Hawaiʻi in Japanese Tourist Imaginary: Wedding, Hula, and Power Spot

Abstract

Hawaiʻi has been one of the most popular overseas destinations for Japanese tourists since the liberalization of foreign travel in Japan in 1964. This dissertation aims to explore how Japanese people have imagined and performed “Hawaiʻi” in their own terms. Additionally, the purpose of this project is to analyze the role of gender in constructing different modes of Japanese imaginations of Hawaiʻi such as akogare (dreaming) and iyashi (healing) toward the islands. The working of gender in tourist imaginations is analyzed through case studies on tourism whose main subjects are women: Japanese wedding tourism to Hawai‘i, hula tourism in Fukushima, Japan, and Japanese power spot tourism to Hawai‘i. The data for this project was collected in Japan and Hawaiʻi through archival research on Japanese tourist media such as guidebooks and magazines, interviews with a wide range of people from staff in the tourist industry to local residents of Hawaiʻi, and participant observations of performances for tourists. Japanese people have understood Hawaiʻi from their perspectives and performed it for their own purposes rather than passively importing images of Hawaiʻi from Hawaiʻi or the United States. These imaginations have changed over time according to the socio-political conditions in Japan, Hawaiʻi, and the United States including Japan’s changing gender norms. Social expectations on women and the change in women’s social status in Japan have particularly affected Japanese women’s tourist desires. At the same time, the Japanese tourist industry has been imbricated with neocolonialism in Hawaiʻi by consuming Hawaiian places, people, and culture outside Native Hawaiian contexts. These findings indicate the need for the continuing effort of the Japanese tourist industry to negotiate with local and Native Hawaiian communities and of Japanese tourists to be more aware of their tourist gazes on Hawaiʻi.