Selling the Naval Ports : Modern-Day Maizuru and Tourism

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  • 軍港都市を売り出せ : 近現代の舞鶴とツーリズム

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The four district naval bases (chinjufu) of the former Imperial Japanese Navy developed throughout the modern period into “naval cities” (gunkō toshi). These continue to function as bases for regional divisions of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), which today continues to utilize some former naval facilities. If we unravel the history of Japanese tourism to naval cities, there is evidence that the navy was used as a resource to shape tourist practices; naval tourism can therefore be said to have existed before World War II. In contemporary Japan, the navy and former naval bases continue to be utilized as tourism resources in various forms of contents tourism. Previous research about naval and naval base tourism has been limited because it tends to focus on short time periods. In order to understand the current nature of such tourism, however, we need to adopt a long-term perspective spanning the establishment of the bases to the present. This article looks at Maizuru, a city in northern Kyoto prefecture that has experienced the greatest tourist growth over recent years among Japan’s naval cities. It traces changes in how the navy has been utilized as a tourism resource, as well as attitudes towards the navy, from the 1900s to the present. Through an analysis of guidebooks and postcards, it reveals how pre-World War II disarmament was a turning point in the emergence of the navy as a tourism resource. The article then identifies three distinct periods in Maizuru tourism in the postwar: a focus on war repatriates, the “discovery” of redbrick naval buildings, and the foregrounding of the navy. It argues that the Maizuru tourism industry only consciously utilized the navy from the latter half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Further, it is argued that the shift towards heritage classification and development of contents tourism based on online gaming and anime can be understood as having emerged out of this context.

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