Regarding Tourism Afield in Japan and its Regions

Recently I have heard that Yukichi FUKUZAWA is coming back into the limelight. He wrote "Encouragement of learning", one of the best, most impressive pieces of literature I have read. Especially his spirit of independence, as in his famous quote, "Without independent individually, a country cannot be independent itself", resounds in these somewhat chaotic times.

Particularly, I believe even more than before that each region needs a "spirit of independence" within the present-day economic and social systems of Japan. Fiscal resources and authority must be overhauled to re-align our government from a centralized one to a more regionally-based one. Thus, we must proceed in earnest to build an infrastructure conducive to regional economic independence. We must remove ourselves from the "public works" mentality of stimulating regional economy and promote industry rooted in the regions themselves.

As Chairman of the Committee for Tourism in Nippon Keidanren, I have seen creative solutions that further encourage my thinking along these lines. For example, the Tsumari District of Niigata Prefecture held the "Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial" which deployed more than 350 works of art in rural mountain communities, rice fields, vacant houses and closed schools. Last summer they received more than 37,000 tourists at their festival over 50 days. Sleepy little towns were coming back to life. Kosaka, a town in Akita Prefecture, which was notorious for its pollution, is now a pioneer in the field of industrial tourism. More than 80,000 tourists visit a year there to see the Meiji-era mine and its historical old town. Neither town is well connected to the transportation network, so they do not have good conditions for tourists with traditional concepts of tourism. Even so, we have much to learn from them in the way they make maximum use of local original characteristics to attract numbers of tourists. The similarities between the two towns are their ability to create original ideas and plan apart from old traditional concepts, the active participation of the local citizens, and the support from their local government.

The solution for economic independence is not only in tourism. I believe that there are solutions suitable as answers for each region. The regeneration of agriculture, for example. The important thing is to find ideas hidden in each region and combine them with the local spirit. We need to rethink the position of national and regional forces in such terms and provide an environment in which local authorities can play a more active role in their economy.