When American participants witness the various sites and live performances during the summit, they are entering into a preexisting set of discourses and practices that are meant to unify the Japanese by connecting them to a putatively shared past that distinguishes them from outsiders (Robertson, 1997; Uzzell, 1998). In essence, American participants do not partake in a unique experience designed specifically for them during the summit but, rather, they are coming into established Japanese tourist practices and cultural ideologies (Ehrentraut, 1993; Graburn, 2010; Guichard-Anguis, 2009; Moon, 2002; Oedewald, 2009). From my experiences in Ōita as well as previous trips to Japan on the summit, the local sessions can sometimes take the form of Japanese domestic rural tourism in terms of site selection, site-seeing activities, promotional materials, and the consumption of souvenirs (omiyage), local specialties (meibutsu), or points of interest (meisho). However, Japanese domestic tourism reifies the rural as furusato (lit. old town, but also interpreted as native place) for the purposes of nostalgic remembrance through cultural consumption (Creighton, 1995, 1997, 1998; Knight, 1993, 1994, 1997; Moon, 2002; Oedewald, 2009).
The word furusato does not denote a real place, but an ontological symbol of collective Japanese origin. Indeed, nostalgia is not created in the past but is an affective longing and interpretation of the past in a present moment (Robertson, 1988, 1995, 1997, 1998). For the Japanese, furusato signifies abiding social relations as grounded in the rural communitas that thrived in a pre-modern, pre-western Japan. Essentially, furusato is the traditional Gemeinschaft
from which Japan’s unique cultural identity developed as counterpoised to the urban and
contemporary Gesellschaft where most Japanese find themselves today. Thus, not only are many contemporary Japanese disconnected from the past according to this discourse, they are
disconnected from their true way of being. All that was modern became seen as artificial, westernized and impersonal, while the rural as past evoked sentimental feelings for communal values, nature, and an ineffable Japanese essence (Moon, 2002). While not all Japanese articulate furusato in this way, tourist agencies, businesses and popular national ideologies have
constructed rural Japan as the locus by which this longing can be ameliorated, but such longing is not grounded in a specific space but, rather, the socially constructed idyllic rural countryside (inaka) where the furusato can be found (Creighton, 1997; Ivy, 1995; Kelly, 1990, Robertson, 1995; Satō, 2002). Local sessions in rural areas further stress the differences between the Japanese and participants because it is in such areas that a more authentic, or traditional, way of Japanese life is purported to exist. Yet, such a mentalité obfuscates how diverse local practices have often been utilized in the formation of the nation-state and subsequent national identity (Anderson, 2006; Fujitani, 1996; Hobsbawm & Ranger, 2012; Schnell, 2005; Sheiner, 1998; Vlastos, 1998). Moreover, it positions individuals living in such areas as allochronic, existing outside of time.
In essence, domestic rural tourism, also known as furusato tourism, in Japan was established for urban Japanese to purchase a sense of heritage and connection to the past, whether perceived as real or imaginary. The origins of furusato tourism can be traced back to Japan’s post high-growth period of the 1970s when travel agencies and major department stores began promoting rural Japan as a spatial and temporal site before Western (i.e. American) influence and modernization (Creighton, 1998). This, in turn, originated from a genuine sense of
loss among Japanese who felt that the material benefits of economic growth and Westernization had come at the cost of Japan’s environment, culture, and sense of community (Creighton, 1997; Ivy, 1995; Robertson, 1995, 1998; Yoshimi, 2003). This discourse of economic development at the cost of cultural identity is a recurring theme in questions of Japanese identity and one often defined by a sense of cultural recuperation by returning to the unadulterated, immutable rural. Yet, America’s occupation of Japan after World War II along with high economic growth policies (kōdo seichō) to reach parity with the West, irrevocably altered the rural lifeways and traditions that furusato tourism promote, making an unadulterated Japan impossible to find (Ivy, 1995; Robertson, 1988).
During my previous trips to the summit, I have encountered Americans that have espoused similar views regarding the authenticity of Japanese culture as grounded in the countryside. In asking about his local session choice for the 2015 summit, Dr. Perry remarked that he chose his particular “homestay as it was out of the city and as far away from the main venue as possible.” He also mentioned, “I feel it is important to have homestays in more rural areas to learn about culture and not be exposed to the city-life, which in many cases reflects the culture of the world, but not necessarily the culture of the country being visited.” Mariko shared similar sentiments while also situating her views within Japanese popular culture. She stated that “I chose Saiki because I wanted to be in a place that was more like the countryside, with lots of traditional style Japanese housing, and rice fields. It reminded me of the scenery in Hayao Miyazaki's Tonari no Totoro.” While such sentiments reflect what my informants consider an important and authentic cultural exchange experience, the idea that rural Japan is somehow more pure or indicative of Japanese culture proves problematic for a Japan-America cultural exchange program.
For Jennifer Robertson (1997) and Markus Oedewald (2009) rural tourism is a means of assuaging an ontological anxiety stemming from an influx of foreigners and foreign ideas into Japan as well as vanishing rural villages. Thus, cultural recuperation as found in the rural is predicated on a sense of loss (Ivy, 1995) or, more accurately, what Margaret Hillenbrand (2010) calls de’ja disparu: the sense of something already having disappeared. In other words, what defines the Japanese is perceived as under threat and in danger of vanishing because of increased Westernization. Thereof, rural areas become bastions of lost traditions that are rediscovered by domestic Japanese tourists (Creighton, 1997; Ivy, 1995; Moon, 2002; Robertson, 1995).
Moreover, the rural provides ontological security in that it is poised as unchanging and, thereof, offers a stable framework by which a narrative of self-identity can be composed (Giddens, 1991). Rural tradition is therefore situated as the opposite of Japanese modernity whereby constructed patterns of an imaginary past, as derived from real historical encounters with the United States, have become detached from their previous contexts and reworked in the present to resolve current anxieties about cultural loss and identity (Hobsbawm & Ranger 2012; Oedewald, 2009).
The activities that American participants engage in, either as part of the tours by the summit or with host families, are not different in terms of their ritualization and importance to the Japanese themselves, but are reliant on a self-other division in which the self is inextricably bound to notions of culture and tradition that have emerged as a result of Japan’s postwar recovery (Arlt, 2006; Ivy, 1995). As mentioned earlier, rural areas in Japan have historically been utilized in constructing a cultural imaginary or imagined community to provide credence for the nation state (Anderson, 2006). Rural spaces, and even vestiges of village life in urban centers, have remained powerful symbols of Japanese heritage. Summit participants enter into such spaces during some of the local sessions as they are introduced to residents who practice
traditional crafts or are afforded opportunities to partake in traditional activities. However, an emphasis on tradition and cultural heritage is derived from a shared imagined past before Western influence. How these spaces are figured in the cultural imaginary of the Japanese positions summit participants in an awkward position as Japanese cultural identity, that is, a sense of self, rests on an oppositional and distinct American other. This is best expressed in nihonjinron which has served to define what constitutes Japanese culture through its unique and regional qualities vis-à-vis the United States.