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Annals

of Tourism Research, Vol.

Pergamon

23, No. 1, pp. 165-180, 1996 CopyrIght 0 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0160-7383/96 $15.00+0.00

0160-7383(95)00055-O

COMPETING HOSPITALITIES IN JAPANESE RURAL TOURISM


John Knight University of Kent at Canterbury Eliot College, UK
Abstract: An increasingly
important theme in the study of tourism is its variability. Through a case study of a Japanese mountain village area popular with urban tourists, this article focuses on the way that tourism varies within a single locale. The concern is not however, with differences among the tourists directly, but with the variable, contested nature of tourism on the 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. Keywords: hosts, domestic tourism, Japan, spa tourism, pilgrims.

en concurrence dans le tourism local au Japon. Un sujet de plus en plus important dans ICtude du tourisme est sa variabilite. A travers one etude de cas dun village de montagne au Japon qui est en vogue chez les touristes urbains, Iarticles discute la faGon dont le tourisme varie dans un seul endroit. On ne parle pas directement des differences parmi les touristes, mais de la nature variable et contest&e du tourisme vue par le village h&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 division sociale entre le secteur actuel et ceux qui nen font pas partie. Mats-cl&: h&es, tourisme domestique, Japan, tourisme de station thermale, ptlerins.

R&urn& Les hospitalitts

INTRODUCTION
Variety has been a recurring theme in anthropological and sociological studies of tourism. Influential typologies include Graburns distinction between nature and culture tourism, each category in turn further subdivided (1989:31-2); Smiths seven classes of tourists, divided according to degree of adaptation to local norms (Smith 1989:11-15); and Cohens phenomenology of tourist experiences (1972, 1979). More recently, concern has been directed to the theme of alternative tourism and the theoretical basis for distinguishing it from mass tourism (Smith and Eadington 1992). The focus of this article is on variation in tourism. The concern is not with the way in which meanings, understandings, and constructs vary among the tourists themselves, but rather with two different axes of variation on the host side. Chambers Dictionary defines the word host as follows: a person who entertains a stranger or guest at his or her house without [or with] reward. In the extended application of the term to tourism contexts, hosts are those directly involved in providing
John Knights (Eliot
doctoral tourism research to them. College, University of Kent at Canterbury, Kent CT2 71LS, UK) was on Japanese mountain villages, including the growing importance of His present research interests include forests and tourism in Japan. 165

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sheiter or accommodation on a commercial basis to visitors. This narrow definition of hosting can be extended to include those who provide other tourism services that bring them into direct contact with, and enable them to derive direct benefit from, the visitors. The first axis of variation is that tourism may be defined very differently by different parts of the tourism sector. It is also common in tourism studies to talk about the host the host community or the host side in a way that population, refers to local people as a whole. Here the distinction between with that between locals and hosts and guests is coterminous tourists. This usage of the term hosts joins together people with quite different relationships to the visitors, placing those who have direct contact with, or indeed direct economic benefit from the presence of, tourists, alongside those with no such direct connection. This divide may become particularly marked where there has been a rapid growth of tourism and tourist-related prosperity. As Eadington and Smith point out, [tlourism development creates winners and losers among the local residents, often without a common acceptance as to the equity of such redistribution [of wealth among local people] (1992:2). T ourism, in other words, by virtue of the new wealth it brings in, itself has the power to create or exacerbate social divisions locally. One possible consequence of this is to make the division between those within and those without the a highly charged subject of local tourism sector into a cleavage, debate and source of social tension. This paper presents data on the social complexity of the host side from a tourism destination in rural Japan. Data from a specific Japanese mountain village area popular with tourists from the cities are used to show the existence of a variety of representations of tourism within the same locality, the emergence of new representations of tourism, and the way that a given discourse of tourism may be articulated by different social sectors and given very different meanings. A description of present-day Japanese mountain villages is offered first in order to show their specific sociological character and why tourism has become of great economic importance to them. An outline of tourism in the Japanese mountain village community of Han@ Ch6 in Wakayama Prefecture in then presented. Here anthropological fieldwork was carried out between 1987 and 1989, and again in the autumn of 1994. Fieldwork consisted of interviews with guesthouse owners and staff, shrine priests, local government staff involved in tourism, local people more generally, and with the tourists themselves, as well as long term observation of interactions between tourists and local people. MOUNTAIN VILLAGES AND RURAL TOURISM

Large-scale urbanization has taken place in Japari in the postwar period, with around three-quarters of the national population now living in urban areas. As a result of urban migration much of rural Japan has become depopulated, particularly the upland, mountain village 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), less than half the figure of 30 years earlier. The effect of this has been to transform Japanese mountain villages into migrant villages - places most of whose natal population live outside. Depopulation has been due largely to the outmigration of younger people, rather than of whole families, with the result that the remaining local population is typically an aged one. In 1990, the proportion of the population in depopulated rural areas aged 65 and over was 20.6%, compared with the national figure of 12% (Kokudo Cho 1994:7). One corollary of this demographic situation is that mountain villages have become dependent on the migrants in a number of ways. Migrants continue to be an important social part of the villages they have left. This is primarily through their return-visiting a number of times each year. During such visits, particularly at midsummer (&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 is known as thefurusato tie: the durable relationship between someone and their natal village. This ideally indelible association between person and place in Japan forms an important part of the cultural background to rural depopulation (because of the continuing extralocal ties attaching to nominally depopulated villages), but also to rural tourism (and other new commercial connections with rural areas) which makes symbolic use of this idiom. The wider background to the demographic decline of upland areas is their economic marginalization. Forestry (the major upland industry) has been in decline since the opening of the domestic market to wood imports in the 1960s. Subsequently, efforts have been made to establish some sort of industrial base in upland areas, through a mixture of encouraging urban industries to relocate, state subsidies to promote new enterprises, and officially-inspired revitalization initiatives, although to date most upland areas have not succeeded in finding an economic substitute for forestry. However, there is one growing rural industry that has, in recent years, held out the promise of upland economic revival. Tourism is becoming an increasingly important industry in contemporary rural Japan. In 1987, the Japanese government passed a law, the sG@ hoyo chiiki seibi ho, (General Recreation Area Establishment Law), designed to stimulate large-scale resort developments in the regions. Surveys variously reckon the scale of recent resort-building plans as covering between 20 and 30% of the national land area ( Honma 1990: 118; Sat6 and NHK 1989: 13). An ever larger part of rural Japan is being transformed into golf-courses, ski-slopes, theme parks, marinas, tennis-courts, as well as hotels, inns, secondhomes and apartment blocks, a trend embraced by many local governments who see it as a means of offsetting rural depopulation. Resort development has been heavily criticized in recent years within Japan as a blatant example of standardization or kakuitsuka of the regions. Antipathy to the form taken by resort development is also to be found within the rural areas, like Hongfi. Hongti guesthouse 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 the coastal resorts nearby. With resorts, it is said, the experience is the same wherever one goes. In Hong& on the other hand, visitors soon know that they are in a locally distinctive place with a tokubetsu na funiki (special atmosphere): a small, homely, friendly place in contrast to the anonymity that marks out the large scale resorts with their mass tourism. Against this asserted sense of difference uis-d-vis the resorts, however, it should be pointed out that in practice this difference may not be quite as stark as all that. In the late 198Os, in response to the increase in tourist numbers, many Hongir guesthouses expanded or added annexes, and in one case a tall tower block was erected. Despite the criticism in Hongii of large-scale tourism developments elsewhere, there continues to be a hunger for tourism development locally. The existing destination villages in Hongu seek to expand the numbers of visitors. There is also a concern to extend local participation in the industry. What from outside appears a prosperous local tourism area may, in fact, be marked by a sharply skewed local distribution of the benefits of tourism. As rural, especially upland Japan continues to depopulate, economic dependence on tourism grows.

Bathers and Pilgrims


Hongii Cho is a popular destination for tourists from the Kansai area. While in 1966 there were 105,523 visitors to Hong& by 1993 this figure had reached 469,385, a fourfold-plus increase in just over a quarter of a century. These figures refer to both day-visits and overnight stays. A breakdown of the gross figure shows that dayvisits have increased by almost 13 times (from 19,623 to 256,958), while overnight stays have increased by only 2% times (85,900 to 212,427). The latter figure is the more important one in terms of both its reliability (nobody actually counts day visitors, whereas overnight stays are recorded) and economic impact. This growth in overnight stays, though rather smaller than the gross, headline figure, is still quite impressive. A key factor in the growth of tourism in Hongir has been the onsen biimu (hot-spring boom) of the 1970s and 1980s. The unsen ryoka (hotspring holiday) is now one of the major forms of domestic tourism in Japan. There are over 2,000 onsenchi (hot-spring resorts) in the country, and in 1987 the overnight guest-rate at these resorts reached 122 million, a number equal to that of the entire Japanese population, and some three times the figure of 30 years earlier (Kanzaki 1988:146; Osaki 1988:276). In the 196Os, the hot-spring holiday was still something largely associated with the elderly or farmers in the agricultural off-season. By the mid-1980s, however, its popularity had increased dramatically among younger people. This is something that can be traced to the national railways Discover Japan advertizing campaign back in the early 1970s aimed at boosting 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, the recent scale of popularity of hot-spring bathing is unprecedented. This is the background against which tourism has become much more economically important in Hongii. The economy of this upland municipality has in the past two decades been steadily transformed from one centred on forestry to one centred on tourism. In 1988, 337 people were employed in tourism (240 women and 97 men). At the same time, the numbers employed in forestry, previously the most important local industry, fell from 547 in 1970 to less than 150 in 1994, a fall of over 70% in 24 years. In 1994 there were 32 guesthouses in Hongii with a combined guest capacity of 1,664 people. Eleven of these were ryokan (Japanesestyle inns), 20 were small family run minshuku (guesthouses), and one was a Swiss-style pension. All but three guesthouses are located in one of the three spa villages; and most (26 out of the 32) are in one of the two main spa villages of Yunomine and Kawayu. A glance through Hongii tourism brochures shows two rather different sets of images or appeals. The first has to do with passive relaxation and centers on spa bathing. Typically featuring young bikini or towel-clad women in open-air pools against a backdrop of verdant mountains, these images often have a ludic air about them. The second, more austere set of images is of the shrine buildings and the forest pilgrimage path with its torii arches and stone monuments. The mountain forests which so dominate the upland environment are present in both sorts of image, but in the former they are the landscape background to bright open-air personcentered ludic images, while in the latter they are present as a darkhued environment in which people, if present at all, are much smaller in scale. This sombre forest interior is clearly used to suggest a sense of timelessness. To a certain extent, these different images correspond to the two main tourism villages in Hongu, Kawayu, and Yunomine. Kawayu, with its riverside hot-spring pools, has an open feel to it. Here the normally inside activity of bathing is made public and visible. The absence of sex-segregation and the possibility, indeed facility, of voyeurism give it the tang of the ludic. This feature of the village was deliberately accentuated in the mid-1980s when the hermit bath or thousand people bath (the transformation of a large area of the river itself into a giant bath, with the help of a bulldozer) was established for the winter season. As one descends (rather precariously) into Yunomine by bus over the peak which separates it from the Hongu Shrine to the north, the steam-clouds of the hot-springs catch the eye and the smell of sulphur is striking. To enter Yunomine, more ravine than valley, is to become enclosed by tall forest. In addition to claiming to be the oldest spa in Japan, Yunomine prides itself on being one of the foremost hinabita onsenchi (or rustic spas) in Japan, with a special atmosphere in which visitors are able to feelyutori (at ease), unlike what some guests refer to as the newer kitori no aru (affected) spas now so widespread in Japan. Near to Hongir Shrine, Yunomine is also strongly identified with the pilgrimage tradition.

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The visitors themselves are individuals, couples, families (usually of four, two parents and two children), but also friends, former classmates, or current workmates may visit together. Smaller groups come by car; larger groups come in the coaches, regularly to be seen crawling along the villages narrow roads. These coaches carry parties of company employees, groups of religious devotees, old peoples clubs, housewives associations, war veterans, or just commercial tour-parties. The overwhelming majority spend just one night in Hong& although some go on for a second night at one of the bigger, livelier coastal resorts. Visitors at weekends and during peak seasons find the spa villages of the hiky~ (hidden land) they have traveled so far to come to teeming with people. This characterization of the recent growth of tourism as a product simply of the hot-spring boom and new trends in leisure consumption is not something universally accepted in Hong6 itself. In fact, rather divergent meanings are attributed to this visitingor at least some of it -by different local constituencies or groups. Hongti is part of an area distinguished by an important pilgrimage tradition, the Kumano m6de. The mountains of the area are sacred and have long been visited by pilgrims from Kyoto, the former capital, including emperors. The area is also associated with the mythological founder of the imperial line, Jimmu Enn6, as the terrain crossed before he went on to establish imperial rule across the nation. Visitors to Hong6 do not come solely to bathe in the hotspring pools, for many - more than half - also pay a visit to the famous Hongii Shrine. The following description of the shrine is reconstructed from this authors fieldnotes:
pull in and out of its carpark throughout the day with frequent regularity. As the coach disgorges its travelers at the foot of the shrine, they pass a shop selling souvenirs, sweets, Fuji film, outside of which is a new soft drink vending machine. A few metres further along, near the great arched entrance to the stone steps leading up to the Shrine, stands a pilgrim wearing white robes, a sedge-hat and straw sandals who sells kumano mcide man@ (Kumano pilgrimage bean-cakes). The travelers ascend the steep steps of the shrine, wash their hands, enter the main compound, move through the gate into the inner courtyard where they are faced with the three shrine-arches through which the wooden buildings housing the shintai can be seen but not reached. It is a tiring journey, especially for older people - many of whom need to stop and catch their breath at the top of the steps; it is also a journey crafted such that one moves progressively inward without ever reaching the inner sanctum. At the shrine-arch, a coin is thrown into a wooden box, a bell rung with a tug of a cord, hands put together, eyes closed tightly, head bowed and a prayer made. This is the moment to wish for what one desires most.

Hongti Shrine is up on a hill. Coaches

In addition to prayer, shrine visitors make a variety of souvenir purchases. A range of talismans and amulets includes the omamori charms (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-shelf or above the door, either way in a high place); small bags of Kumano earth, as well as polythene bags containing two tamaishi (jewelstones) from the riverside; and mikuji (an arrow coiled around a piece of paper telling ones fortune). There are also postcards, booklets on the shrine, and green tea to buy. These goods are mostly wrapped in white paper bags on which, in bold red characters, Kumano is proclaimed to be nihon dai ichi duireikensho (The Foremost Site of Miracles in Japan). Even if visitors do not actually go to the shrine, there is still a sense in which it influences their visit. Most tourism brochures project Hongii to the visitor as Kumano Hongii or Oku [inner] Kumano Hongii. Kumano is the ancient name of the wider area, and is strongly 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 of the visit. There is a disagreement between local institutions over whether the visitors are tourists or pilgrims. What the town-office registers as kankckyaku (tourists), the Shrine tends to characterize as sanpaisha (pilgrims). This was something that emerged during an interview with the Head Priest. When the increase in tourists in recent years was mentioned to the priest, he immediately corrected the statement by saying that the visitors to the area are not kanktikyaku but sanpaisha. The priest then took the trouble to explain the Kumano tradition. Sanpaisha used to travel for over a month on foot to get to Kumano. Kumano is afuben no chi, (remote, inaccessible land), but it is this fubensa (inconvenience) which makes the omairi (pilgrimage) meritorious - a kugy6 (a penance or austerity). Today visitors from Osaka, the priest says, while they no longer travel on foot, still have to endure a five hour car journey, much of it along dangerous narrow, often winding mountain roads. Yappari kurd desu yo (this is hardship), he adds, for they could much more easily board a plane and go off to Hawaii. Why do they come all this way? They come all the way from the city because the land of Kumano is, for Japanese, kokoro nofurusato (the home village of the heart). Yes, they may come and stay at the hot-spring resorts in comfortable ryokan inns, but they have had to endure discomfort to get here. They have chosen to come to Kumano just like many sanpaisha before them, for shizen (the nature) and sobokusa (simplicity) of the area is like ajishaku (magnet) to them. There is a arigatami (virtue) in coming to such an inconvenient
place. People of long ago thought it was a real shimakuni (island country), especially Tokyo people . . . . But it was because of that [distance, inconvenience] that there was virtue in coming here.

The priest stresses that into the mountains from Kumano. The exertion of experience of ease at the experience. Despite their not, he stresses, different time.

the journey to Kumano, the hard ascent the plains, is central to the experience of travel is the necessary precondition of the end of it, a constitutive part of the whole stay in the spa resorts, these visitors are in kind from the pilgrims of an earlier

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It follows from this emphasis on the complementary relationship between exertion and relaxation that the journey to Hongti should continue to be an arduous one. Indeed the priest is firmly opposed to proposals to carve ever wider and straighter roads through the mountains to allow visitors easier access. The administrators who propose this, he explains, do not understand the true character of Kumano. Not only would this destroy the natural features of the Kumano region, but it would also change the meaning of the visit. The sort of improved accessibility for which the local governments of the peninsula are pressing in order to increase tourism would ultimately diminish the enjoyment of the stay and the pleasure of the bathing, and erase the special quality of the visit to Kumano. When Kumano ceases to be an island in the mountains, it will no longer be worth visiting. The shrine is a condensed site of nature. The mountain forests of the region are the abode of a myriad of kami (spirits). The Hong6 Shrine is the site of privileged access to this spiritualized nature: here are located-enshrined -the main deities of the shinto pantheon, including Amaterasu (the female sun deity), and Susanaonomikoto (the male earth deity). Here every year on the 29th of April (midori no hi or Green Day), the kinaesai (Tree Sapling Festival) is held in which forest landowners gather to petition the enshrined kami to promote the growth of their trees. The shrine is a focal point for the wider natural world beyond, both for local people and for visitors. The shrines relationship to the town is complicated. The town is named after the shrine, the annual shrine festival has become the unofficial town festival, and as already noted the shrine forms at least part of the local touristic appeal on which the town economy increasingly depends. Yet the relationship is often strained. The shrine festival has not been fully accepted as a truly town-wide festival. Historically the festival has been associated with the smaller area of what is now a town section, and despite local efforts to encourage town-wide participation, many people living outside this section still do not consider it their own festival. Some people question whether the shrine is completely committed to the welfare of the town. It is sometimes perceived as rather indifferent to revitalization initiatives. For example, the town-office has only just managed, after a number of years of trying, to persuade the shrine to allow a weekly market (where local produce is sold) to be held in its expansive car-park. The long-running opposition of the shrine to the suggestion tends to be cited locally as evidence of its lack of concern for the plight of local people. For its part, the shrine, apart from its local parish function (in relation to the central section of Hongii), sees itself as responsible to a national constituency. It has a national network of bunsha (branch shrines) from which many visitors come each year, especially for the shrine festival in the spring, and this, along with the tens of thousands of unconnected visitors, allows it to boast a significant national distribution for its o&da charms. The shrine sees itself as having ritual responsibilities primarily to its local parish and as the

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custodian of local tradition consideration of the town,

for the wider nation, with only minor a municipal unit created onlv in the

GREEN

TOURISTS

AND WOULD-BE

HOSTS

The meaning of the visit is not the only matter of contention as far as tourism is concerned in Hongti. The distribution of the benefits of tourism is a major contemporary political issue in mountain village areas like Hongfi. The recent growth in tourism has brought considerable prosperity but only to some parts of Hong& and conspicuously not to others. For example, because tourist guesthouse owners often recruit employees through already existing social networks of kinship and village co-residence, the employment benefits of tourism tend to be restricted to the areas of the tourism villages. There is a growing sense that Hongti is a place of 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 be heard about tourists from local people. Tourists are a cause of forest fires. They cause pollution: not only lots of litter but also, because of the disposal of poorly treated human waste from the inns, pollution of the rivers-on which villagers depend for their drinking water. Local people see tourists as competitors in mushroom gathering, especially in the late autumn during the pine mushroom season, and complaints can be heard of tourists picking herbs and other edible forest plants by their roots (thus obstructing regrowth). During the peak seasons of Golden Week, Midsummer and New Year, huge numbers of visitors cause road congestion, and make the local leisure facilities such as restaurants and bathhouses inaccessible to local people. This can make some local families quite irate, especially as Midsummer is the time when most migrants and their families return to visit their natal homes, and local people find themselves unable to take their own family visitors along to enjoy the local facilities together. One migrant visitor commented during his Midsummer stay in 1989 that it the large-scale tourist presence - felt as though his firusato (home village) was senryd sareta (under occupation). There is also a sense of grievance in those local settlements far from the tourist villages that the latter always receive priority in the allocation of public resources, for example the repair of roads, while they have to wait years for a pot-hole to be dealt with. The point here is that while some people derive direct benefit from tourism, for others the presence of the tourists is experienced only as a source of bother. The presence of the commercial guests, moreover, may even mean that local families are less able to look after family visitors. Midsummer is the season when commercial hosting is most acutely experienced as interfering with with the family hosting associated with thefurusato relationship. There have been a number of initiatives aimed at extending the benefits 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. In 1987 the Hongii town-office surveyed the guesthouses in order to determine the proportion of local goods they used. It was found that % of rice, % of vegetables, 80% of freshwater fish, 60% of seawater fish, 70% of meat, and L% souvenirs were purchased by the guestof houses from outside traders (Hongfi Cho 1987). On the basis of these findings, the town-office actively encourages the guesthouses to purchase more goods from local sources. By connecting more local retailers to tourism demand, the ha/@ k&r (multiplier effect) of tourism would increase, and the economic benefits widen. At the same time, the retail suppliers themselves are called on to buy local produce in order to further extend the chain of local benefits. Although town-office staff could not make guesthouse owners change their ways, they could remind them of their moral obligation to give some thought to the wellbeing of their fellow town citizens. They could also point out that this would, in the long run, be in their own interests. As one official put it, tourism in Japan is changing, with tourists increasingly demanding to eat local foods and buy local souvenirs. By localizing their supplies, the guesthouses would also help to make Hongti a more appealing place to visit. This supply localization campaign has met with only limited success. In 1994 most guesthouses continued to purchase most of their foodstuffs from outside the town. Often there are not suitable local suppliers for the souvenirs and foodstuffs. The town-office, drawing on state (mostly prefectural) subsidies, has sought to promote local production to fill such gaps. There have been numerous attempts to establish new jiba sun.@ (local industries), but few 12 separate fish farms (sweetfish, carp, have lasted. For example, and loach) have been established at different times to supply the guesthouses, but none has succeeded. The larger guesthouses, in particular, require large quantities of such fish uniform in shape and size to serve to their guests, something which the new fish farms have been unable to provide. Local souvenir production has been somewhat more successful. Among the new local souvenirs that can now be purchased at Hongii guesthouses are varieties of bottled juice (siso, perilla;jabara, a citrus fruit), jars of beanpaste, packets of dried mushrooms, packets of tea, and miniature straw sandals. Woodcraft souvenirs (assorted boxes, trays, spatulas etc.) were another area targeted, but to date this has been less successful, with most woodcrafts sold still brought in from other parts of the country. There are other, more direct means of connecting tourism demand Asa ichi (morning markets), established in with local producers. Hong6 in the mid-1980s, are an additional channel for tourist commerce. On Sunday mornings, stalls selling local fruit and vegetables are setup in the spa villages of Hongu. Here, before starting on the drive back to the city, tourists buy fresh local produce directly from the producers themselves. Morning markets are viewed as a means of enabling local people to sell their surplus farm produce themselves, and have proved popular with visitors. Morning markets and 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 an annual fee to receive quarterly deliveries of seasonal vegetables and other produce, and in the process become menba (members) of a furusato (home village). Like morning marke ts,furusatokai allow local households to sell their goods directly to outsiders. By 1993, 294 such associations had been established in depopulated rural areas (Kokudo Cho 1994). The Hongii ch6 inaka no aji tomo no kai (Hongit Country Taste Society of Friends) was established in Hongti in 1984. In 1994 the Society had a consumer membership of around 60 households, while the number of local producer households was around 45. The annual revenue yielded by the enterprise was around 42.5 million (around $17,600 at the 1987 exchange rate of $1=4142), which, divided between the 45 households, amounted to an average of around $390 each. There are also more direct connections between thefurusatokai and tourism. First, tourism may be an important means of recruitment of society members. In Hongfi furusatokai leaflets and notices are strategically placed in the guesthouses. Second, the members may in turn become visitors. In some cases,furusatokai may actually serve as the organizational medium of tourism as such. In one such example, the society consisted of dyadic ties established between urban and rural families and periodic visiting of the latter by the former (NKS 1983:161-5). The Hongfifurusatokai was itself originally envisaged by its founder as a k&yiikai, an association based on dyadic ties between urban and rural people involving regular face-to-face contact. The exchange of goods would be the base on which more intimate relationships, including visits, would develop. In fact, in its first ten years of operation between 1984 and 1994, the Honga furusatokai has remained, in effect, a food mail order service. There is a regular newsletter enclosed in the food parcels which brings news and information from their furusato to the urban members (including interviews with village producers, reports of bountiful local harvests or local typhoon damage; items on local folklore or local dialect; descriptions of local festivals; or news of new tourism facilities), but there has been little direct contact. While some urban members have visited Hong& most have never actually set eyes on their adoptedfurusato! The same man who founded the furusatokai has also been one of the prime movers behind the recent trend to establish farm guesthouses. While the furusatokai has not developed visiting relationships between urban and rural people, the founder continues to see potential for a more intimate form of tourism in which visitors are hosted in the ordinary homes of villagers. Like thefurusatokai, there is a clear instrumental motivation in the promotion of n6ka minshuku (farm guesthouses), seen as another means of widening the range of local beneficiaries of tourism. Thus the founder is concerned to ensure that families in his own village have the opportunity to host visitors and so break the monopoly on

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hosting of the three spa villages. Over the years, there has been a growth in the number of minshuku guesthouses in Hongii, but this has been a phenomenon almost entirely confined to the three spa villages themselves. The aim of the n6ku minshuku idea is to establish 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 key idiom in the rural revitalization movement in Japan. In response to the prospective growth in farm imports following the GATT agreement, the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture is currently promoting farm tourism as a potential alternative source of income for farmers. Among municipal tourism officials, there is a strong belief that tourism is changing its character: from miru kank6 (seeing tourism) to suru kank6 (doing tourism). One example of the latter is kank6 n6gyG (tourist farming), in which visitors undertake farming activities 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. Twenty women tourists, aged between 17 and 21, from Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo, paid Y20,OOO yen each for a four day holiday in Hongii. Two whole days were given over to ringy6 taiken (forestry challenges). Kitted out with blue safety helmets, white gloves, neck towels, and field sneakers, the visitors learned how to use saws and sharpen sickles before ascending up the mountains to cut undergrowth in cryptomeria timber plantations. On the following day, they undertook the more dangerous task ofjobatsu (felling young trees). The event had a number of explicit purposes to it. The first of these was to ensure k#ryz? (interaction) between tourists and local people. Thus, the visitors were instructed in the forestry tasks by local women foresters. Second, it served to show the practicability of n6ku minshuku (farm guesthouses), as the visitors stayed in the homes of n6kka minshuku (local families). Third, it demonstrated how tourism and forestry, the two most important industries in Hongfi, could be combined. The significance of this in Hong& where tourism areas are starkly circumscribed spatially, was to include those (spa-less) parts of the municipality which hitherto have been outside the tourism zone. But why all women? One answer to this seems to be that the scheme was originally conceived in connection with the bride shortage in Hongu: as a means of introducing local bachelors to wouldbe brides (i.e., as what is known as shiidan omiai or group date of the kind found elsewhere). However, it evolved into a plan primarily related to tourism. Today, two sorts of answer are given for restricting the scheme to women. The first is that women are an important target group because, as eventual mothers, they play the key role in influencing the attitudes and outlook of the next generation. This suggests that another dimension of the scheme was educational: to instruct city people on the present-day state of mountain villages and the 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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was thought that this would make it easier for the novice hosts putting up the visitors; men, on the other hand, would want waiwai suru to stay up later, drink alcohol, and enjoy themselves. While such households could hardly emulate the standards of service of the established inns, they could offer a more homely atmosphere. Indeed, this greater intimacy would be their central attraction, for visitors would have the opportunity of really getting to know a local family. The n6ka minshuku idea is seen on the local side as a practical example of green tourism. Most tourists stay in established yokan inns employing many staff, and while ideas offurusato intimacy may be invoked even for these tourists, the yokan cannot pretend to be a simple family house. Encouraging ordinary households to make rooms available for tourists would provide both a real family 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 experimental and small-scale. There are also doubts locally as to its practicability as a model for tourism in the future: whether there really are many tourists keen to stay in ordinary family homes in spa-less villages. Nonetheless, it does give expression to a major preoccupation within rural tourism areas like Hong& namely the demand to widen participation. What might be called farm tourism in Europe is not really seen as synomynous with green tourism, or even really alternative tourism (Pearce 1992:27-8). But in the Honga context green tourism clearly relates to the importance of kc%@ between locals and tourists, for it involves much more intimate contact between visitors and local householders, and ideally gives visitors a more direct insight into the way of life of mountain villagers. Here the emphasis is placed not so much on directly experiencing the nature of the mountain village but on experiencing mountain village society. Contesting Tourism

Hosting in Hongii is a contested field in a double sense: first, with regard to the qualitative character of tourism itself; second, in relation to the social participation in hosting tourists on the local side. The definition of tourism and tourists in Hongti varies according to the different hosts. In contrast to the routine emphasis on pleasure and relaxation of the town office and the guesthouse owners, the shrine claims that it is first and foremost a religious experience which is continuous with the pilgrimages of earlier times. There is also a third category of hosts to which corresponds a further definition of tourism. The new idiom of green tourism is largely motivated by the aim of bringing into the tourism sector those at present outside of it. But it also refers to nature tourism. Nature tourism has a growing currency within rural tourism in across the country have established Japan; rural municipalities natural attractions for urban visitors such as firefly and stag beetle parks, deer farms or sheep meadows (FJS 1988; Kokudo Ch6 1994:240-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 been used to attract tourists. In addition to the evident touristic appeal of nature, in Hongti there is a further factor in Hongtis pursuit of nature tourism in the mid-1990s. From the 198Os, a new pattern of migration into Hongu emerged. Younger couples of urban origin began to settle in Hongir to take up organic farming (Knight 1994b). In some cases, the new families have attempted to enact a lifestyle of productive self-sufliciency whereby they directly cultivate their household needs themselves and are able to avoid involvement in the cash economy. For these settlers, then, shi~ezen n&6 (natural farming) is much more than simply an economic activity, for it allows people to re-establish an intimate relationship with nature. For the most part these settlers have not involved themselves in the rural revitalization activities, nor have they shown any interest in tourism. The prospect of tourism development is squarely at odds with their own vision of Kumano as a place where an alternative peasant lifestyle can be pursued. In recent years, however, at least some have taken a greater interest in local tourism, participating in town-office-sponsored debates on green tourism (Hong6 Cho 1993). Some of the newcomers have floated the idea of running their own guesthouses; guests would have the chance themselves to practice organic farming. Tourists would not just come to Hong6 for relaxation in the hot-springs, but would undergo a degree of farming exertion. 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, and encounter the possibility of an alternative way of life. It must be stressed that the newcomers vision amounts to no more than a minority definition of green tourism in Hongu. The dominant emphasis is on extending inclusion in the lucrative local tourism sector to those villages hitherto outside of it. Judging by the events already held, the green character of such visits centers, in the first instance, on the k6~ii they involve between local families and the visitors rather than any direct encounter with nature on the part of the visitors. CONCLUSIONS Whatever else tourism in Hong6 is, it is not a unified, fixed category, but rather the dynamic object of a multifaceted local debate. There is a strong local self-consciousness of difference in the Hongti spa villages not just in relation to urban Japan but also visA-vis the new resorts. Yet, there is also awareness of divergence within Hongit, with the two main tourism villages seen as having very different atmospheres. Moreover, while the image of the typical tourist may be that of the hot-spring bather, it is clear, from the local side at least, that the tourist may be subject to a variety of symbolic associations, including the pilgrim drawn to a sacred land or the migrant visiting his home village. In their respective claims to centrality, one axis of host rivalry can be found.

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Interest ingly, s&en (nature) appears central to both appeals. On the one hand. there is spiritualized nature access to which is highly localized through the shrine; on the other, there is the nature of the earth, exemplified by the outside spa, bathing in which both brings one into direct contact with the (subterranean) elements and encloses one in a natural landscape. The forest forms part of both representations of it is the spiritualized environment through which the nature: pilgrim passes and the surrounding landscape enclosing the bather. The second axis of host rivalry concerns the inclusion in the host category itself, admission to the (increasingly lucrative) tourism sector. The rise of tourism in Hongti has brought about a marked social division between the prosperous spa villages and the rest, and consequently demands by the latter for inclusion. This social friction is mediated by the municipal state which has tried to promote the localization of guesthouse sourcing in order to widen the tourism sector, although to little effect so far. Partly because of this failure the nonspa villages are now demanding the chance to host directly themselves, a demand couched in the idiom of green tourism. Although basically referring to farm guesthouses and interaction with local people, it is significant that here again nature is invoked. The would-be hosts offer another, alternative pathway to nature. Tourism in Hongu is not just a bilateral encounter between hosts and guests. It is also an evermore important medium through which intralocal relationships are played out. Cl 0 REFERENCES
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 Tourism Alternatives: 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 of Tourism Amith, V.L., ed. pp. 21-36. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hongti Cho 1987 Ryokan minshukuto ni okeru busshi no konyir (Guesthouse Purchases of Goods). Hongfi: Town-office. Hongti Cho. 1993 Gurin tstirismu: suishin katsudo jigyo kiroku (Green Tourism: A Record of Enterprise Activity Promotion). Hongti: Town-offtce. Honma, Y. 1990 Ima mata susumu retto kaizd (Yet Another Reconstruction of the Peninsula). Sekai 6:118-130. Kanemitsu, T. 1990 Dai rizcito k6sd ni yureru kaso no machi (A Depopulated Town Resonating to the Great Resort Plan). Sekai 6:42-7. Kanzaki, N. 1988 Kuse no nihon bunka (The Japanese Culture of Habits). Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha.

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Knight, J. 1994a The Temple. the Town Office and the Migrant: Demographic Pluralism in Rural Japan. Archives EuropeCnnes de Sociolggie 35( 1):21~4~. 1995 The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming in a Mountain Village. In Nature and a anese Culture, P. Asquith and A. Kalland; London: Curzon Press. K 0 k!d:Cho. 1994a Heisei gonendohan kaso taisaku no genkyo ni tsuite (Appendix to the 1993 The Present-day State of Depopulation Countermeasures). Tokyo: Kokudo Cho. 19941, Kaso taisaku no genkyo (The Present-day State of Depopulation Countermeasures). 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 Challenge of the Regions: The National Village Revival and Town-making Report). Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha. NTK 1986 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 Tourism Alternatives: 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 NHK 1989 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 of Tourism. Chichester: J. Wiley. Tadaki, Y. 1988 Mori to ningen no bunkashi (A Cultural History of Forests and Man). Tokyo: NHK Books. Submitted 30 June 1994 Resubmitted 1 March 1995 Accepted 6 April 1995 Refereed anonymously Coordinating Editor: Nelson

H. H. Graburn

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