In the Name of the Moon, I’ll Cheer For You! Pop-Culture and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Legacies Sinja de Block 1007904 Master Thesis Tourism and Culture, Radboud University Supervisor: Martijn Stevens 15-06-2018 Word count: 23.495 Abstract This thesis explores several tourism trends in Japan, namely contents tourism and the pop-culture diplomacy employed by the Japanese government, and connects these to the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games. This is due to the increasing importance of legacies in sporting events like the Olympics. This is also adamant in the International Olympic Committee’s host city contract, in which the host city promises to leave a positive legacy. Furthermore, the Tokyo 2020 Games are the first games to have an action and legacy plan and will have researchers study the effects of the Games when they have been concluded. A qualitative approach was used to link tourism trends with the Olympics. Several databases and sources were utilised to gather data about the tourism trends in Japan as well as Olympic Games and sports tourism in general, which were then analysed and studied to apply the theories to the case study of the Tokyo 2020 Games. This research has clarified that one of the main driving forces behind bidding on hosting the Games is the increased tourism that goes with it, so it was expected that the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games would exploit the current tourism diplomacy. Especially since the Japan Olympic Committee and Japan Paralympic Committee have invested in getting the rights for several prominent anime characters and Prime Minister Abe appeared on stage as Mario at the end of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. By studying the 2017 Action & Legacy plan provided by the Tokyo Organising Committee it became apparent that pop-culture does not play a big part in the organising and legacies of the Games. However, their intended legacies do leave room for pop-culture to get involved, so several suggestions have been made to illustrate how pop-culture can be utilised within the Action & Legacy plan so that more positive legacies can be created. Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 1. Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................................... 5 1.1. Contents Tourism and Similar Types............................................................................................ 5 1.2. The History of Pop-culture Diplomacy and Cool Japan ................................................................ 7 1.3. The Problems of Pop-culture Diplomacy and Cool Japan ............................................................ 9 1.4. Why Pop-culture Diplomacy Works for Japan ........................................................................... 13 1.5. The Influence of Olympic Games on a City and Tourism ........................................................... 14 1.6. Places and Their Importance ..................................................................................................... 17 1.7. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 18 2. Method ............................................................................................................................................. 20 3. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Pop-culture ...................................................................................... 23 3.1. Expectations ............................................................................................................................... 23 3.2. Legacies ...................................................................................................................................... 25 3.3. Contents Tourism and Pop-Culture ........................................................................................... 30 3.4. Kawaii Culture ............................................................................................................................ 34 3.5. Locations .................................................................................................................................... 35 3.6. Suggestions ................................................................................................................................ 37 3.7. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 38 Conclusion and Discussion .................................................................................................................... 40 Glossary ................................................................................................................................................. 42 Primary Sources .................................................................................................................................... 44 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................................................ 45 Introduction Temples, Buddhist monks, people weaving, towns, nature, robots, other technology, state-of-the-art buildings, busy streets and a first-year maiko1 which will undoubtedly be mistaken for a geisha* by foreigners. These are the things that can be found in the promotional video for Japan – the country ‘where tradition meets the future’ – made by the Japan National Tourism Organisation (JNTO) and encompasses a rather stereotypical image of the country. That is because it is an advertisement for Japan and aims to highlight the interesting places but also creates a brand for the country. Japan is not alone in using this strategy. In fact, it is quite common for countries nowadays to have video commercials to attract visitors (Bruner 2005). However, comparing this to other countries, like Egypt and Turkey, it seems Japan does not rely on this video too much. The other countries have had several versions of their promotion video and can be found on YouTube, but the JNTO’s channel only has this specific video from 2016 as this kind of promotional material. This begs the question of how Japan promotes and brands itself if not through the common video commercials on television. Scholars have asked similar questions throughout the years and have come up with an answer: Popular culture. Almost fifteen years ago, the JNTO wanted to try to get more tourists to come to Japan (Berger 2010) and in order to do so they needed a new strategy. In 2004 the Japan Brand Strategy organisation was founded as a part of the Intellectual Property Strategic Programme (IPSP) which, in turn, was initiated two years earlier (Valaskivi 2013). As Valaskivi explains, the fact that an intellectual property organisation was involved suggests that creative industries were to be at the heart of ‘future’ Japan. However, it wasn’t until May 2011 that the Creating a New Japan proposal (atarashī Nihon no sōzō)2 by the Cool Japan Advisory Council (kūru japan kanmin yūshikisha kaigi) came forth, which was aimed at the promotion of creative industries and the spreading of Japanese popular culture. Rather than using video commercials, Japan chose to focus on their pop- culture to create a brand for their country. But what exactly is the popular culture of Japan? The answer to this needs some more explaining as the definition of pop-culture in itself is unclear (Seaton and Yamamura 2015) and this will be done more elaborately in the next chapter. For the moment it can be assumed that pop- culture is something that speaks to the general public and stems from different media forms. Japanese pop-culture can be found mostly in anime (Japanese animation shows and films), manga (Japanese comics), and games. Sometimes a person is moved so much by a story and its characters – be it a book or show or game – that they actually visit the physical location of where it takes place. This is called media-induced tours. Examples of these are for instance when fans of Harry Potter go to King’s Cross Station to take a picture at Platform 9 ¾ and Lord of the Rings fans going to New Zealand where the movies were shot. For anime and manga enthusiasts, this desire to go to the place where their favourite characters are in the story is no different. In fact, according to the country’s Lonely Planet, ‘Japan is one huge pop-culture playground’ (p. 31). Even though media-induced tourism is a large part of pop-culture tourism, Japanese government officials as well as scholars have come up with a different term and form of this kind of tourism. It deals with pop-culture and entails people travelling to certain places, yet is different enough from normal film and literature induced tourism to warrant a new name. This form of tourism is more about narrative and theme rather than characters and the places they go to or 1 More information about terms and districts can be found in the glossary in alphabetical order and will be marked with a small asterisk (*). The abbreviations for (governmental) institutions can also be found here. 2 All translations are by the author unless stated otherwise. 1 where the story was filmed. The name the scholars and officials have chosen for this new phenomenon is kontentsu tsūrizumu or content(s) tourism3 (Seaton & Yamamura 2015). Even though it has