Old vs. New in Japan Tourist Push
Japan draws in relatively few tourists with sites like Gion, a geisha district in Kyoto. The nation is torn about how to attract more.
By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: May 7, 2010
KYOTO — A dolphin pool, a penguin park and a giant wave pool could soon join the imperial-era townhouses and ancient Buddhist temples in Kyoto, the former imperial capital of Japan.
Hiro Komae for The New York Times
“Kyoto should not be building concrete boxes,” said Shinsho Kajita, head priest at the Honen-in Buddhist temple in Kyoto and leader of a local protest movement against plans to build the 19,000-square-foot aquarium.
As early as June, work will begin on a mammoth aquarium complex in central Kyoto, in leafy Umekoji Park at the center of the city. Developers say the project, a brainchild of Orix Real Estate, will breathe life into Kyoto’s tourism industry by attracting more than two million visitors a year.
But to opponents, the proposed aquarium, set to open in 2012, is misguided and threatens to destroy the city’s historic ambience. Adding to the disgrace, they say, is Orix’s plan to showcase dolphins in a 1,765-square-meter, or 19,000-square-foot, pool at a time when the country is under fire for hunting thousands of dolphins and porpoises each year.
“Kyoto should not be building concrete boxes,” said Shinsho Kajita, head priest at the Honen-in Buddhist temple in Kyoto and leader of a local protest movement against Orix’s plans.
“Kyoto’s residents and its visitors care more about preserving old neighborhoods,” he said. “We have the wrong idea of economic development, and it is destroying our city.”
Whether or not Kyoto gets the 11,000-square-meter aquarium, experts say that Japan needs to review its approach to tourism, a $944 billion industry worldwide — bigger than automobiles or steel.
Japan drew just 8.4 million foreign visitors in 2008, despite attractive destinations like ancient Kyoto, cutting-edge Tokyo and a selection of beach and ski resorts. In comparison, France had 79 million visitors; the United States, 58 million; and China, 53 million, according to the World Tourism Organization. In 2009, the number of foreign visitors to Japan dropped 18.7 percent, to 6.79 million, amid the global recession, according to the Japanese government.
The country generated just $10.8 billion from foreign tourism in 2008, a tenth of the $110 billion the United States earned from overseas tourists that year. Ukraine and Macao each attract more foreign tourists a year than Japan.
“Japan has the potential to be a tourism superpower,” said Hiroshi Mizohata, who took over as commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency in January.
Mr. Mizohata, former president of a popular local soccer team, has set a goal of increasing the number of foreign visitors to Japan to more than 10 million in two years and to 20 million by 2016. “With new ideas and initiatives, I believe we can meet these targets,” he said.
Government officials attribute the low tourist numbers to the lack of options for budget travel in Japan as well as the high costs.
But critics of the country’s tourism strategy point out that until now, the tourism market has been geared almost exclusively to domestic travelers, which means that much of the tourist infrastructure does not meet the expectations of foreign tourists.
Japan’s tourism strategy has also focused on investment in engineering projects and theme parks rather the protection of the country’s natural and cultural riches, an oversight that some experts say has cost the country tourism dollars.
Nowhere are the country’s weakness in tourism more evident than in Kyoto, said Alex Kerr, a longtime resident and the founder of Iori, a company that since 2004 has restored 10 old townhouses, or machiya, in the city to rent out to visitors.
In the postwar period, Kyoto has shown little concern for preserving the traditional neighborhoods that would most appeal to foreign tourists, he said. The pace of destruction gathered speed in the 1990s, when more than 40,000 old wooden homes disappeared from central Kyoto, according to the International Society to Save Kyoto.
Though the city still has ancient temples and gardens, they are overwhelmed by a sprawling mass of gray buildings and neon signs — the product of ineffective zoning policies in the city, Mr. Kerr said.
Visitors to Kyoto are greeted by the peculiar, needle-shaped, red-and-white Kyoto Tower, as well as the Kyoto Hotel Okura, a 16-floor granite building in the heart of the city that had to seek a waiver from local height restrictions when it was rebuilt in 1994. Three years later, Kyoto Station — a structure nearly 800 meters, or half a mile, long, with a glaring glass facade in its latest incarnation — opened in the city center.
Besides the aquarium, local politicians are pushing for more big projects in Kyoto’s city center, including a new 30,000-square-meter railroad museum built by the West Japan Railway, scheduled to open in 2014. The deals are expected to bring the city more rental income.
All the modern construction can obscure the city’s charms, especially for foreign visitors.
“This all looks the same as Tokyo,” said Delaina Hutchinson, a tourist from Australia, after a hike up the Kyoto Tower in February. She, her husband and two young daughters planned to spend just a day in Kyoto before returning to their Tokyo hotel that evening. “I wish we could get away to somewhere quieter,” she said.
According to Mr. Kerr, the government has long neglected investment in tourism, which it sees as an industry that supports only menial, low-paid jobs. Officials overlook the economic activity generated by architects, landscape architects and other high-value professions, he said.
“Making things has been a Japanese obsession, something that advanced economies do, while tourism was for poor countries,” Mr. Kerr said. “Now the importance has flipped: in today’s economy, it’s software over hardware. But they have been asleep in Tokyo.”
Kyoto officials say that tourism can coexist with modern development.
“Of course, we care about Kyoto’s scenery and will work to preserve it,” Keiji Yamada, governor of Kyoto Prefecture, told a group of foreign reporters this year. “But we must also compete with the world.”
Local officials say that the aquarium will be especially good for attracting tourists from China, more of whom have come in recent years. The Chinese have many ancient temples of their own, noted Miyako Murozaki, a tourism official at Kyoto’s chamber of commerce. “They like new things,” she said.
Orix says the aquarium will be an “interactive and educational space” that will showcase local and exotic marine life. “We have been holding many meetings with local residents, and we intend to consider their views,” said Tetsuya Nagai, a company spokesman.
Local residents were clearly angry at a recent protest meeting.
“I want them to leave Umekoji Park as it is,” said Yasuko Hirano, a 60-year-old homemaker.
“As a little child, I remember playing in the garden of a local temple, but now it’s turned into a car park,” she added. “What’s being destroyed and what’s being built — they are both tragedies.”
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