Japan's anime tourism: A blend of cash and chaos

As visitors mob locations shown in their favorite works, some wonder whether the industry isn't overdoing it

When Liu Chenyu and Ji Xiaotian arrived in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, for their honeymoon early this summer, the Great Buddha and Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, two well-known tourist spots in the area, weren’t what they wanted to see.

Their destination was a railway crossing near Kamakura High School — the setting for a classic scene in the mega-hit animation series “Slam Dunk.”

On that particular day, dozens of tourists, mostly fellow Chinese like themselves, had formed a crowd there to take selfies while posing like the lead character, Hanamichi Sakuragi, who stands behind the school’s track with a bag on his shoulder, facing the ocean.

Liu wanted to take a selfie, too, but eventually gave up.

“Too many people,” the 25-year-old newlywed complained with a sigh.

Japan has become a magnet for young tourists from Asia on “pilgrimage” tours to the most famous scenes in Japanese anime. And with the 2020 Olympics approaching, experts believe the number will continue to rise as tourists combine visits to anime-inspiring locations with the games themselves.

Tourists take photos next to a railway crossing near Kamakura High School that appeared in the hit Japanese anime "Slam Dunk." | COURTESY OF GUAN HUIWEN

According to a Japan Tourism Agency survey in 2018, 4.6 percent of about 140,000 responding tourists in Japan said they had visited anime- or movie-related locations. If applied to the record 31.19 million visitors Japan received last year, that would translate to about 1.43 million people in that segment of the industry.

“Foreign anime fans can easily collect and share details” about Japanese animation on the internet, including the places certain scenes were based on, said Takeshi Okamoto, associate professor at Kindai University in Osaka Prefecture and an expert on anime tourism. “It has become one of the prime motives for these foreign travelers to visit Japan.”

Seichi junrei (pilgrimage to a sacred site), was one of Japan’s buzzwords in 2016 when tourists of all types thronged to locations shown in “Your Name.” and other animated series and movies.

Medical students Zhao Chuning and Quan Xiaohang, both 26, came from Zhejiang province in southeast China for a graduation trip. Their primary objective: visit the places depicted in “Your Name.,” including a stairway that leads to Suga Shrine in Shinjuku, Tokyo — the place where the two main characters find each other at the end of the film.

“The scene in the movie is so impressive,” Zhao said. “That’s why we decided to check it out.”

According to a ranking compiled by Chinese tourism website Mafengwo, other popular anime destinations include Tokyo One Piece Tower, a theme park in Tokyo Tower based on “One Piece”; the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in Koganei, western Tokyo, which contains historical structures believed to be depicted in Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Spirited Away,” and places in the capital that appear in Makoto Shinkai’s film “5 Centimeters per Second,” such as Gotokuji Station on the Odakyu Line and Ueno Park’s iconic cherry tree.

The Anime Tourism Association also compiles an annual list of 88 locations in Japan to visit based on votes from fans at home and abroad. For the 2019 version, which was based on last year’s poll, spots that made it onto the list for the first time include Hakata Station in Fukuoka, featured in “Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens,” and the Toei Animation Museum in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward, which has works from the studio’s collection on display.

Such museums are drawing more visitors. One of the most popular is the Fujiko F Fujio Museum in Kawasaki, which highlights the iconic cartoon character Doraemon, who is widely popular in China.

“The proportion of foreign tourists has been gradually increasing since the opening of the museum in 2011,” said Taisuke Toudou of the Kawasaki Municipal Government, which operates the facility. The museum received nearly 86,000 foreign visitors in 2018 who accounted for 20 percent of its traffic.

Melody Cheung, a 24-year-old office worker from Hong Kong, rushed to the museum after she got off the plane at Narita.

“I really like it,” she exclaimed at the museum’s cafe, showing smartphone pictures of her Doraemon latte art and toast imprinted with math equations, mimicking the character’s “memory bread” tricks.

Japan is eagerly cashing in on the trend to sustain its struggling economy.

In January, the government extended its eased visa requirements to Chinese university students and graduates so they can be counted as single-entry individual tourists, meaning they are no longer obliged to provide documents to verify their financial standing.

The new policy will benefit 25 million to 30 million young adults, giving a boost to anime-themed tourism because this generation grew up on a steady diet of Japanese anime, Kindai University’s Okamoto said.

“We got it pretty smoothly,” med school graduate Zhao said, referring to the new visa policy. “We only had to provide the graduation certificate and some other documents to apply for it.”

While the tourist dollars are welcome news for local economies, the surge in visitors has created a problem of its own: “over-tourism.”

In March, the Kamakura Municipal Assembly passed an ordinance to raise travelers’ awareness of Japanese etiquette in public places. Actions such as taking photos on roads and eating while walking can be troubling behavior that visitors should avoid, it stipulates, though violators won’t be punished.

During the Golden Week holidays, Kamakura and Enoshima Electric Railway (Enoden) initiated a provisional measure that allows residents to be prioritized over tourists when using the small private train line. Enoden trains stop at the crossing depicted in “Slam Dunk” and at other sightseeing spots.

Under the policy, residents are able to board the trains ahead of tourists if they show their IDs.

“It’s good to have inbound anime ‘pilgrims’ here and let them enjoy different regional cultures,” says Kindai’s Okamoto. However, “strategies to deal with over-tourism are necessary.”

(Source: JT)

Pokemon: 'Ash Ketchum failing for 22 years taught me being a loser is OK'

We're told to never give up on our dreams - but grafting for 22 years? That might be pushing things for most of us.

Not for Ash Ketchum though, who this weekend became a Pokemon Master in a new episode of the Pokemon anime.

Yes, obviously Ash is a cartoon character and Pokemon aren't real, but for many fans of the franchise it's a big moment.

He's been plugging away at being the very best ("like no one ever was") since 1997.

In the latest episode, he won the Alola Pokemon league, despite the fact that throughout much of his adventures, he's been quite bad at training Pokemon - losing every other championship he's ever entered.

'The lesson is to pick yourself back up'
But that - and Pikachu, obviously - was always part of the appeal.

"Pokemon was great escapism for me but it also taught me that not necessarily being the best, that was OK too," 27-year-old Jake Saunders from Bromborough tells BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat.

"Putting it bluntly, it was like being a loser is OK. The important lesson is to pick yourself back up, roll with the punches and keep going."

"It's taken Ash 22 years and obviously that's a lot of people's youth," says Jake

And Laura Kate Dale, who's 28 and from Surrey, says Ash proved to her that you could be "still worthy of praise" even if you failed every single time.

"He was always the underdog, half the times he won gym badges it was because he did something nice, not because he was the best at fighting," she tells Newsbeat.

"There was something really beautiful about seeing that growing up - that it's OK if you're not the strongest, the most qualified, as long as you keep trying to be the best person you can be, the nicest you can be to people around you."

Pokemon told 'relatable stories in digestible ways'
While it's easy to dismiss the franchise as just the game that had us all rummaging around in the park for a stray Nidoqueen or rogue Vulpix in 2016 when Pokemon Go was released, the cartoon helped people like Kate and Jake deal with serious issues in real life.

Kate says an episode in which Ash met a Charmander (small, red, dragon-ish, tail on fire - you know the one) which had been abandoned by its original trainer has stuck with her to this day.

"At the time, I was a child dealing with the fact that my biological dad had left and didn't seem to care the way he was supposed to," she says.

"If you keep trying at the things you want to do, they're attainable," says Laura, about Ash's Pokemon journey

"The episode's story was about learning to move on and be OK after someone who was supposed to look after you just vanishes - it was really tasteful in dealing with something that as a child was really difficult to comprehend.

"That's what the show was really good at. It told stories about relatable themes in digestible ways for children."

'A wonderful piece of closure'
But those children are now adults and Jake (a self-confessed "man-child" but in the process of buying a house and "juggling things quite successfully") says seeing Ash achieve his dreams reminds him of what's happening for him.

"I think I was around eight or nine-years-old when I started watching it and it's almost in parallel to where I am in my own life now," he says.

"I think a lot of young people will be able to relate to that.

"Looking at the show, it's a wonderful piece of closure for his character arc. It's brought everything full circle with all these people who have been watching the show since it began."

(Source: BBC)

Angelina Jolie's Breadwinner spotlights Afghan girls' plight

First, Angelina Jolie directed a film about the effect of war on a young girl in Cambodia, First They Killed my Father. Now, she has produced a film set in Afghanistan, saying at the premiere: "There are few countries in the world where it's harder to be a young girl."

The Breadwinner, made by Irish film-maker Nora Twomey, is an animation written, produced and directed by women, and adapted from the Canadian bestseller by author Deborah Ellis.

It features the voice of teenage Canadian actor Saara Chaudry as Parvana, an 11-year-old growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Parvana's father is wrongly arrested

When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy to save her mother and sisters from starvation, as women are unable to leave their house without a male relative.

Although it's a story for children, it doesn't disguise the details of life under the Taliban - including what happens when a woman is caught in the street without a burka.

Parvana dresses as a boy to try to get food for her family

After its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the movie was nominated for Best Animation at this year's Oscars, with Jolie, its executive producer, urging a younger generation attending the festival to promote tolerance by "getting to know people in your neighbourhood who have different backgrounds".

"Diversity is the most wonderful part of our world," she said.

Twomey had already been nominated twice for Oscars, for her work on Irish animations Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells, when she was approached to direct The Breadwinner.

"The idea of Parvana started to rise within me," she says.

"You don't get many stories like this for the screen, particularly with animations, and Deborah Ellis has a way of writing for a young adult which is very unique - she doesn't talk down to children, she writes in a very matter-of-fact way, and her stories are based upon her experiences in refugee camps in Pakistan during the Taliban era."

Director Nora Twomey didn't want the film to come across as didactic

The other great help, according to Twomey, was Jolie, who came in very early on when the writer, Anita Doron, was working on a draft of the script.

"She had more than a decade of experience with Afghanistan. She supports the education of girls there. She also encouraged me to employ as many Afghan voice actors as possible. And she helped me understand the way in which the world has changed since 2001 and how we in the West view these parts of the globe," says Twomey.

The film-makers also employed Afghan artists and musicians. And the film has been translated into Dari and Pashto, the languages of Afghanistan. The film was screened in Kabul before the Oscars.

"But I don't want young people to be hit over the head with a 'message' film about what girls face in some societies. In many ways I hope the character of Parvana transcends gender," says Twomey.

The story had a big impact on the young voice actress who played Parvana

"She's looking at a very serious situation in a very childlike way that I think both girls and boys can relate to. It's a universal film like that - even as an Irish woman, the conflict in Northern Ireland when I was growing up gave me an outlook on the complexity of war and the vulnerability of peace, and how we should cherish it where we have it."

Saara Chaudry, who was not much older than the character of Parvana when she played her, says The Breadwinner "opened my eyes to my privileges".

"I have food, water, education and healthcare that I take for granted and yet other girls around the world don't have access. I was nine years old when I first read the books and I loved Parvana for her determination and her optimism, I just wanted to have her spirit.

"Since playing her, I have been passionate about trying to help other young girls around the world even if it's just by donating online to charities or spreading awareness, in whatever small way girls my age can help. It's just hard to hear of other girls facing problems I could never dream of."

But Twomey says: "I don't think The Breadwinner offers any easy answers to the situation of women in Afghanistan, and nor should it.

The director says Parvana's story is one of hope

"The story is a symptom of a situation which has become ingrained in that society. And it's from generations of hurt. You can't just come in and impose what you think, you have to empower those young women to transform their own society.

"Right now, standing up to those societal restrictions, you are asking a great deal of women and families and fathers who love their daughters, who wouldn't want them to lose their lives over a principle. Standing up would have an impact on you, your family and your community.

"These are things we don't take lightly. We just provide a character in the film who is an embodiment of hope. And hope is what we need to hang on to."

(Source: BBC)

The evolution of the Japanese animation industry

In recent years, Japanese animation has become popular around the world. Industry veteran Yamaguchi Yasuo, who has been involved in anime production for half a century, traces the history of Japanese animation, from its birth to today, on Nippon.com. Read on: 

The Dawn of Japanese Anime
Japan began producing animation in 1917—still the age of silent films—through trial-and-error drawing and cutout animation techniques, based on animated shorts from France and the United States. People started talking about the high quality of Japanese “manga films.” But Japanese anime were costlier to produce than Western animations and were overshadowed by the popularity of Disney cartoons. They faced an uphill battle from the start.

One of the things that helped them find their niche was anime production for public relations and publicity campaigns by public institutions. Domestic anime production was beginning to develop a small but solid foundation when Tokyo and the surrounding area suffered catastrophic damage in the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923. The anime industry was forced to start over from scratch.
The industry continued to struggle, unable to respond adequately to successive innovations, including the appearance of the first talkies in 1929 and color film in 1932. During this period, Ōfuji Noburō won international acclaim for Bagudajō no tōzoku (The Thief of Baguda Castle), which he made by cutting and pasting chiyogami (Japanese colored paper). His film is remembered as the first to make its presence felt outside Japan.

Many other promising anime artists appeared one after another, but with war approaching, goods were in extremely short supply as the national mood turned militaristic. Even film was not easy to get hold of. It was in this context that the first full-length theatrical film in the history of Japanese anime was released. Momotarō: Umi no shinpei (Momotarō’s Divine Sea Warriors, B&W, 74 minutes), produced by the navy, came out just before the end of the war. This was a propagandistic film designed to lift morale and commitment to the war effort.

Soon after the war ended, the General Headquarters of the Allied occupation (GHQ) brought together 100 anime artists in the bombed-out ruins of Tokyo to form the Shin Nihon Dōgasha, or New Japan Animation Company. The aim was to make it easier to spread occupation policies by having the artists produce anime in praise of democracy. However, many of the artists were fiercely independent and territorial, and the company was riven by disagreements from the outset. The project strayed off course, and eventually disbanded. Even GHQ threw in the towel. It seemed the switch from militarism to democracy was not going to be so easy.

The Start of Tōei Dōga (Now Tōei Animation)
It was during these years, as Japan began to recover from the disastrous war, that Ōkawa Hiroshi, president of the Tōei film company, saw Disney’s Snow White (1937). He was overwhelmed by the gorgeous color of the film. In 1956, he built a modern studio—a white-walled palace with air conditioning, as people called it—and founded Tōei Dōga (now Tōei Animation). His ambition: to become “the Disney of the East.”

Tōei Dōga’s first full-length film, Hakujaden, was released in October 1958.
It was based on a Chinese tale. Miyazaki Hayao, who saw the f
ilm during a break from studying for his college entrance exams,
was astonished by its quality. © Tōei

Tōei Dōga chose Hakujaden (The Legend of the White Snake) as their first film. They sent a research team to the United States and invited several experts to travel to Japan as mentors. As a result, they were able to master the Disney system of “assembly-line production.” They hired a team of new employees who honed their skills while they produced the film under the supervision of veteran animators like Mori Yasuji and Daikuhara Akira.

With jobs hard to come by in the postwar Japan, the new company was able to attract an outstanding team of young talent happy to work for relatively low starting salaries. It was a typical labor-intensive company. However, as the government’s drive to double people’s incomes started to take effect, wages shot up and the company soon found itself in the red. Attendances at the World Masterpiece Fairy Tale Anime Series, a “manga festival” held every year during the springtime school holidays (and, in later years, during the summer vacation as well), were falling. The company’s financial future was uncertain. The labor movement was also gaining momentum, bringing frequent labor disputes and labor-management clashes. Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao, now with Studio Ghibli, began their careers at Tōei Dōga (Takahata entered the company in 1959, Miyazaki in 1963). Both were active members of the labor union, Takahata serving as vice-chairman and Miyazaki as secretary-general.

Tetsuwan Atomu: The First Japanese Television Anime
On January 1, 1963, Fuji Television broadcast a 30-minute animated television series called Tetsuwan Atomu (better known in English as Astro Boy). The show became a surprise hit, starting an anime boom and a period of intense competition for TV audiences. The success marked the beginning of a new kind of anime industry.

The low franchise fees paid to the studio for Tetsuwan Atomu (created by Tezuka Osamu, the president of Mushi Production) meant that the company needed to come up with a way to drastically cut production costs. They ruthlessly cut the number of drawings, trimmed the number of lines in each image to the bare minimum, and took to using more still images. They worked to make the storylines quicker and devised clever ways of simulating movement, from sound effects to the dialogue.

The company offset its losses with copyright income—licensing the rights for the Atom character to their corporate sponsor, confectionary maker Meiji Seika, who used the character on a popular brand of chocolates. When the company still posted a loss, Tezuka decided to invest his own income from manga publishing. It was a generous gesture typical of the man they called the “god of manga.”

The Wilderness Years and the Appearance of a Blockbuster
Merchandising became entrenched as part of the basic business model for all the television anime that followed. The most popular genre dealt with science fiction and space, followed by shows about girls with magical powers. In 1968, the popular baseball-themed Kyojin no hoshi (Star of the Giants) began, followed in 1969 by the first episode of the family drama Sazae-san, which continues to this day as the longest-running series in anime history. But not every series could be a winner, and with a glut on the market competition intensified.

At Tōei Dōga, which continued to run a deficit due to high production costs, labor-management relations deteriorated, leading to a lockout and layoffs in the summer of 1972. Mushi Production went bankrupt in 1973 (although the labor union later took over from Tezuka, the founder, and has led the company until the present day). The anime industry went into recession. Behind this recession were larger economic issues, such as the Nixon Shock in 1971 and the 1973 oil crisis.

When an animated television series ended, the staff was disbanded. Tōei’s seniority-based employment system fell apart, and they switched to a system of performance-based pay. They were required to change to a corporate style that was more compatible with the shrewd programming policies of television stations.

Amidst the recessionary mood of these bleak years, a new work appeared that challenged the idea of anime as simply children’s entertainment. Uchū senkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato), released as a TV series in 1974 and a feature film in 1977, became a social phenomenon, tremendously popular with millions of young adults.

The Proliferation of “Japanimation” Fans
Meanwhile, Japanese television anime began to become popular among young people overseas. In some countries, adults rejected it, calling it “Japanimation” and criticizing it as cheap, violent, and sexually explicit. When Kyandi kyandi (Candy Candy) was broadcast in France, young girls were glued to the television screen. Some parents resented this, claiming their children were being corrupted by a strange culture from the Orient. Nevertheless, the anime fan base continues to grow around the world, mostly among young people. Some fans even wonder, “Why can’t our country create works that surpass Japanimation?” Today, “Japanimation” means something quite different from the negative connotations it used to have.

Although the number of television anime gradually recovered after the collapse of the bubble economy in 1992 and the economic slump of the 1990s, the industry as a whole has never recovered the pomp of its golden years. A slump in advertising revenue, dwindling birthrates, and the popularity of alternative forms of entertainment like video games and cell phones have led to sluggish prime time ratings and a decline in the number of anime since the peak in 2006. Although there are fewer anime on the main commercial stations today, other channels have remained anime-friendly: TV Tokyo chief among them, followed by local and regional stations, satellite channels, and other communication systems. Unfortunately, these smaller channels tend to have smaller budgets than the main stations, with predictable consequences for production costs.

The Japanese anime industry is at a turning point. The reality is that many anime production companies are struggling, and have become little more than subcontractors for television stations. The need to improve the status of these companies is foremost among the many issues that need to be addressed if the industry is to continue to develop new talent for the future.