Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first book to apply the concept of ‘contents tourism’ in a global context and to establish an international and interdisciplinary framework for contents tourism research. The term ‘contents tourism’ gained official recognition in Japan when it was defined by the Japanese government in 2005, and it has been characterised as ‘travel behaviour motivated fully or partially by narratives, characters, locations, and other creative elements of popular culture forms including film, television dramas, manga, anime, novels and computer games’. The book builds on previous research from Japan and explores three main themes of contents tourism: ‘the Contentsization of Literary Worlds’, ‘Tourist Behaviours at “Sacred Sites” of Contents Tourism’ and ‘Contents Tourism as Pilgrimage’ and draws together these key themes to propose a set of policy implications for achieving successful and sustainable contents tourism in the 21st century.
Trade ReviewIn this volume, an international group of scholars rewrites the old canon of ‘contents tourism’ with impressive cultural sensitivity. Across several chapters exploring aspects of Japanese popular culture’s adherence to performance and visuality, native phenomena are examined as instances of transnational hybridisation and global cultural connectivity. An essential read for students of international popular culture, tourism and the moving image.
* Rodanthi Tzanelli, University of Leeds, UK *
This book reconceptualises the largely compartmentalised views of media-tourism relationships, such as film and literary tourism, advancing and encapsulating them within the socialising frame of contents tourism. The authors provide engaging insights into the formation, curation and (re)crafting of media-related narratives, variously bonding communities, media, tourists and places across the different contexts. These insights provoke new interpretations and considerations, which will benefit anyone studying contents tourism (or any tourism-media relationship).
* Glen Croy, Monash University, Australia *
This important book expands the concept of contents tourism, which has so far been limited mainly to the Japanese context, and shows its transnational and transmedial potential. Case studies from different cultural contexts, which refer to enthusiasm for literature, theatre, folklore or anime, illustrate the variety of paths the imagination can take – and how imaginary journeys become real tourism.
* Elisabeth Scherer, University of Düsseldorf, Germany *
Contents tourism is among the very few productive new ideas that has emerged in tourism studies in the past several decades. The authors in this important volume capture the dynamics of the emotional and symbolic connection of tourists to the places they visit. The chapters prove the promise of contents tourism beyond studies of the mise en scene of Japanese anime where it originated.
* Dean MacCannell, Emeritus Professor, University of California, Davis, USA *
This book further contributes to academia as it clarifies the term ‘contents tourism’, broadens this term from the Japanese context to a global context, links literature and tourism from a ‘contentsization’ point of view, and focuses on mediarelated narratives in tourism. From a qualitative-research point of view, the authors have contributed to this growing field of contents tourism by building their argumentation on different qualitative methods, as the following analysis illustrates.
-- Zafer Öter, İzmir Katip Çelebi University, Turkey * Journal of Qualitative Research in Tourism, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2021 *
This book contributes greatly to our understanding of the role of popular culture and its contents for the contemporary global tourism landscape [and] provides a fresh perspective that will hopefully decrease the fragmentation of existing related research while making especially Japanese research in this area more accessible to English-speaking academia.
-- Ina Reichenberger, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand * Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 7 No. 1, 2021 *
This collection of essays examines the phenomenon of "contents tourism" within a global context [...] In all cases, content is the unifying element of analysis rather than the platform. This interesting construct utilizes the content itself as the focus/motivator of tourism rather than the individual modality of presentation (e.g., film, theater). This is a readable, interesting, and informative study.
-- S. A. Schulman, CUNY Baruch College, USA * CHOICE, Vol. 58 No. 4, Dec 2020 *
Table of ContentsForeword. Sue Beeton
Introduction. Takayoshi Yamamura: Contents Tourism Beyond Anime Tourism
Chapter 1. Philip Seaton: The Contents Tourism of Jane Austen’s American Fans
Chapter 2. Maree Thyne & Gretchen Larsen: Conceptualising Contents Brandscapes: The Brontë Brand
Chapter 3. Aleksandra Jaworowicz-Zimny: The Witcher Novels and Games-inspired Tourism in Poland
Chapter 4. Takayoshi Yamamura: Traveling Heidi: International Contents Tourism Induced by Japanese Anime
Chapter 5. Catherine Butler: The Cotswolds and Children’s Literature in Japanese Fantasy: The Case of Castle Combe
Chapter 6. Shinobu Myoki: Yōkai Tourism in Japan and Taiwan
Chapter 7. Kyungjae Jang: Contents Tourism and Religious Imagination
Chapter 8. Akiko Sugawa-Shimada: The 2.5-Dimensional Theatre as a Communication Site: Non-site-specific Theatre Tourism
Chapter 9. Ranny Rastati: Indonesian Cosplay Tourism
Chapter 10. Sueun Kim: Outbound Tourism Motivated by Domestic Films: Contentsized Koreanness in Thai movies and Tourism to Korea
Chapter 11. Christopher Hood: Contents Tourism in Plane Sight
Chapter 12. Stefanie Benjamin: Breaking Benjamin: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to New Mexico
Chapter 13. Sue Beeton: From Banjo to Basho: Poets, Contents and Tourism
Conclusions. Philip Seaton: Sustainable Contents Tourism in the 21st Century
