Art Interventions on Japanese Islands: The Promise and Pitfalls of Artistic Interpretations of Community (original) (raw)
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Rural art festival revitalizing a Japanese declining tourism island
Routledge, 2021
Aging, depopulation, and stagnation are serious problems for island communities in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. As a result, many of these communities have seen their distinguishing features and cultural identities disappear, and some face outright extinction. The Setouchi Triennale strives to revitalize twelve of these islands through art festival tourism. While it has been claimed that the art festival has become a model for policies aimed at community revitalization and tourism, the response of many local residents to the festival’s development model and certain issues caused by the presence of tourists indicate persistent problems. This research examines how a rural art festival influences local communities - particularly, whether a top-down initiative can boost tourism while also leading to bottom-up, sustainable community development outcomes. The conceptual framework of the research integrates art interventions, rural art festival tourism, revitalization, and creative placemaking in the context of island communities. Mixed methods field research was conducted on the largest Setouchi Triennale island, Shodoshima. The study found that Setouchi Triennale turned the island into an art destination and it is playing a significant role in supporting the revitalization of regional culture and local tourism businesses. However, the research identified very few bottom-up initiatives.
Island Studies Journal, 2021
Many small island destinations owe their spatial character to their entanglements with stakeholders involved in the arts. Space is the dynamic outcome of complex relational processes, which makes it impossible to identify a straightforward development pathincluding when it comes to the arts and tourism. Using assemblage thinking, we scrutinize the different translocal processes influencing art-based tourism activities on Bornholm, Denmark and Naoshima, Japan. On these islands, artists, investors, residents, destination managers, creative individuals, and government officials are all involved in networks and negotiations that form complex translocal assemblages of art and tourism. The craft-artists of Bornholm took advantage of regional development policies aimed at fostering rural tourism development, and subsequently established a destination known for quality professional craftart. On Naoshima, top-down corporate investments in large-scale art developments have clashed with local stakes in rural revitalization. These top-down projects have attracted creative in-migrants who have further turned Naoshima into a hybrid space. While Bornholm's entanglement with the arts stems from the possibilities generated by its spatial evolution, Naoshima's involvement with the arts first led to reterritorialization and then creative enhancement. Both islands are, thus, distinct loci of translocal art trajectories.
Teshima - from Island Art to the Art Island
Shima - The International Journal of Research Into Island Cultures, 2020
In order to understand the art island as a new type of socially engaged community revitalisation practice it is necessary to move beyond considering art simply as an aesthetic object. This article is informed by relational aesthetics, creative geography theories and with regard to three evaluation axes concerning artwork, community and new businesses and it considers the entirety of Teshima as an integrated relational art site. Outcomes were evaluated related to the provision of top-down elite art, relational social interactive art and bottom-up community efforts provided by emerging creative businesses on the island. Research for this article revealed that elite arts effectively attract tourists but do not touching upon the deeper root of Teshima culture in locals' way of life. By contrast, relational and interactive arts and business practices have played a significant role in community revitalisation. The case study undertaken identifies the success of the large-scale relational art site as a practice. Operating under an artistic 'halo', residents' art businesses appear as powerful agencies that help Teshima to embark upon a path of self-sufficiency and revitalisation as an island supported by art.
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese government enacted several assimilation strategies to unify the nation through education reform, militarization, and modernization. As a result, Japan’s minority populations were forcibly integrated into the mainstream society and were ostensibly transformed into dutiful, loyal Japanese citizens. This assimilation saw the decline of cultural difference and the rise of discrimination for those who resisted. The Ainu, Japan’s indigenous people, witnessed wide spread decline in cultural rights and traditional life. In response, the Ainu began in the 1950s to reclaim traditional lands in Hokkaidô to create learning centers that simultaneously functioned as tourist sites for domestic and foreign travelers as well as teaching spaces for Ainu people to reconnect with their indigenous identity. Today these sites offer tourists “off center” alternatives to Japanese domestic attractions, and are intentionally set apart from mainstream Japan by the Ainu. These places create space for Ainu to construct a separate identity from their daily Japanese life. From an interview in 2010, one Ainu artist asserts that though he lives a “dualistic life”, both Japanese and Ainu, when he performs Ainu music, he “becomes” Ainu again. In this paper I explore the music being used to construct the Ainu identity in these tourists sites as both artistic expressions and intentional identity markers. In these performative spaces Ainu reclaim their indigenous heritage and demonstrate their Ainuness in modern Japan while mixing traditional and contemporary musical forms to construct modern Ainu identities.
Local and Contemporary: Community-Based Art Initiatives in Southern Ibaraki, Japan
In contrast to the nation's capital Tokyo, Japan's more distant urban areas are declining due to their aging populations, low birth rates and the migration of many of the remaining youth to more prosperous cities. Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, is no stranger to this phenomenon, with cities such as Joso and Toride struggling to rejuvenate their waning communities. In 1999, Toride city in partnership with Tokyo University of the Arts initiated the community-based Toride Art Project (TAP). TAP has been a model for community-based art projects, drawing participation from the city government, Tokyo University of the Arts and its citizens. Focusing on creating an artistic environment where local people are exposed to art in daily life and providing young artists with opportunities to exhibit their artworks, TAP has been actively trying to integrate urban life with the arts. Joso city is similarly faced with the problem of revitalising the city and creating visitor interest. As a response, the city government spearheaded an art initiative called Machinaka in 2006. By encouraging its citizens to interact with artists, and placing artworks in alternative spaces such as disused frameworks, antiquated buildings and open areas, Machinaka is challenging the way art is being displayed and appreciated. As more popularly known art festivals located in the rural areas of Japan such as Echigo Tsumari and Setouchi gain ground, community-based art initiatives have become vital in restoring interest in otherwise unknown localities. An examination of TAP and Machinaka will explore the operations, sustainability and challenges that such projects face.
Art Festivals and Rural Revitalization: Organizing the Oku-Noto Triennale in Japan
Journal of Asian Rural Studies, 2020
Organizing rural art festivals is considered an effective intervention in support of rural revitalization in the face of aging and population decline in Japan. Several studies have identified the impacts of art festivals on economic and social rural development internationally. Little research, however, has focused on the management process of such festivals. The objective of this paper is to identify and examine the management processes crucial to an arts festival’s success, especially in terms of preparation, organization and community outreach. We focus on the first edition of the Oku-Noto Triennale, which took place in Suzu City, a remote coastal area of rural Japan in 2017. The Triennale was held from September 3, 2017 to October 22, 2017 with 39 groups of artists. Data for this study was primarily obtained through qualitative interviews with Suzu’s City Office, the coordinator of theArt Front Gallery, a Tokyo-based art gallery, and community members involved in the festival. O...
Creative and Sustainable Tourism: The Case of Ainu in Japan
Symphonya. Emerging Issues in Management
Tourism is one of the world's fastest growing business sectors and a key economic contributor around the world. In Japan, Hokkaido is a popular tourist destination for both domestic and international tourists because it provides a unique natural landscape, climate, and culture due to its geographic location and the presence of the Ainu. The Ainu population are an indigenous people of Japan and Russia. Despite the Ainu are one of the oldest examples and signs of tradition and heritage, one of the biggest challenges for them to play a key role in tourism is relating to the relationship's imbalances with other members of the community. To this end, the aim of the paper is to explore the nature of relationships in the region, under the lens of stakeholder theory. We illustrate some possible avenues to restore the Ainu as protagonists of value creation processes in their own community, which might increase the benefit for tourists, sustainable performances of the area and the happiness and wellbeing of such vulnerable community.
Community-based cultural tourism: Issues, threats and opportunities
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2012
In community-centered cultural tourism, the encounter with the ‘Other’ is central and the role of professional intermediaries in facilitating this experience crucial. Tour guides are often the only ‘locals’ with whom tourists spend a considerable amount of time. These tourism service workers have considerable agency in the image-building process of the peoples and places visited. They not only shape tourist imaginaries but indirectly influence the self-image of those visited too. Using ethnographic examples from long-term fieldwork in Tanzania, this paper scrutinizes how local guides handle their public role as ambassadors of communal cultural heritage and how communities variously react to their tourismifying narratives and practices. Selected modules from the well-established and award-winning Cultural Tourism Program (CTP) are taken as an instructive case study. Findings reveal multiple issues of power and resistance that help us grasp what is at the root of many community-centered tourism conflicts and how these can be overcome.
Using Art and Artists as a Tool to Promote Tourism
Regional Formation and Development Studies, 2022
The aim of the study is to demonstrate the role of art and artists in the promotion of regional tourism in the post-pandemic period. The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have suspended or severely restricted tourism worldwide. The negative effects of the pandemic are particularly visible in the regional economy. Despite financial support from states and international organisations, including the European Union (the EU Reconstruction Fund), many regions which lived off tourism until now are struggling with great economic difficulties. The aim of the study is to show the possibility of using art and artists as tools for the promotion and economic development of the local community. These activities may increase interest among potential tourists and investors. The analysis of the possibility for using the new method of local promotion with the use of artists is enriched with reference to the effects of the local economic recovery programme implemented in 2015 and 2016 by the Otwock district. The research hypothesis is the statement that today it is necessary to search for new and unconventional means of promoting countries and regions The result of the analysis is to show possible forms of using art and artists for local promotion in the post-pandemic period.