With Japan's old-fashioned manufacturing and construction economy beginning to stagnate in the 1990s, it came as a jolt to the government to realize that perhaps services do matter to a modern economy, and a few officials began looking at the long-ignored issue of tourism. It quickly became clear that Kyoto, Nara, and Japan's once lovely rural villages were nearly beyond help, but there was hope: theme parks. Today, the Japanese flock to theme parks featuring reconstructed European cities, such as Huis Ten Bosch (Dutch) in Kyushu and Shima Spain in Mie, or a replica of Mount Rushmore (at one-third the scale) under construction in Tochigi Prefecture. These are spotless and completely artificial, like the enormous Seagaia complex in Miyazaki, which, though located on the coast, boasts a fully enclosed artificial beach. The number of adult tourists visiting these theme parks (close to 8 million touring Huis Ten Bosch and Shima Spain as early as 1994) wiU soon surpass the number visiting Kyoto. The designers of Huis Ten Bosch used natural materials such as rough bricks, incorporated sign control, buried power lines, and established design guidelines; with its lovingly tended lawns, it is much more appealing than a cluttered and unloved Kyoto. It would seem that Japan's premier tourist destinations will end up having nothing to do with its own culture, becoming watered-down copies of Western originals.
Obviously, these cannot have much appeal to Westerners, but the hope is that they will draw Asian tourists. «For Hong Kong's Wong Chun Chuen, [neither Mount Fuji nor Kyoto] compares with that hallowed sanctum of the Japanese soul, San-rio Puroland,» writes Tanikawa Miki. Sanrio Puroland is a mini-medieval Europe on the outskirts of Tokyo, built indoors with a nymphs' forest, floating riverboats, and cartoon characters such as Hello Kitty. Sanrio's 150,000 Asian visitors represented 10 percent of the total number of visitors in 1996, while at Huis Ten Bosch, Asian visitors numbered 330,000, about 8 percent of the total.
In January 1999, China ended its ban on visiting Japan, and many in the tourism industry see it as Japan's last great hope. «China has the potential to become our largest foreign market,» says Shimane Keiichi, the president of Japan Travel Bureau's subsidiary Asia Tourist Center. «China has a population of over 1.2 billion. If about 1 percent of Chinese a year come to Japan, we will get about 12 million visitors.» The long-term problem is that if tourism will depend on gimmicky theme parks, there is competition ahead when Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea, and Taiwan jump on that bandwagon. It bodes ill that the Japanese site that most travelers from mainland China want to see is Tokyo Disneyland, for at the beginning of 1999 Disney announced that it was negotiating to build a new Disneyland in or near Hong Kong.
Since badly conceived development is defacing beyond recognition the attractions that were unique to Japan, it is time to build new attractions, and this suits the Construction State. The government has announced its plans for another wave of halls and monuments. The Japan National Tourist Organization (a wing of the Transport Ministry) says that its Welcome Plan 21 involves «building a broad range of tourist attractions [italics mine]. For example, Japan could create rekishi kaido, or 'Japanese historic highways,' as well as theme districts around the country, complete with roads and international exchange facilities.» An example is the Ise Civil War Era Village, near the Grand Shrine of Ise, a wholly artificial medieval town that is meant to evoke Japan during the civil wars of the sixteenth century.
In the coming decades, we can look forward to the raising of hundreds of facilities designed specially for travelers under the banner of «international tourism.» Japan must build these monuments-that is a certainty, for the construction industry requires it. Typical of what the next wave will probably be is ASTY Tokushima, a monument that sits at the confluence of two rivers in the town of Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku. ASTY Tokushima features a multipurpose hall and the Tokushima Experience Hall, where, as the prefectural tourism bureau puts it, travelers can discover «passionate romantic Tokushima.» The passionate romantic experience includes the Yu-ing Theatre, where two robots perform traditional puppet-ballad drama, and a corner where visitors can gaze at photographs of Tokushima s scenery as it changes from season to season.
The end of the road for the domestic tourism industry is when it gives up on natural or historical attractions altogether and makes concrete itself an attraction. This is beginning to happen, for Japan Railways and local towns are sponsoring package tours of their dams and cement fortifications. Flyers advertising dam tours are often seen in subways and buses. «At Atsui Dam, everywhere you look, it's huge!» trumpets a publicity pamphlet from the Construction Ministry, urging travelers to join a bus tour and come and see cement being poured. «It's almost the last chance to see Atsui Dam while under construction,» the pamphlet says invitingly.
There is hardly the need to create fake tourist facilities or to rely on cement-pouring at dams for excitement when Japan has plenty of the real thing. Still, the modern malaise seems to have created an inability to distinguish between what is fake and what is real. Kyoto prides itself on being Japan's «cultural capital,» yet for the past fifty years it has put all its energies into destroying its old streets and houses. The Cultural Zone in the New Kyoto Station typifies the confusion; there a tearoom provides a light show of cherry blossoms instead of the real thing, and the restaurant features a copy of a Raphael fresco-«culture» with no particular connection to Kyoto at all.
Recent events in Kyoto show that a sizable minority of its citizens are angry about all this. In November 1998, one group miraculously succeeded in halting a very destructive project. The story began more than a year earlier, when the city office announced plans for its newest monument – right in the middle of Pontocho, one of the few historic city blocks left, a narrow street of bars and geisha houses running alongside the Kamo River, with the Sanjo Bridge to the north and Shijo Bridge to the south. The city proposed to demolish a segment in the middle of Pontocho and build a new bridge modeled on one that spans the Seine-not even one of the famous old bridges, with picturesque stone arches, but a modern structure of steel girders and tubular concrete pilings of no distinction. To add insult to injury, the city fathers actually proposed to call this copy the Pont des Arts, and enlisted the support of France's President Chirac, who in a classic case of foreign misunderstanding of Japan endorsed the project because it was French inspired. For many, this was the last straw. Professor Saino Hiroshi wrote:
Pontocho is part of our cultural heritage, representing Kyoto's cityscape based on a wood-based culture. It was built as an integral piece of the space along the river. [The new bridge] will conflict with traditional architecture such as Shimbashi [an old neighborhood on the other side of the river], and furthermore [Pontocho] has something rarely seen in other cities – traditional architecture extending continuously 600 meters down it – and one feels a sense of historical atmosphere. This will be split in two by a modern European-style bridge right in the middle of it, which will greatly decrease its cultural value.
This time the protests of Saino and others did not go unheard, as they had in 1964 with Kyoto Tower, in 1990 with Kyoto Hotel, and in 1994 with the design competition for the New Kyoto Station. The concerned citizens of Kyoto amazed everyone by gathering such overwhelming support for their anti-bridge petition that the project was discontinued.