way. This doesn’t mean that they are bowing in front of their superiors. It is just the answer to the anthropologist’s request, a representation. Any kind of research inevitably an answer to a request. When anthropologists start their work by the idea of analyzing something, they choose the place that they know will offer that something. An anthropologist doesn’t go in Japan to study, let us say, African voodoo. Eventually, someone will answer the question that anthropologist asks, in the way anthropologist hopes to hear. If anthropologists travel as content tourists, they already have an idealization of the answer they need and where to find them even before start. They go on the place and select only the things they want to see, obscuring whatever doesn’t enter in their ideal. Like the missionaries that offer anthropologists a place to stay near the village, but seen as a presence that had not changed the locals’ lifestyle. Anthropologists may also fall in the trap of egotism. Having them and their own idea as the only important object of study, depicting a self that represents the perfect anthropologists and changing the reality of the fact, to do not admit their work was not what they expected. In all these models I found tabi to be the ideal I would like to follow. I need not find any absolute truth about Japan or any other place I would visit. I just want to know something more, and hopefully, make more people appreciate the multiple forms of culture that are always present in each individual. I just would like to be an anthropologist, as Miyamoto—or my idealization of Miyamoto—was. 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