Popular Media-induced Tourism and Local Mascots .... landscapes etc., were used as a defining feature to attract potential tourists (Moon, 2002, p. 229).
Author’s draft
Recreating the Place: Video-Sharing Websites and the Promotion of Domestic Tourism in the Concurrent Trend of Popular Media-induced Tourism and Local Mascots in Japan Tzung-De Lin National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan ABSTRACT The development and uptake of information and communication technologies have provided tourism industries innovative opportunities to interact with potential tourists. Instead of focusing on the development and implementation of new technological tools with which much E-tourism research is concerned, this paper examines a case of tourism promotion in Japan made possible by the spread of video-sharing websites. The case shows a nontraditional, non-intuitive strategy. It reaches potential tourists and gains nationwide visibility at a relatively low cost by producing videos featuring an unappealing character who symbolizes the destination: Hakodate City. This strategy of promoting domestic tourism was preceded by other two popular strategies of tourism promotion in Japan, and the case is compared with them: popular media-induced tourism, particularly anime tourism, and local mascots. Keywords: popular media-induced tourism, anime pilgrimage, local mascot, video-sharing websites, Ikaaru-Seijin (squid alien), Hakodate City, Japan
INTRODUCTION The availability of information and communication technologies has provided tools for E-tourism to revolutionize “…the entire value chain as well as the strategic relationships of tourism organizations with all their stakeholders. The internet allows tourism organizations to interact with all their stakeholders, including potential and loyal customer, local groups and public authorities” (Buhalis & Deimezi, 2004, p. 107). Concerning the relationship of 1
organizations of tourist destinations with their potential visitors, this paper focuses on a strategy of using video-sharing websites. This should not be overlooked in E-tourism research, for attracting potential tourists by using information and communication technologies is an important item on the agenda of E-tourism. Although using video-sharing websites is a common strategy, what is special in this case is its nontraditional and non-intuitive way. It therefore can be differentiated from, and also compared to, a trend which can be identified as its predecessor, popular media-induced tourism. In recent years, popular cultural products such as films, TV programs, and novels, have been significant in influencing people’s motivation for visiting tourist destinations, a phenomenon characterized as “popular media-induced tourism” (Iwashita, 2006, p. 60). The phenomenon is so significant that in Japan, official departments have acknowledged the influence of animations on tourism, and have been actively facilitating linkages between the two (Yamamura, 2011, p. 5). This trend has been made possible by the current post-industrial and post-modern condition: people come to know a place they have never been to by the representations presented in media. They then manage to personalize their “experience” of the place in a specific way that makes the experience meaningful to them (Macionis, 2004, p. 87). In popular media-induced tourism, media content itself is sufficient to make locations, such as places featured in an anime (Japanese term for film and television animation), for example, destinations of tourist visits. A place needs not be special in order to become a tourist destination. In such cases as that mentioned above, the story and characters of the anime make the otherwise ordinary place meaningful for potential tourists. As meanings can be constructed in various ways, other forms of meaning construction are also used to promote tourism, for example, an emphasis on a local culture which claims distinction from the cultures of other places. Recently, in Japan, this has been manifested in the use of local mascots. Mascots which personify foods, products, or the historical figures of cities or regions are used as symbols of these places. Local mascots, like characters in anime, are able to provide meanings and rationale for potential tourists, and have been used for tourism promotion for more than a decade in Japan. This paper examines a special case in which a squid-like mascot is used to promote the tourism for Hakodate City, Hokkaido. Qualitative interview is used to obtain knowledge about the case from the main protagonists. The case shows how a combination of popular media―short anime films, in this case, and local mascot, has been successful in promoting Hakodate City at a relatively low cost. As a somewhat idiosyncratic case which combines anime and a localized mascot, its further development and its influence on promotional strategies taken for local tourism are worth tracing, and worth comparing with other local mascots and sites of anime tourism.
ANIME TOURISM Although anime tourism has grown in popularity in recent years, its history can be 2
traced to earlier decades. Anime tourism begins with potential tourists’ experiences of watching anime, reading manga (Japanese term for comic books), or playing video games. The streets, buildings, and landscapes shown in the above-mentioned media inspire some of the audience willing to travel to the place, thus turning these consumers of anime-related contents into tourists. The late 1980s saw, for example, stores using cartoonists of local origin as a selling point and also for town revitalization. Physical models of characters from certain manga written and drawn by those cartoonists were put on streets, trains and buses were decorated with images of manga characters, and events related to either those cartoonists or characters of their creation were held. For some thirty recorded instances of anime tourism in Japan, most took place at places where certain cartoonists were born or where stories unfolded (Yamamura, 2011, p. 25). The spread of information technology and social network software help to fuel anime tourism by creating a group of young internet users who not only consume but also create messages on the internet. As Yamamura states, video-sharing websites like Youtube or Niconico (a website which can be said to be the counterpart of Youtube in Japan) have created a massive “informal audience” that does not rely only on media content produced by formal organizations. Everyone can participate in sharing media content created by him or herself, and is able to form, with others, a group for information exchange quite easily. Also, using the internet, it is easy to share pictures of and information about the places where anime stories are based, and this has made anime tourism and its more enthusiastic form, “anime pilgrimage,” easier (Yamamura, 2011, pp. 51-53). The popularity of anime pilgrimage in Japan was precipitated by a new way of anime production common among many anime production companies in recent years. During the first decade of the 21st century, anime broadcasted late at night became more and more popular. To save time for production, anime companies began using buildings and roads of specific places that truly exist as a model of landscape settings, rather than creating them from scratch (Okamoto, 2013, p. 50). This time-and-money-saving practice has stimulated the somewhat unexpected trend of anime pilgrimage, in which fans of anime try to make certain whether buildings, roads, and shops that appear in anime have counterparts in reality, and if so, to pinpoint their exact locations (Anonymous, n.d.). The unexpected appearance of young anime fans in cities whose natural and human-made environments have appeared in anime, has encouraged people in these cities try to promote tourism by linking the cities with anime. For example, many cities put cardboard cutouts of anime characters at shops, hotels, or notable places, and produce maps for anime pilgrims to trace the scenes that appeared in the anime. As anime pilgrimage does help the local economy through tourism, local governments and resident groups have become interested in cooperating with anime production companies to encourage the practice. Whether already famous tourist sites or not, these places take on meanings in anime stories for anime pilgrims, and become pilgrimage destinations. These 3
meanings, constructed through anime, although at first incomprehensible and detached from what the local residents think of their places, become contact points through which interactions between local residents and anime pilgrims are made possible. Anime pilgrims’ actual experiences of their targeted cities are edited and shared on the internet without much effort, and this, in turn, makes the content of the original anime more diversified― anime pilgrimage has become a special kind of “content” associated with the original anime. For pilgrims, furthermore, interactions between anime pilgrims and local residents might be shared on the internet, and this is itself a type of extended content. Local residents also share among themselves their interactions with anime pilgrims, interactions which might transform their impression of the “otaku” (zealous fans of anime/manga) from something negative to something positive (Ishii, 2014).
LOCAL MASCOTS While anime tourism or anime pilgrimage are made possible, unavoidably, by the products of anime production companies which are broadcasted regionally, nationally, or even internationally, local mascots (in Japanese, “gotōchi kyara”) are generally run by local governments with the help of local resident groups. In fact, using characters created in cartoons or movies to sell related products has been a popular business practice since the last years of the 19th century in the U.S. and Europe (Odagiri, 2010, p. 126). In Japan, the business model began to prosper in the 1950s. In the 1980s, even companies unrelated to the media business began using cartoon characters for advertizing (Allison, 2003, p. 386). Although local mascots can be traced to the “character business” beginning in the 1950s, what is special about local mascots in Japan is the appropriation of the merchandizing model for local revitalization. The conditions that led to this transformation were both economic and social in nature. Faced with the continued advancement of urbanization and rural depopulation, the central government’s strategy was to encourage local government and groups to take greater responsibility for local expenditure (Love 2010, p. 222; Birkett, 2012, p. 54). This situation precipitated the adoption of local mascots as a strategy to promote tourism. In fact, promoting tourism has been a strategy for rural areas, as part of the
“muraokoshi” (village
revitalization) movement, to respond to the depopulation problem from as early as the late 1970s (Moon, 2002, p. 228). In such a movement, there were instances in which any characteristics that were thought special of the places in question, be it history, local products, landscapes etc., were used as a defining feature to attract potential tourists (Moon, 2002, p. 229). Local mascots were born in such an atmosphere. They were used for village revitalization for the first time in the early 1980s (Birkett, 2012, pp. 59-60). The first decade of the 21st century has seen the boom of local mascots. In the new millennium, local mascots are spread all over Japan (Birkett, 2012, p. 57). The spread of local 4
mascots has been accelerated by manga illustrator Jun Miura. He coined the word “yuru-kyara” (loose mascot character) in 2000, and edited a pictorial handbook listing a hundred local mascots in 2004, which made the word popular. The word “yuru” comes from “yurui,” loose, which connotes non-professional, amateurish design typical of many local mascots created not by professionals but by local residents. As local governments usually cannot afford to pay for professionally designed mascots, their designs usually come from a selection of the received designs from a public recruitment (Tan, 2014, p. 78). In recent years, however, “yuru” has taken on the connotation of appeasing or healing (Inuyama & Sugimoto, 2012, p. 12), and can also be associated with cuteness. There have also been competition events such as the “Yurukyara Grand Prix” for mascots held every year since 2010. In 2013, over 1500 mascots were listed in the Yurukyara Grand Prix (1245 local mascots and 335 company mascots). Recent years have also seen the emergence of some local mascots whose appearance is difficult to associate with cuteness and friendliness. A specific adjective exists for these somewhat unappealing, weird, or even scary mascots: “yurukunai.” Literally “not yurui,” it takes on meanings of “not cute” or “unappealing.” This opposes the predominant trend which emphasizes cuteness to promote the sales of items to youngsters in Japan. However, with so many mascots out there competing for notice by being cute and friendly looking, yurukunai-kyara can be a risky but eye-catching strategy. The word “yurukunai” also means that the design is by professional hands and not amateurish.
THE CASE OF HAKODATE CITY Ikabo as a Local Mascot? A short anime film featuring squid-like (squid is a sea creature with a long body and eight arms and two tentacles) aliens was first released to promote tourism in Hakodate City in 2008. But, in fact, in Hakodate City, squid-like objects are not new as objects of attention. In Hakodate City, there is a harbor festival taking place within the first week of August every year. During the festival, some twenty thousand people march in a “squid dance,” a simple combination of movements and steps that symbolically represent the movements of squid, the famous seafood in Hakodate City. Although many people participate in the festival, the festival has remained a local event, especially when compared to the famous festivals taking place around the same time each year in the cities in Miyagi, Aomori, and Akita prefectures located in the North-Eastern part of Honshu (the main island of Japan). These festivals each attracts some hundred thousand people each day during the festival period, and have become not only local but national, or even international attractions. Among these festivals, Aomori’s Nebuta festival is famous for the huge lanterns which shaped like sleeping monsters featuring in historical novels. In order to promote their harbor festival as a tourist attraction, residents of Hakodate City suggested building a robot based on the symbol of Hakodate City ―the squid―so that the robot could 5
join people in squid dance. They proposed the idea to professors of the Future University of Hakodate City (FUN), a small-sized, public university which specializes in information technology and emphasizes its links with the local communities. What the local residents had in mind was something of a size comparable to the huge lantern (some 20 meters high) featured in Aomori’s Nebuta festival. i However, considering the movability and safety issues of such a creation, the size of the squid-like robot was set at two meters high (Matsubara et al., 2010, p. 572). With the participation of local residents, businesses, and students and teachers of FUN as well as of the Hakodate National College of Technology, the first two squid-like robots were built in 2006 and 2007, and were given the name “IKABO” (“ika” means squid in Japanese, and “bo” is part of the word “robot” or “bot”) (Matsubara et al., 2010,
p. 572).
They participated in several local events, and have performed the “squid dance” in the Harbor festival almost every year since 2007. After the creation of two IKABOs, in order to show the robots around Japan, several smaller ones were also built. This promotion is well in line with how local mascots are used―they present themselves (usually as people in local mascot costumes, rather than as robots) also in events held in places other than from where they originate in order to attract potential tourists. Also, the design philosophy of IKABO―emphasizing cuteness―was similar to that of a typical local mascot. Originally there were other prototypical designs, some prioritizing ease of fabrication and low cost, some appealed in their similarity to a real squid. The final design, however, emphasized a big round “head” with two big round eyes on it. The long part of the body as is of a real squid was deformed into the big round “head,” and the eyes were moved upward to be located on the sides of the “head.” Besides several stationary arms, IKABO features two long tentacles which move to accompany the “squid dance.” Its fins on top of the “head” are also movable. Besides the harbor festival, IKABOs have been used in several local events. In order to gain greater publicity, a bigger IKABO―with a height of about four meter―is currently in preparation. It is hoped that it will appear in the harbor festival in 2015, and that IKABO as a symbol of Hakodate City will become better recognized when it appears in the events related to the openings of Hokkaido Shinkansen (the bullet train) in March 2016.ii Although IKABO’s design features cuteness and friendliness, as a general local mascot does, as suggested above, it suffers from maneuverability issues. The robots have to be accompanied by people and paraphernalia when moved to other places. In contrast, most local mascots always have a real-world representation―a person in a mascot costume―and “it” can join whatever events are available rather easily. IKABO was expected to serve as a powerful symbol for Hakodate City, just like the huge lantern of sleeping monsters in Aomori. However, both IKABO and the huge lanterns are rather festival-orientated and are difficult to use in everyday promotions. Also, unlike those sleeping monsters which are famous figures in 6
historical novels, there are no stories in which IKABO can take part and play a role. These set limits on the usefulness of the IKABO to promote tourism.
Ikaaru-Seijin as a Character of a Promotional Anime Film Another character which was also modeled on a squid, but created later than IKABO, gave IKABO a role in a series of fictitious short stories. This character is “Ikaaru-Seijin” (squid alien), which looks exactly like a squid. However, with a malicious look in its eyes, it deviates from the friendly look a typical yuru-kyara has. Ikaaru-Seijin is a “yurukunai-kyara” in both senses of the term. First, it has an unfriendly look. Secondly, unlike many of the local mascots which are designed by amateurs, Ikaaru-Seijin was designed by a professional designer. Although it is now seen as a promotional character of Hakodate City, Ikaaru-Seijin was not intended to play this role in the beginning. In mid 2008, the Hakodate City government, with a budget of two hundred and ten thousand Japanese Yen (which was about twenty thousand US dollars), invited applications from the public for producing thirty short video clips, each about thirty seconds in length, to promote tourism. These video clips were expected to be put on the internet. One of the applicants was Ms. Sakaguchi, owner of a small company specialized in transforming 8mm films into DVD format. Sakaguchi considered tactics for how the clips could attract attention. She noticed that Youtube users were then predominantly young men. In order to attract their attention, tourism promotion clips showing famous sightseeing spots in an ordinary way would not do well: the clips would have to be unique. If the clip became a big hit on video-sharing websites like Youtube, it was possible that it would be covered in the news, in a newspaper or on TV. If so, it would have greater effect in inviting tourists from other parts of Japan to go to Hakodate City. That is because, in Japan, female homemakers have the predominant decision-making power on the scheduling of possible family travel, and TV is still the most effective medium for accessing female homemakers and small children. Therefore becoming a hit on Youtube was seen by Sakaguchi as the first step toward a successful advertising campaign. iii Sakaguchi’s idea that the clips be made interesting and unique was approved by the city government. But how was Ikaaru-Seijin born? From the beginning, squid and hot springs, well-known by residents of Hakodate City as promotional features, were considered important elements to include in these clips. But outside of this, there was no clear idea of the needed content. Sakaguchi started a discussion and elicited help from a circle of friends interested in promoting tourism in Hakodate City, with one friend helping produce few clips. However, a break came from Mr. Hiyama, one of that circle of friends. A professional, freelance toy designer, and owner of the design studio “Nekonote-Do,” Mr. Hiyama had proposed a whimsical idea. He produced, by himself, an unexpected computer graphics clip, in which the Tower of Goryōkaku (Goryōkaku is a star-shaped fort and a famous historical 7
site in Hakodate City) is transformed into a robot that fights with IKABO―who was also transformed into a giant robot. The fighting began because squid aliens thought Hakodate City had consumed too many squids. In order to take revenge, squid aliens kidnapped IKABO to use as a weapon to invade Hakodate City. The fight between the two giant robots wrecked havoc on Hakodate City, and many buildings and roads, including the Hakodate City government building, were destroyed. Many historical sightseeing spots are shown in the clip. At the end of the clip, viewers are advised to visit Hakodate City before its possible destruction. The unusual clip was, somewhat surprisingly, approved by the city government and by most of the people closely related to the buildings which are shown affected or destroyed by the fighting robots in the clip. It was uploaded to Youtube and to the promotional website of Hakodate City at the end of 2008. Sakaguchi also informed newspapers, TV channels, and friends of the clip. Within few months, the access numbers of the clip on the internet reached into the hundreds of thousands, and the clip had begun to be covered in newspapers and TV programs, which made the character of Ikaaru-Seijin known across Japan. Meanwhile, in 2009, Mr. Hiyama also created a costume of Ikaaru-Seijin, which made Ikaaru-Seijin one among many local mascots in the boom of the yuru-kyara. iv As mentioned above, as the costume of Ikaaru-Seijin was made not by an amateur, but by a professional designer, this mascot can be categorized as a “yurukunai-kyara.” Around that time, however, the design of many yuru-kyara was also experiencing some change. With the growing popularity of yuru-kyara, and the possible economic benefits gained from their use, more and more professionally-designed local mascots were starting to appear. Even though many were being created by professionals, Ikaaru-Seijin still stood out. Unlike other local mascots, Ikaaru-Seijin was originally created as a character in media content. The clips featuring Ikaaru-Seijin tried to create for Ikaaru-Seijin a role in the history of Hakodate City. Whether this strategy to reinterpret the history of Hakodate City from the viewpoint of Ikaaru-Seijin was believable or not, it provided a way of storytelling (by video clips) through which people associate Ikaau-Seijin with Hakodate City. Interest, ridiculousness, and humorous interpretation of content are common strategies used to attract those who frequent video clip websites on the internet. A clip created in 2010 for promoting sightseeing of the then rebuilt and open-to-the-public Magistrate’s Office (Bugyōsho, built in 1864 along with Goryōkaku, and torn down in 1871) inside the star-shaped fort (Goryōkaku), takes the history of the invasion of Hakodate City by Ikaaru-Seijin back some 150 years. In actual history, Hakodate port was opened to foreign trade in 1859 as one of the five open ports in Japan. In 1868 to 1869, there was a battle, the last one between the Tokugawa shogunate (the last feudal military government, 1603-1867) and the new imperial government, in Hakodate City, known as the battle of Goryōkaku. A legendary swordsman of the Tokugawa shogunate army, Toshizō 8
Hijikata, died in the battle. In the clip, however, a fictitious history is constructed, described in the following in italics. Hakodate port was opened to the universe in 1859, and in 1869, Hijikata was defending Hakodate City from an attack by the alliance between the new imperial government and the aliens. An alien envoy persuaded Hijikata to flee to outer space, for Hakodate City would need him sometime in the future, and it was not in the city’s best interest for him to die. Hijikata fled, taking the attic of the Magistrate’s Office as his spacecraft. He came back some 140 years later, assumed by the Ikaaru-Seijin to be commanding
the
destruction
of
the
Ikaaru-Seijin’s
space
warships
by
the
Goryōkaku-turned-spacewarship. Because the Ikaaru-Seijin thought the newly built Magistrate’s Office (in actual history, it was opened to the public in 2010) was Hijikata’s new military headquarters, an Ikaaru-Seijin was sent to investigate. The Ikaaru-Seijin was, however, found and surrounded by Hijikata and his warriors. Hijikata shouted, with swords in his hands, at the Ikaaru-Seijin: “the entrance fee is five hundred yen!” Baffled, the Ikaaru-Seijin remained silent for a while. As Hijikata wondered whether the Ikaaru-Seijin had perhaps not brought money with it, the Ikaaru-Seijin confirmed his suspicion, flying away and saying: “I will remember to take money with me and come back!” For the fictitious story to be coherent, Ikaaru-Seijin, in the form of costumed mascots seen at many promotional occasions, were given a place in the fictitious story. These Ikaaru-Seijin in mascot costumes are said to pretend to help with sightseeing promotion through which they can continue their work as alien spies―aiming for the ultimate goal of conquering Hakodate City. Moreover, there is another legend built on Ikaaru-Seijin’s first encounter with Hakodate City some 150 years ago. The legend goes as follows. Earlier than the “first encounter,” a spaceship occasionally visited an island near Hakodate City. That was Ikaaru-Seijin’s reconnaissance spaceship, which was somehow crippled in one of its expeditions. Unable to return to its homeland, the Ikaaru-Seijin then, however, did not fight with human beings, but merely showed its advancement of technology to the latter. Awed by its technological power, people in the shotgun period built a shrine to worship it. However, following later attacks by Ikaaru-Seijin, the worship soon faded, and the location of the original shrine, believed to be somewhere on Hakodate Mount, had sunk into oblivion. To bring the fictitious legend to life, Hiyama and Sakaguchi set up a shrine to worship Ikaaru-Seijin, inside a shop selling Ikaaru-Seijin items in a market beside the Hakodate City train station in the summer of 2014.
EVAUATION OF THE STRATEGY Several background factors are important when considering the strategy of using Ikaaru-Seijin for tourism promotion. First, it was made possible by the easy access to and distribution of multimedia content on the internet. Video-sharing websites like YouTube and Niconico provide a free channel for media contents to be viewed by an unspecified audience. 9
However, as there are so many clips on the internet, a clip has to have something special for it to attract attention and increase its viewing numbers. The fictitious story of Ikaaru-Seijin was created exactly for achieving this purpose. Then, because in the current media ecology, clips with high access numbers are more likely to get coverage in traditional media, newspapers and TV programs were then targeted for exposure to a wider audience. The interesting and nontraditional nature of the clips of Ikaaru-Seijin itself provided the clips with hundreds of free chances for exposures on TV. It would have cost a lot for the clips to be broadcasted as commercials on TV channels. v Thirdly, the trend of local mascots was the background against which Ikaaru-Seijin was transformed from merely a character of multimedia content to a materialized, three-dimensional mascot, although the costumed character of Ikaaru-Seijin was not planned from the beginning. Since this transformation, it has been presented in various events, occasions, and TV programs, not only in Hokkaido but also nationally. The efficacy of Ikaaru-Seijin in promoting domestic tourism―both as a character in a series of clips and as a costumed mascot―can be considered separately. It gained much visibility when the clips first launched, and the sales of some its items were remarkable. However, its influence in attracting potential tourists to actually go to Hakodate City for travelling is difficult to evaluate. A few people, attracted by the clips of Ikaaru-Seijin, did come to Hakodate City, from far away in other parts of Japan, to buy a considerable number of Ikaaru-Seijin items. vi However, this is not comparable to the enthusiastic pilgrimage induced by some anime and manga. Although stories of Ikaaru-Seijin are still unfolding and a new clip is released steadily every few months, the small scale of its production sets a limit on its influence, compared to those anime that inspire hundreds of thousands of people to travel to the places shown in these anime. vii However, it can also be seen on the websites encouraging short films for local tourism promotion, that many clips have followed the example of Ikaaru-Seijin by using anime, computer graphics, or local mascots to create unexpected and interesting contents. On the other hand, considering the mascot itself, although Ikaaru-Seijin is not specified as the official mascot of the Hakodate City government, it still appears occasionally but steadily at events and in TV programs as a recognized symbol of Hakodate City. viii It functions like other local mascots as symbols of the places they represent. However, in order for the Ikaaru-Seijin mascot to be accepted for a wider audience, especially children, another costume of Ikaaru-Seijin was made recently. The new Ikaaru-Seijin mascot looks less realistic. It looks friendlier and not as exceptional, even when standing alongside other friendly-looking local mascots. This recent development clearly shows the latent conflict that exists between the two roles of Ikaaru-Seijin. That is, between the Ikaaru-Seijin as invaders for the promotional clips to be interesting―invaders with a friendly look are difficult to imagine―and the Ikaaru-Seijin as friendly mascots presenting themselves at various occasions and events in order to attract a wide audience. 10
CONCLUSION This paper traces a case in Japanese tourism promotion that actively takes advantage of the popular media-induced tourism in the information age. As noted by researchers on anime tourism, the 21st century is seeing individualization and a new mode of tourism: tourists “create” their own destinations out of their own idiosyncratic interests, which might not be recognized and understood by others (Okamoto, 2013, pp. 32-35; Yamamura, 2011, p. 44). Anime tourism is a product of an information age in which pilgrims receive and give out information about targeted places on the internet. Concurrently, the booming of local mascots fits with this trend of the individualization of tourism (Inuyama & Sugimoto, 2012, pp. 111-114). The constructed specialness of a given place, symbolized by its local mascot, is used by local cities, towns, and villages to differentiate them from other places so that they can attract otherwise uninterested potential tourists. The case of Ikaaru-Seijin is an instance that characterizes the common features of popular media-induced tourism and local mascots: both of them depend on using certain representations (for example, the contents of anime or facial features of mascots) to create a specialness for the place in question, so as to increase the possibility of its being considered a tourist destination. As a promoting strategy, the movie clips of Ikaaru-Seijin incorporated the former squid-like robot IKABO, and gained moderate popularity nationwide at relatively low cost. However, the role of Ikaaru-Seijin (an alien invader) is different from the typical way of running the local mascot business: in general, the mascots which gain popularity among children and facilitate sales of related goods are cute ones. Between the goals of attracting children (and therefore their parents) and interesting those older fans who frequent Youtube or Niconico, Ikaaru Seijin is at a crossroads.
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ADDITIONAL READING Gordon, A. (2013). A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 12
Kvale, S. & Brinkman, S. (2008). InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing, 2nd ed. London: SAGE.
KEY TERMS & DEFINITIONS Anime tourism: see Popular media-induced tourism. Anime pilgrimage: see Popular media-induced tourism. Hakodate City: A port city in southern Hokkaido famous for its seafood, especially squid, historical sightseeing spots, hot springs, and night view seen from Mount Hakodate. Hokkaido: The most northern and the second largest of the four main islands of Japan, famous for its natural scenery as a tourist destination. Interviewing: A method in social science research to obtain knowledge from whom the researcher is interested in eliciting information. The basic form is that the researcher obtains answers from the respondents by asking questions. The questions vary from open-ended questions, which make the interview much like cursory conversations, to standardized ones, which make the interview highly structured. In qualitative research, interview is usually carried out in a flexible, semi-structured form such that issues of interest are covered. Although interview method is often used to know how people give meanings to their social life, it can also be used to gather information for inductive research which seeks, for example, to find a common pattern shown in the interview data on a specific issue. Popular media-induced tourism: A form of tourism when tourists are motivated to visit those places featured in popular films, TV programs, and novels. When tourists are motivated to visit those places featured in anime or manga, it is called anime tourism or anime pilgrimage. Squid: Invertebrates which have a mantle where a swimming fin is located on each side, two eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles. Squid feed on other small sea animals such as fishes and shrimps. As popular seafood, squid is known as calamari in English-speaking world. Tokugawa Shogunate: The last hereditary military government led by the Tokugawa clan. It ruled Japan from 1603 to 1867. During the period it adopted an isolationist foreign policy except for the final fifteen years when ports including Hakodate port were open to foreign trade. It was replaced by the Meiji imperial government in 1868. In 1869-1869, a series of battles occurred between the remnants of the Tokugawa shogunate and the new imperial government, and the last of which, occurred in Hakodate City, is also known as the battle of 13
Goryōkaku. The period in which the Tokugawa Shogunate was in power is called the Edo period. Yuru-kyara: a term coined by illustrator Jun Miura, literally “loose mascot character,” pointing to those local mascots that are designed by non-professionals. Recently it also denotes those mascots with cute, attracting looking. Yurukunai-kyara: mascots designed by professionals. It has in recent years taken on the meaning of those unappealing or even scary local mascots designed to attract attention.
i
Interview with Prof. Hitoshi Matsubara, Hakodate, 24 July 2014. Matsubara interview. iii Interview with Akiko Sakaguchi, Hakodate, 24 July 2014. iv In 2008, the word “yuru-kyara” was nominated one of the popular words of the year. With many guidebooks on yuru-kyara published, the year 2009 was claimed to be the climax of the yuru-kyara boom (Inuyama & Sugimoto, 2012, p. 118-119). v Sakaguchi interview. In Japan, a TV commercial of fifteen seconds broadcasted in the evening between 7PM to 10PM generally costs two to three million Yen (Inuyama & Sugimoto, 2012, pp. 148-149). vi Sakaguchi interview. vii A noteworthy example of anime pilgrimage is Ōarai town in the Ibaraki prefecture. In recent years, the numbers of people attending one of its annual events, the Anglerfish Festival held in November, has increased significantly. The figure increased from some thirty thousand before 2012 each year, to about sixty thousand in 2012, and to a hundred thousand in 2013. It is claimed that the increase was made possible by the anime “Girls und Panzer,” broadcasted from 2012 to 2013 (Ishii, 2014, p. 118). With trains and buses decorated with image of characters, cupboard cutouts of characters standing at shops, and various related events held, local residents groups of Ōarai town have been actively using “Girls und Panzer” for tourism promotion with the cooperation of the creators of the anime. viii Sakaguchi interview. ii
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