Tourism Development in Okinawa: Spatial and Temporal Patterns

Abstract

Okinawa Prefecture maintains the distinction of being Japan's southernmost prefectural division. It is also the only prefecture that consists entirely of islands. Okinawa's multi-island geography presents problems for the promotion and analysis of tourism that this thesis seeks to address. The thesis first surveys Okinawa's economic and political changes within the last century, under different regimes, from Imperial Japanese to United States civilian administration, reverting to Japanese control in 1972. It then traces the prefecture's four ten-year development plans, and the fifth development plan to begin in 2012. These development plans emphasized the use of tourism development as a method to decrease the economic disparity between mainland Japan and Okinawa. This thesis presents a new evolutionary model of spatial and temporal changes in Okinawa Prefecture's tourism across its many islands since 1972. Specifically, the study examines the development of tourism infrastructure such as highways, bridges, airports, flight routes, and resorts across the islands of the prefecture. The thesis maps the spread of flights and resorts to more islands over time and space. This research considers the applicability of existing literature on tourism development, tourism life-cycle models, and tourism geography to a multi-island destination, and attempts to conceptualize a new approach in mapping tourism development across an archipelago.