Japanese Popular Culture and Contents Tourism – Introduction

Abstract

This introduction to the special issue on ‘Japanese Popular Culture and Contents Tourism’ places the four articles in theoretical and contextual perspective. Contents tourism is a theoretical concept that originated in Japan. Its closest counterpart in the English-language literature at present is film-induced tourism or media-induced tourism. Contents tourism is placed within the theoretical context of cultural tourism and the rationale for its focus on narratives, characters and other creative elements over media format (for example, cinema) is explained. The article then gives a brief chronological overview of how contents tourism has worked its way into the official language of government economic and tourism policy up to and including 2013.