Summer Research Reports: Jaclyn Zhou on Anime Fan Tourism
BCNM is thrilled to support our students in their summer research. Read about Jaclyn Zhou on Anime Fan Tourism!
A BCNM Summer Research Award enabled me to travel to Japan this summer for a short fieldwork trip to advance my dissertation research. My dissertation investigates anime fan tourism, defined as a variety of activities undertaken by Japanese and international anime fans whose touristic practices are shaped by their attachments to certain anime texts, characters, and settings.
My fieldwork this summer focused on tourism in Hokkaido (the northernmost prefecture of Japan) related to the anime and manga series Golden Kamuy (manga 2014-2022; anime 2018-ongoing). Golden Kamuy is a popular and award-winning series that is well known for its Hokkaido setting, its invocation of historical events and figures from the turn of the 20th century, and its inclusion of Ainu characters and culture. The Ainu are an indigenous group associated primarily with Hokkaido. Even as the Ainu have faced enormous cultural loss and political repression since the colonization of Hokkaido by the Empire of Japan in 1869, Ainu-related cultural tourism has long been a significant part of Hokkaido’s place-branding.
Golden Kamuy has had a massive imprint on Hokkaido tourism traffic and place branding, particularly since the debut of the anime in 2018. It is arguably ushering in a renewed interest in Ainu culture, channeling thousands of fans to sites we might otherwise have called cultural, historical or even ethnic tourism, such as the National Ainu Museum in Shiraoi. Though my chapter focuses on a specific tourism campaign, I wanted to learn more about the Golden Kamuy tourism ecology in general, and particularly the ways in which fan tourism (or “content tourism,” as it is called in Japan in somewhat more marketing terms) intersects with other tourism practices, infrastructures, and pathways. To do so, I visited “pilgrimage” sites scattered throughout the prefecture, from a military history museum with a Golden Kamuy cosplay corner to a historic prison complex that serves as a crucial setting in an action-packed arc.
As a longtime anime fan, I thank BCNM for its generous support as I continue to channel my fannish feels into what I hope will be new insights on the operations of fiction-inspired leisure travel in the construction of racial and national identity and the mediation of history.