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Annals ofTourismesearch, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 165-180, 1996Pergamon CopyrIght 0 1996 Elsevier Science LtdPrinted in Great Britain. All rights reserved0160-7383/96 $15.00+0.000160-7383(95)00055-O

COMPETING HOSPITALITIES INJ APANE SE RURAL TOURISM

John KnightUniversity of Kent at CanterburyEliot College, UK

A b s t r a c t : An increasingly important theme in the study of tourism is its variability. Througha case study of a Japanese mountain village area popular with urban tourists, this articlefocuses on the way that tourism varies within a single locale. The concern is not however, withdifferences among the tourists directly, but with the variable, contested nature of tourism onthe host side. It demonstrates how tourist hosting may be marked by a double tension: first,with respect to the different definitions of tourism within the tourism sector; and secondly,in relation to the social divide between the existing sector and those outside of it. K e y w o r d s :hosts, domestic tourism, Japan, spa tourism, pilgrims.R & u r n & Les hospitalitts en concurrence dans le tourism local au Japon. Un sujet de plus enplus important dans ICtude du tourisme est sa variabilite. A travers one etude de cas dunvillage de montagne au Japon qui est en vogue chez les touristes urbains, Iarticles discute lafaGon dont le tourisme varie dans un seul endroit. On ne parle pas directement des differencesparmi les touristes, mais de la nature variable et contest&e du tourisme vue par le villageh&e. On voit que Ihospitalitt touristique peut etre marquee dune double tension: dun c8te,par les diffkrences du tourisme dans le secteur touristique, et de Iautre cBtC, par la divisionsociale entre le secteur actuel et ceux qui nen font pas partie. Mats-cl&: h&es, tourismedomestique, Japan, tourisme de station thermale, ptlerins.

INTRODUCTIONVariety has been a recurring theme in anthropological and socio-

logical studies of tourism. Influential typologies include Graburnsdistinction between nature and culture tourism, each category inturn further subdivided (1989:31-2); Smiths seven classes oftourists, divided according to degree of adaptation to local norms(Smith 1989:11-15); and Cohens phenomenology of tourist experi-ences (1972, 1979). More recently, concern has been directed to thetheme of alternative tourism and the theoretical basis for distin-guishing it from mass tourism (Smith and Eadington 1992). Thefocus of this article is on variation in tourism. The concern is notwith the way in which meanings, understandings, and constructs varyamong the tourists themselves, but rather with two different axes ofvariation on the host side.Chambers Dictionary defines the word host as follows: aperson who entertains a stranger or guest at his or her house without[or with] reward. In the extended application of the term totourism contexts, hosts are those directly involved in providing

J o h n K n i g h t s (Eliot College, University of Kent at Canterbury, Kent CT2 71LS, UK)doctoral research was on Japanese mountain villages, including the growing importance oftourism to them. His present research interests include forests and tourism in Japan.

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sheiter or accommodation on a commercial basis to visitors. Thisnarrow definition of hosting can be extended to include those whoprovide other tourism services that bring them into direct contactwith, and enable them to derive direct benefit from, the visitors. Thefirst axis of variation is that tourism may be defined very differentlyby different parts of the tourism sector.It is also common in tourism studies to talk about the hostpopulation, the host community or the host side in a way thatrefers to local people as a whole. Here the distinction betweenhosts and guests is coterminous with that between locals andtourists. This usage of the term hosts joins together people withquite different relationships to the visitors, placing those who havedirect contact with, or indeed direct economic benefit from thepresence of, tourists, alongside those with no such direct connection.This divide may become particularly marked where there has beena rapid growth of tourism and tourist-related prosperity. AsEadington and Smith point out, [tlourism development createswinners and losers among the local residents, often without acommon acceptance as to the equity of such redistribution [of wealthamong local people] (1992:2). T ourism, in other words, by virtue ofthe new wealth it brings in, itself has the power to create or exacer-bate social divisions locally. One possible consequence of this is tomake the division between those within and those without thetourism sector into a cleavage, a highly charged subject of localdebate and source of social tension.This paper presents data on the social complexity of the host sidefrom a tourism destination in rural Japan. Data from a specificJapanese mountain village area popular with tourists from the citiesare used to show the existence of a variety of representations oftourism within the same locality, the emergence of new representationsof tourism, and the way that a given discourse of tourism may be artic-ulated by different social sectors and given very different meanings.A description of present-day Japanese mountain villages is offeredfirst in order to show their specific sociological character and whytourism has become of great economic importance to them. Anoutline of tourism in the Japanese mountain village community ofHan@ Ch6 in Wakayama Prefecture in then presented. Hereanthropological fieldwork was carried out between 1987 and 1989,and again in the autumn of 1994. Fieldwork consisted of interviewswith guesthouse owners and staff, shrine priests, local governmentstaff involved in tourism, local people more generally, and with thetourists themselves, as well as long term observation of interactionsbetween tourists and local people.MOUNTAIN VILLAGES AND RURAL TOURISM

Large-scale urbanization has taken place in Japari in the postwarperiod, with around three-quarters of the national population nowliving in urban areas. As a result of urban migration much of ruralJapan has become depopulated, particularly the upland, mountainvillage areas. In the late 1980s around 5 million people or 4% of the


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national population lived in mountain villages (Tadaki 1988:185), lessthan half the figure of 30 years earlier. The effect of this has been totransform Japanese mountain villages into migrant villages - placesmost of whose natal population live outside. Depopulation has beendue largely to the outmigration of younger people, rather than of wholefamilies, with the result that the remaining local population is typicallyan aged one. In 1990, the proportion of the population in depopulatedrural areas aged 65 and over was 20.6%, compared with the nationalfigure of 12% (Kokudo Cho 1994:7).One corollary of this demographic situation is that mountainvillages have become dependent on the migrants in a number ofways. Migrants continue to be an important social part of thevillages they have left. This is primarily through their return-visit-ing a number of times each year. During such visits, particularly atmidsummer (&on), migrants participate in family ancestor rituals,village festivals and other events, and often help with farming(Knight 1994a). This is a concrete manifestation of what in Japan isknown as thefurusato tie: the durable relationship between someoneand their natal village. This ideally indelible association betweenperson and place in Japan forms an important part of the culturalbackground to rural depopulation (because of the continuing extra-local ties attaching to nominally depopulated villages), but also torural tourism (and other new commercial connections with ruralareas) which makes symbolic use of this idiom.The wider background to the demographic decline of upland areasis their economic marginalization. Forestry (the major upland indus-try) has been in decline since the opening of the domestic marketto wood imports in the 1960s. Subsequently, efforts have been madeto establish some sort of industrial base in upland areas, through amixture of encouraging urban industries to relocate, state subsidiesto promote new enterprises, and officially-inspired revitalizationinitiatives, although to date most upland areas have not succeededin finding an economic substitute for forestry. However, there is onegrowing rural industry that has, in recent years, held out the promiseof upland economic revival.Tourism is becoming an increasingly important industry incontemporary rural Japan. In 1987, the Japanese government passeda law, the sG@ hoyo chiiki seibi ho, (General Recreation AreaEstablishment Law), designed to stimulate large-scale resort devel-opments in the regions. Surveys variously reckon the scale of recentresort-building plans as covering between 20 and 30% of the nationalland area ( Honma 1990: 118; Sat6 and NHK 1989: 13). An ever largerpart of rural Japan is being transformed into golf-courses, ski-slopes,theme parks, marinas, tennis-courts, as well as hotels, inns, second-homes and apartment blocks, a trend embraced by many localgovernments who see it as a means of offsetting rural depopulation.Resort development has been heavily criticized in recent yearswithin Japan as a blatant example of standardization or kakuitsukaof the regions. Antipathy to the form taken by resort developmentis also to be found within the rural areas, like Hongfi. Hongti guest-house owners and town office staff stress the difference between the


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sort of tourism offered in Hongii from that found in some of thecoastal resorts nearby. With resorts, it is said, the experience isthe same wherever one goes. In Hong& on the other hand, visitorssoon know that they are in a locally distinctive place with a tokubetsuna funiki (special atmosphere): a small, homely, friendly place incontrast to the anonymity that marks out the large scale resorts withtheir mass tourism.Against this asserted sense of difference uis-d-vis the resorts,however, it should be pointed out that in practice this differencemay not be quite as stark as all that. In the late 198Os, in responseto the increase in tourist numbers, many Hongir guesthousesexpanded or added annexes, and in one case a tall tower block waserected.Despite the criticism in Hongii of large-scale tourism develop-ments elsewhere, there continues to be a hunger for tourism devel-opment locally. The existing destination villages in Hongu seek toexpand the numbers of visitors. There is also a concern to extendlocal participation in the industry. What from outside appears aprosperous local tourism area may, in fact, be marked by a sharplyskewed local distribution of the benefits of tourism. As rural,especially upland Japan continues to depopulate, economic depen-dence on tourism grows.Bathers and Pilgrims

Hongii Cho is a popular destination for tourists from the Kansaiarea. While in 1966 there were 105,523 visitors to Hong& by 1993this figure had reached 469,385, a fourfold-plus increase in just overa quarter of a century. These figures refer to both day-visits andovernight stays. A breakdown of the gross figure shows that day-visits have increased by almost 13 times (from 19,623 to 256,958),while overnight stays have increased by only 2% times (85,900 to212,427). The latter figure is the more important one in terms ofboth its reliability (nobody actually counts day visitors, whereasovernight stays are recorded) and economic impact. This growth inovernight stays, though rather smaller than the gross, headlinefigure, is still quite impressive.A key factor in the growth of tourism in Hongir has been the onsenbiimu (hot-spring boom) of the 1970s and 1980s. The unsen ryoka (hot-spring holiday) is now one of the major forms of domestic tourismin Japan. There are over 2,000 onsenchi (hot-spring resorts) in thecountry, and in 1987 the overnight guest-rate at these resortsreached 122 million, a number equal to that of the entire Japanesepopulation, and some three times the figure of 30 years earlier(Kanzaki 1988:146; Osaki 1988:276). In the 196Os, the hot-springholiday was still something largely associated with the elderly orfarmers in the agricultural off-season. By the mid-1980s, however, itspopularity had increased dramatically among younger people. Thisis something that can be traced to the national railways DiscoverJapan advertizing campaign back in the early 1970s aimed at boost-ing revenues from tourism (Osaki 1988:277). Although bathers have


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long come from far and wide to take the local Hong6 waters, therecent scale of popularity of hot-spring bathing is unprecedented.This is the background against which tourism has become muchmore economically important in Hongii. The economy of this uplandmunicipality has in the past two decades been steadily transformedfrom one centred on forestry to one centred on tourism. In 1988, 337people were employed in tourism (240 women and 97 men). At thesame time, the numbers employed in forestry, previously the mostimportant local industry, fell from 547 in 1970 to less than 150 in1994, a fall of over 70% in 24 years.In 1994 there were 32 guesthouses in Hongii with a combinedguest capacity of 1,664 people. Eleven of these were ryokan (Japanese-style inns), 20 were small family run minshuku (guesthouses), andone was a Swiss-style pension. All but three guesthouses are locatedin one of the three spa villages; and most (26 out of the 32) are inone of the two main spa villages of Yunomine and Kawayu.A glance through Hongii tourism brochures shows two ratherdifferent sets of images or appeals. The first has to do with passiverelaxation and centers on spa bathing. Typically featuring youngbikini or towel-clad women in open-air pools against a backdrop ofverdant mountains, these images often have a ludic air about them.The second, more austere set of images is of the shrine buildingsand the forest pilgrimage path with its torii arches and stonemonuments. The mountain forests which so dominate the uplandenvironment are present in both sorts of image, but in the formerthey are the landscape background to bright open-air person-centered ludic images, while in the latter they are present as a dark-hued environment in which people, if present at all, are muchsmaller in scale. This sombre forest interior is clearly used to suggesta sense of timelessness.To a certain extent, these different images correspond to the twomain tourism villages in Hongu, Kawayu, and Yunomine. Kawayu,with its riverside hot-spring pools, has an open feel to it. Here thenormally inside activity of bathing is made public and visible. Theabsence of sex-segregation and the possibility, indeed facility, ofvoyeurism give it the tang of the ludic. This feature of the villagewas deliberately accentuated in the mid-1980s when the hermitbath or thousand people bath (the transformation of a large areaof the river itself into a giant bath, with the help of a bulldozer) wasestablished for the winter season.As one descends (rather precariously) into Yunomine by bus overthe peak which separates it from the Hongu Shrine to the north, thesteam-clouds of the hot-springs catch the eye and the smell ofsulphur is striking. To enter Yunomine, more ravine than valley, isto become enclosed by tall forest. In addition to claiming to be theoldest spa in Japan, Yunomine prides itself on being one of theforemost hinabita onsenchi (or rustic spas) in Japan, with a specialatmosphere in which visitors are able to feelyutori (at ease), unlikewhat some guests refer to as the newer kitori no aru (affected) spasnow so widespread in Japan. Near to Hongir Shrine, Yunomine is alsostrongly identified with the pilgrimage tradition.


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The visitors themselves are individuals, couples, families (usuallyof four, two parents and two children), but also friends, former class-mates, or current workmates may visit together. Smaller groupscome by car; larger groups come in the coaches, regularly to be seencrawling along the villages narrow roads. These coaches carryparties of company employees, groups of religious devotees, oldpeoples clubs, housewives associations, war veterans, or justcommercial tour-parties. The overwhelming majority spend just onenight in Hong& although some go on for a second night at one ofthe bigger, livelier coastal resorts. Visitors at weekends and duringpeak seasons find the spa villages of the hiky~ (hidden land) theyhave traveled so far to come to teeming with people.This characterization of the recent growth of tourism as a productsimply of the hot-spring boom and new trends in leisure consump-tion is not something universally accepted in Hong6 itself. In fact,rather divergent meanings are attributed to this visiting- or atleast some of it -by different local constituencies or groups.Hongti is part of an area distinguished by an important pilgrim-age tradition, the Kumano m6de. The mountains of the area are sacredand have long been visited by pilgrims from Kyoto, the formercapital, including emperors. The area is also associated with themythological founder of the imperial line, Jimmu Enn6, as the terraincrossed before he went on to establish imperial rule across thenation. Visitors to Hong6 do not come solely to bathe in the hot-spring pools, for many - more than half - also pay a visit to thefamous Hongii Shrine.The following description of the shrine is reconstructed from thisauthors fieldnotes:

Hongti Shrine is up on a hill. Coaches pull in and out of its car-park throughout the day with frequent regularity. As the coachdisgorges its travelers at the foot of the shrine, they pass a shopselling souvenirs, sweets, Fuji film, outside of which is a new softdrink vending machine. A few metres further along, near the greatarched entrance to the stone steps leading up to the Shrine, standsa pilgrim wearing white robes, a sedge-hat and straw sandals whosells kumano mcide man@ (Kumano pilgrimage bean-cakes). Thetravelers ascend the steep steps of the shrine, wash their hands,enter the main compound, move through the gate into the innercourtyard where they are faced with the three shrine-archesthrough which the wooden buildings housing the shintai can be seenbut not reached. It is a tiring journey, especially for older people- many of whom need to stop and catch their breath at the topof the steps; it is also a journey crafted such that one movesprogressively inward without ever reaching the inner sanctum. Atthe shrine-arch, a coin is thrown into a wooden box, a bell rungwith a tug of a cord, hands put together, eyes closed tightly, headbowed and a prayer made. This is the moment to wish for whatone desires most.

In addition to prayer, shrine visitors make a variety of souvenirpurchases. A range of talismans and amulets includes the omamoricharms (for household safety, travel-safety, long life, exam-success,etc.); the ofuda, strips of paper or wood inscribed with the name of


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the Kumano kami spirit (to be placed in the home, on the god-shelfor above the door, either way in a high place); small bags of Kumanoearth, as well as polythene bags containing two tamaishi (jewel-stones) from the riverside; and mikuji (an arrow coiled around apiece of paper telling ones fortune). There are also postcards,booklets on the shrine, and green tea to buy. These goods are mostlywrapped in white paper bags on which, in bold red characters,Kumano is proclaimed to be nihon dai ichi duireikensho (The ForemostSite of Miracles in Japan).Even if visitors do not actually go to the shrine, there is still asense in which it influences their visit. Most tourism brochuresproject Hongii to the visitor as Kumano Hongii or Oku [inner] KumanoHongii. Kumano is the ancient name of the wider area, and isstrongly associated with the pilgrimage tradition of the kumano mcide,which itself centers on the shrine.There is local competition to define the visitors and the nature ofthe visit. There is a disagreement between local institutions overwhether the visitors are tourists or pilgrims. What the town-officeregisters as kankckyaku (tourists), the Shrine tends to characterize assanpaisha (pilgrims). This was something that emerged during aninterview with the Head Priest. When the increase in tourists inrecent years was mentioned to the priest, he immediately correctedthe statement by saying that the visitors to the area are notkanktikyaku but sanpaisha. The priest then took the trouble to explainthe Kumano tradition. Sanpaisha used to travel for over a month onfoot to get to Kumano. Kumano is afuben no chi, (remote, inaccessi-ble land), but it is this fubensa (inconvenience) which makes theomairi (pilgrimage) meritorious - a kugy6 (a penance or austerity).Today visitors from Osaka, the priest says, while they no longertravel on foot, still have to endure a five hour car journey, much ofit along dangerous narrow, often winding mountain roads. Yapparikurd desu yo (this is hardship), he adds, for they could much moreeasily board a plane and go off to Hawaii. Why do they come all thisway? They come all the way from the city because the land ofKumano is, for Japanese, kokoro nofurusato (the home village of theheart). Yes, they may come and stay at the hot-spring resorts incomfortable ryokan inns, but they have had to endure discomfort toget here. They have chosen to come to Kumano just like manysanpaisha before them, for shizen (the nature) and sobokusa (simplic-ity) of the area is like ajishaku (magnet) to them.

There is a arigatami (virtue) in coming to such an inconvenientplace. People of long ago thought it was a real shimakuni (islandcountry), especially Tokyo people . . . . But it was because of that[distance, inconvenience] that there was virtue in coming here.

The priest stresses that the journey to Kumano, the hard ascentinto the mountains from the plains, is central to the experience ofKumano. The exertion of travel is the necessary precondition of theexperience of ease at the end of it, a constitutive part of the wholeexperience. Despite their stay in the spa resorts, these visitors arenot, he stresses, different in kind from the pilgrims of an earliertime.


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It follows from this emphasis on the complementary relationshipbetween exertion and relaxation that the journey to Hongti shouldcontinue to be an arduous one. Indeed the priest is firmly opposedto proposals to carve ever wider and straighter roads through themountains to allow visitors easier access. The administrators whopropose this, he explains, do not understand the true character ofKumano. Not only would this destroy the natural features of theKumano region, but it would also change the meaning of the visit.The sort of improved accessibility for which the local governmentsof the peninsula are pressing in order to increase tourism wouldultimately diminish the enjoyment of the stay and the pleasure ofthe bathing, and erase the special quality of the visit to Kumano.When Kumano ceases to be an island in the mountains, it will nolonger be worth visiting.The shrine is a condensed site of nature. The mountain forests ofthe region are the abode of a myriad of kami (spirits). The Hong6Shrine is the site of privileged access to this spiritualized nature:here are located-enshrined -the main deities of the shintopantheon, including Amaterasu (the female sun deity), andSusanaonomikoto (the male earth deity). Here every year on the 29thof April (midori no hi or Green Day), the kinaesai (Tree SaplingFestival) is held in which forest landowners gather to petition theenshrined kami to promote the growth of their trees. The shrine isa focal point for the wider natural world beyond, both for localpeople and for visitors.The shrines relationship to the town is complicated. The town isnamed after the shrine, the annual shrine festival has become theunofficial town festival, and as already noted the shrine forms atleast part of the local touristic appeal on which the town economyincreasingly depends. Yet the relationship is often strained. Theshrine festival has not been fully accepted as a truly town-wide festi-val. Historically the festival has been associated with the smallerarea of what is now a town section, and despite local efforts toencourage town-wide participation, many people living outside thissection still do not consider it their own festival.Some people question whether the shrine is completely commit-ted to the welfare of the town. It is sometimes perceived as ratherindifferent to revitalization initiatives. For example, the town-officehas only just managed, after a number of years of trying, to persuadethe shrine to allow a weekly market (where local produce is sold) tobe held in its expansive car-park. The long-running opposition of theshrine to the suggestion tends to be cited locally as evidence of itslack of concern for the plight of local people.For its part, the shrine, apart from its local parish function (inrelation to the central section of Hongii), sees itself as responsibleto a national constituency. It has a national network of bunsha(branch shrines) from which many visitors come each year, especiallyfor the shrine festival in the spring, and this, along with the tens ofthousands of unconnected visitors, allows it to boast a significantnational distribution for its o&da charms. The shrine sees itself ashaving ritual responsibilities primarily to its local parish and as the


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custodian of local tradition for the wider nation, with only minorconsideration of the town, a municipal unit created onlv in the

GREEN TOURISTS AND WOULD-BE HOSTSThe meaning of the visit is not the only matter of contention asfar as tourism is concerned in Hongti. The distribution of thebenefits of tourism is a major contemporary political issue inmountain village areas like Hongfi. The recent growth in tourismhas brought considerable prosperity but only to some parts of

Hong& and conspicuously not to others. For example, becausetourist guesthouse owners often recruit employees through alreadyexisting social networks of kinship and village co-residence, theemployment benefits of tourism tend to be restricted to the areas ofthe tourism villages. There is a growing sense that Hongti is a placeof two halves: the three well-to-do tourist villages, on the one hand,and the still depopulating villages, on the other.This is the background of some of the negative comments to beheard about tourists from local people. Tourists are a cause of forestfires. They cause pollution: not only lots of litter but also, becauseof the disposal of poorly treated human waste from the inns, pollu-tion of the rivers-on which villagers depend for their drinkingwater. Local people see tourists as competitors in mushroom gather-ing, especially in the late autumn during the pine mushroom season,and complaints can be heard of tourists picking herbs and otheredible forest plants by their roots (thus obstructing regrowth).During the peak seasons of Golden Week, Midsummer and NewYear, huge numbers of visitors cause road congestion, and make thelocal leisure facilities such as restaurants and bathhouses inaccessi-ble to local people. This can make some local families quite irate,especially as Midsummer is the time when most migrants and theirfamilies return to visit their natal homes, and local people findthemselves unable to take their own family visitors along to enjoythe local facilities together. One migrant visitor commented duringhis Midsummer stay in 1989 that it - the large-scale touristpresence - felt as though his firusato (home village) was senryd sareta(under occupation).There is also a sense of grievance in those local settlements farfrom the tourist villages that the latter always receive priority in theallocation of public resources, for example the repair of roads, whilethey have to wait years for a pot-hole to be dealt with. The pointhere is that while some people derive direct benefit from tourism,for others the presence of the tourists is experienced only as a sourceof bother. The presence of the commercial guests, moreover, mayeven mean that local families are less able to look after familyvisitors. Midsummer is the season when commercial hosting is mostacutely experienced as interfering with with the family hostingassociated with thefurusato relationship.There have been a number of initiatives aimed at extending thebenefits of tourism locally. One of the these has been to increase the


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proportion of locally supplied goods used in the tourism sector. In1987 the Hongii town-office surveyed the guesthouses in order todetermine the proportion of local goods they used. It was found that% of rice, % of vegetables, 80% of freshwater fish, 60% of seawaterfish, 70% of meat, and L% f souvenirs were purchased by the guest-houses from outside traders (Hongfi Cho 1987).On the basis of these findings, the town-office actively encouragesthe guesthouses to purchase more goods from local sources. Byconnecting more local retailers to tourism demand, the ha/@ k&r(multiplier effect) of tourism would increase, and the economicbenefits widen. At the same time, the retail suppliers themselves arecalled on to buy local produce in order to further extend the chainof local benefits. Although town-office staff could not make guest-house owners change their ways, they could remind them of theirmoral obligation to give some thought to the wellbeing of theirfellow town citizens. They could also point out that this would, inthe long run, be in their own interests. As one official put it, tourismin Japan is changing, with tourists increasingly demanding to eatlocal foods and buy local souvenirs. By localizing their supplies, theguesthouses would also help to make Hongti a more appealing placeto visit.This supply localization campaign has met with only limitedsuccess. In 1994 most guesthouses continued to purchase most oftheir foodstuffs from outside the town. Often there are not suitablelocal suppliers for the souvenirs and foodstuffs. The town-office,drawing on state (mostly prefectural) subsidies, has sought topromote local production to fill such gaps. There have been numer-ous attempts to establish new jiba sun.@ (local industries), but fewhave lasted. For example, 12 separate fish farms (sweetfish, carp,and loach) have been established at different times to supply theguesthouses, but none has succeeded. The larger guesthouses, inparticular, require large quantities of such fish uniform in shape andsize to serve to their guests, something which the new fish farmshave been unable to provide. Local souvenir production has beensomewhat more successful. Among the new local souvenirs that cannow be purchased at Hongii guesthouses are varieties of bottled juice(siso, perilla;jabara, a citrus fruit), jars of beanpaste, packets of driedmushrooms, packets of tea, and miniature straw sandals. Woodcraftsouvenirs (assorted boxes, trays, spatulas etc.) were another areatargeted, but to date this has been less successful, with mostwoodcrafts sold still brought in from other parts of the country.

There are other, more direct means of connecting tourism demandwith local producers. Asa ichi (morning markets), established inHong6 in the mid-1980s, are an additional channel for touristcommerce. On Sunday mornings, stalls selling local fruit and vegeta-bles are setup in the spa villages of Hongu. Here, before starting onthe drive back to the city, tourists buy fresh local produce directlyfrom the producers themselves. Morning markets are viewed as ameans of enabling local people to sell their surplus farm producethemselves, and have proved popular with visitors. Morning marketsand similar schemes have become widespread in recent years, and


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by 1993 were to be found in some 409 depopulated rural areas(Kokudo Cho 1994:125).Another new form of trade is thefurusatokai (home village society).This is a food trading enterprise in which urban consumers pay anannual fee to receive quarterly deliveries of seasonal vegetables andother produce, and in the process become menba (members) of afurusato (home village). Like morning marke ts,furusatokai allow localhouseholds to sell their goods directly to outsiders. By 1993, 294 suchassociations had been established in depopulated rural areas(Kokudo Cho 1994).The Hongii ch6 inaka no aji tomo no kai (Hongit Country Taste Societyof Friends) was established in Hongti in 1984. In 1994 the Society hada consumer membership of around 60 households, while the numberof local producer households was around 45. The annual revenueyielded by the enterprise was around 42.5 million (around $17,600 atthe 1987 exchange rate of $1=4142), which, divided between the 45households, amounted to an average of around $390 each.There are also more direct connections between thefurusatokai andtourism. First, tourism may be an important means of recruitmentof society members. In Hongfi furusatokai leaflets and notices arestrategically placed in the guesthouses. Second, the members mayin turn become visitors. In some cases,furusatokai may actually serveas the organizational medium of tourism as such. In one suchexample, the society consisted of dyadic ties established betweenurban and rural families and periodic visiting of the latter by theformer (NKS 1983:161-5).The Hongfifurusatokai was itself originally envisaged by its founderas a k&yiikai, an association based on dyadic ties between urban andrural people involving regular face-to-face contact. The exchange ofgoods would be the base on which more intimate relationships,including visits, would develop. In fact, in its first ten years of opera-tion between 1984 and 1994, the Honga furusatokai has remained, ineffect, a food mail order service. There is a regular newsletterenclosed in the food parcels which brings news and information fromtheir furusato to the urban members (including interviews withvillage producers, reports of bountiful local harvests or local typhoondamage; items on local folklore or local dialect; descriptions of localfestivals; or news of new tourism facilities), but there has been littledirect contact. While some urban members have visited Hong& mosthave never actually set eyes on their adoptedfurusato!The same man who founded the furusatokai has also been one ofthe prime movers behind the recent trend to establish farm guest-houses. While the furusatokai has not developed visiting relationshipsbetween urban and rural people, the founder continues to see poten-tial for a more intimate form of tourism in which visitors are hostedin the ordinary homes of villagers.Like thefurusatokai, there is a clear instrumental motivation in thepromotion of n6ka minshuku (farm guesthouses), seen as anothermeans of widening the range of local beneficiaries of tourism. Thusthe founder is concerned to ensure that families in his own villagehave the opportunity to host visitors and so break the monopoly on


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176 JAPANESE MOUNTAIN VILLAGES

hosting of the three spa villages. Over the years, there has been agrowth in the number of minshuku guesthouses in Hongii, but thishas been a phenomenon almost entirely confined to the three spavillages themselves. The aim of the n6ku minshuku idea is to estab-lish small family-run guesthouses beyond of the existing spa villages.The n6ka minshuku idea is locally associated with gurin tstirismu(green tourism). In the 199Os, green tourism has become a keyidiom in the rural revitalization movement in Japan. In response tothe prospective growth in farm imports following the GATT agree-ment, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture is currently promotingfarm tourism as a potential alternative source of income for farmers.Among municipal tourism officials, there is a strong belief thattourism is changing its character: from miru kank6 (seeing tourism)to suru kank6 (doing tourism). One example of the latter is kank6n6gyG (tourist farming), in which visitors undertake farming activi-ties such as tea-leaf picking (NTK 1986). Another is kanka ring@(tourist forestry), whereby visitors engage in forms of forest labor.A recent example of the latter is the yama no kami ase kake tsiia(Mountain Spirit Sweat Tour) held in Hong6 in July 1994. Twentywomen tourists, aged between 17 and 21, from Osaka, Kyoto andTokyo, paid Y20,OOO yen each for a four day holiday in Hongii. Twowhole days were given over to ringy6 taiken (forestry challenges).Kitted out with blue safety helmets, white gloves, neck towels, andfield sneakers, the visitors learned how to use saws and sharpensickles before ascending up the mountains to cut undergrowth incryptomeria timber plantations. On the following day, they under-took the more dangerous task ofjobatsu (felling young trees).The event had a number of explicit purposes to it. The first ofthese was to ensure k#ryz? (interaction) between tourists and localpeople. Thus, the visitors were instructed in the forestry tasks bylocal women foresters. Second, it served to show the practicability ofn6ku minshuku (farm guesthouses), as the visitors stayed in the homesof n6kka minshuku (local families). Third, it demonstrated how tourismand forestry, the two most important industries in Hongfi, could becombined. The significance of this in Hong& where tourism areasare starkly circumscribed spatially, was to include those (spa-less)parts of the municipality which hitherto have been outside thetourism zone.But why all women? One answer to this seems to be that thescheme was originally conceived in connection with the bride short-age in Hongu: as a means of introducing local bachelors to would-be brides (i.e., as what is known as shiidan omiai or group date of thekind found elsewhere). However, it evolved into a plan primarilyrelated to tourism. Today, two sorts of answer are given for restrict-ing the scheme to women. The first is that women are an importanttarget group because, as eventual mothers, they play the key role ininfluencing the attitudes and outlook of the next generation. Thissuggests that another dimension of the scheme was educational: toinstruct city people on the present-day state of mountain villages andthe need to assist the upland population in maintaining the forests.The second reason for confining participation to women was that it


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JOHN KNIGHT 177

was thought that this would make it easier for the novice hostsputting up the visitors; men, on the other hand, would want waiwaisuru to stay up later, drink alcohol, and enjoy themselves.While such households could hardly emulate the standards ofservice of the established inns, they could offer a more homelyatmosphere. Indeed, this greater intimacy would be their centralattraction, for visitors would have the opportunity of really getting toknow a local family. The n6ka minshuku idea is seen on the local sideas a practical example of green tourism. Most tourists stay in estab-lished yokan inns employing many staff, and while ideas offurusatointimacy may be invoked even for these tourists, the yokan cannotpretend to be a simple family house. Encouraging ordinary house-holds to make rooms available for tourists would provide both a realfamily atmosphere and the opportunity of extra household income.It should be emphasized that this was very much a pilot event.Although deemed a success, and repeated in 1995, it remains exper-imental and small-scale. There are also doubts locally as to its practi-cability as a model for tourism in the future: whether there reallyare many tourists keen to stay in ordinary family homes in spa-lessvillages. Nonetheless, it does give expression to a major preoccupa-tion within rural tourism areas like Hong& namely the demand towiden participation.What might be called farm tourism in Europe is not really seenas synomynous with green tourism, or even really alternative tourism(Pearce 1992:27-8). But in the Honga context green tourismclearly relates to the importance of kc%@ between locals and tourists,for it involves much more intimate contact between visitors and localhouseholders, and ideally gives visitors a more direct insight into theway of life of mountain villagers. Here the emphasis is placed notso much on directly experiencing the nature of the mountainvillage but on experiencing mountain village society.Contesting Tourism

Hosting in Hongii is a contested field in a double sense: first, withregard to the qualitative character of tourism itself; second, inrelation to the social participation in hosting tourists on the localside. The definition of tourism and tourists in Hongti varies accord-ing to the different hosts. In contrast to the routine emphasis onpleasure and relaxation of the town office and the guesthouseowners, the shrine claims that it is first and foremost a religiousexperience which is continuous with the pilgrimages of earlier times.There is also a third category of hosts to which corresponds afurther definition of tourism. The new idiom of green tourism islargely motivated by the aim of bringing into the tourism sectorthose at present outside of it. But it also refers to nature tourism.Nature tourism has a growing currency within rural tourism inJapan; rural municipalities across the country have establishednatural attractions for urban visitors such as firefly and stag beetleparks, deer farms or sheep meadows (FJS 1988; Kokudo Ch61994:240-l; Moon 1995), and on the Kii Peninsula alone the wolf


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(albeit extinct), the serow, the whale and the wild boar have all beenused to attract tourists.In addition to the evident touristic appeal of nature, in Hongtithere is a further factor in Hongtis pursuit of nature tourism in themid-1990s. From the 198Os, a new pattern of migration into Honguemerged. Younger couples of urban origin began to settle in Hongirto take up organic farming (Knight 1994b). In some cases, the newfamilies have attempted to enact a lifestyle of productive self-sufli-ciency whereby they directly cultivate their household needsthemselves and are able to avoid involvement in the cash economy.For these settlers, then, shi~ezen &6 (natural farming) is much morethan simply an economic activity, for it allows people to re-establishan intimate relationship with nature.For the most part these settlers have not involved themselves inthe rural revitalization activities, nor have they shown any interestin tourism. The prospect of tourism development is squarely at oddswith their own vision of Kumano as a place where an alternativepeasant lifestyle can be pursued. In recent years, however, at leastsome have taken a greater interest in local tourism, participating intown-office-sponsored debates on green tourism (Hong6 Cho 1993).Some of the newcomers have floated the idea of running their ownguesthouses; guests would have the chance themselves to practiceorganic farming. Tourists would not just come to Hong6 for relax-ation in the hot-springs, but would undergo a degree of farmingexertion. They would not only experience the farmers way of life,but also be exposed to ideas critical of mainstream farming in Japan,and indeed urban-industrial Japanese society as a whole, andencounter the possibility of an alternative way of life.It must be stressed that the newcomers vision amounts to no morethan a minority definition of green tourism in Hongu. The dominantemphasis is on extending inclusion in the lucrative local tourismsector to those villages hitherto outside of it. Judging by the eventsalready held, the green character of such visits centers, in the firstinstance, on the k6~ii they involve between local families and thevisitors rather than any direct encounter with nature on the part ofthe visitors.CONCLUSIONS

Whatever else tourism in Hong6 is, it is not a unified, fixedcategory, but rather the dynamic object of a multifaceted localdebate. There is a strong local self-consciousness of difference in theHongti spa villages not just in relation to urban Japan but also vis-A- v i s the new resorts. Yet, there is also awareness of divergencewithin Hongit, with the two main tourism villages seen as havingvery different atmospheres. Moreover, while the image of the typicaltourist may be that of the hot-spring bather, it is clear, from the localside at least, that the tourist may be subject to a variety of symbolicassociations, including the pilgrim drawn to a sacred land or themigrant visiting his home village. In their respective claims tocentrality, one axis of host rivalry can be found.


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Interest ingly, s&en (nature) appears central to both appeals. On theone hand. there is spiritualized nature access to which is highly local-ized through the shrine; on the other, there is the nature of the earth,exemplified by the outside spa, bathing in which both brings one intodirect contact with the (subterranean) elements and encloses one ina natural landscape. The forest forms part of both representations ofnature: it is the spiritualized environment through which thepilgrim passes and the surrounding landscape enclosing the bather.The second axis of host rivalry concerns the inclusion in the hostcategory itself, admission to the (increasingly lucrative) tourism sector.The rise of tourism in Hongti has brought about a marked socialdivision between the prosperous spa villages and the rest, and conse-quently demands by the latter for inclusion. This social friction ismediated by the municipal state which has tried to promote the local-ization of guesthouse sourcing in order to widen the tourism sector,although to little effect so far. Partly because of this failure the non-spa villages are now demanding the chance to host directly themselves,a demand couched in the idiom of green tourism. Although basicallyreferring to farm guesthouses and interaction with local people, it issignificant that here again nature is invoked. The would-be hosts offeranother, alternative pathway to nature.

Tourism in Hongu is not just a bilateral encounter between hostsand guests. It is also an evermore important medium through whichintralocal relationships are played out. Cl 0REFERENCES

Cohen, E.1972 Toward a Sociology of International Tourism. Social Research 39(1):164-82.Cohen. E.1979 A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences. Sociology 13: 179-202.Eadinaton. W. R.. and V. L. Smith.1993 Introduction: The Emergence of Alternative Forms of Tourism. In TourismAlternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development of Tourism, V.Smith and W. Eadington, eds., pp. 2-12. Chichester: J. Wiley.FJS.1988 Furusato joho (Furusato Information). Tokyo: Furusato joho Senta.Graburn, N. H. H.1989 Tourism: The Sacred Journey. In Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology ofTourism Amith, V.L., ed. pp. 21-36. Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress.Hongti Cho1987 Ryokan minshukuto ni okeru busshi no konyir (Guesthouse Purchases ofGoods). Hongfi: Town-office.Hongti Cho.1993 Gurin tstirismu: suishin katsudo j igyo kiroku (Green Tourism: A Record ofEnterprise Activity Promotion). Hongti: Town-offtce.Honma, Y.1990 Ima mata susumu retto kaizd (Yet Another Reconstruction of thePeninsula). Sek ai 6:118-130.Kanemitsu, T.1990 Dai rizcito k6sd ni yureru kaso no machi (A Depopulated Town Resonatingto the Great Resort Plan). Sekai 6:42-7.Kanzaki, N.1988 Kuse no nihon bunka (The Japanese Culture of Habits). Tokyo: NihonKeizai Shinbunsha.


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Knight, J.1994a The Temple. the Town Office and the Migrant: Demographic Pluralism inRural Japan. Archives EuropeCnnes de Sociolggie 35( 1):21~4~.1995 The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming in a Mountain Village. In Nature and

K k!d:Cho.a anese Culture, P. Asquith and A. Kalland; London: Curzon Press.01994a Heisei gonendohan kaso taisaku no genkyo ni tsuite (Appendix to the1993 The Present-day State of Depopulation Countermeasures). Tokyo:Kokudo Cho.19941, Kaso taisaku no genkyo (The Present-day State of DepopulationCountermeasures). Tokyo: Kokudo Cho.Moon, 0.1995 Marketing Nature in Rural Japan. In Nature and Japanese Culture, P.Asquith and A. Kalland, eds. London: Curzon Press.NKS, (ed.)1983 Chiho no chosen: mura okoshi, machizukuri zenkoku rupo (The Challengeof the Regions: The National Village Revival and Town-making Report). Tokyo:Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha.NTK1986 Machi to mura no koryu gaido (Guide to Interaction of Towns and Villages).Tokyo: Noringyogyb Taiken Kyokai.Osaki, N.1988 Beaten Tracks to Secret Spas. Japan Quarterly 35:275-8.Pearce, D. G.1992 Alternative Tourism: Concepts, Classifications, and Questions. In TourismAlternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development of Tourism, V.L.

Smith, and W.R. Eadington cd., pp. 15-30. Chichester: J. Wiley.Sato, M. and NHK1989 Dokyumento rizdto (Resort Documentary). Tokyo: Nihon Hyoronsha.Smith, V. L.1989 Introduction. Zn Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, V.1,.Smith, ed. pp. . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Smith, V. L., and W. R. Eadington, eds.1992 Tourism Alternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development ofTourism. Chichester: J. Wiley.Tadaki, Y.1988 Mori to ningen no bunkashi (A Cultural History of Forests and Man). Tokyo:NHK Books.Submitted 30 June 1994Resubmitted 1 March 1995Accepted 6 April 1995Refereed anonymouslyCoordinating Editor: Nelson H. H. Graburn

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