Part of the reason that so much coverage of the city where I live errs on the side of optimism is that Tokyo remains lodged in the postwar American imagination as a place of sophistication and wealth, good taste and cultural authenticity, with a reputation for deferential hospitality. Never mind that this was the calculated effect of bilateral postwar public relations campaigns, a boom in exportable middlebrow culture, and fearmongering about Japanese industrial dominance. Now, some eighty years after the American invasion, Tokyo is accessible to anyone with a couple thousand dollars. Just as, in the popular telling, Mexico City is an oasis for digital nomads, or Yiwu is a modern-day Alexandria—a cosmopolitan shipping hub, attracting dealers in durables and Third World middlemen—the travel-brochure-as-think piece only comes as a surprise to those who have managed to remain innocent of a century of complete transfiguration. It is perhaps unintentional that the authors of such pieces suggest, always in the mildest, most consumer-friendly terms, that calling budget tourism down on Tokyo is the last hope for a country burnt to the filter economically, culturally, and demographically. Japan’s economy never regained the heights of the asset price bubble of the late 1980s; wage increases have all but vanished for the past three “lost decades,” and the number of citizens has plummeted over the past fifteen years (the population is estimated to become half its current number by 2100). Hence, every tourist delivered to Haneda or Narita counts, whether they are purchasing frocks on Omotesando, pornographic manga in Akihabara, or fried dough at the FamilyMart.
Tokyo’s race toward peak tourism hasn’t been all bad. In this massive city, with an economy surpassing that of almost every country in Europe and an area of around five thousand square miles, the ebb and flow of tens of millions of tourists can be better accommodated than in more boutique tourist traps abroad. The real estate market has received a modest jolt from developers buying up property for hotels, and tight restrictions on short-term rentals introduced six years ago have saved Tokyo from the market distortion of cities like Florence, where Airbnb and predatory landlords have been blamed for an affordability crisis.
Still, mass tourism is as demoralizing and demeaning here as anywhere. Tourists disrupt the rhythm of the city, agents of minor turmoil set loose in familiar spaces. There may be no way to describe these transgressions without sounding like a crank—I know it is not maliciousness on their part—but I have lived in Japan long enough that the surprise of encountering a broad, looming American, with their transparent expressions and flashy Lycra pants, stuns me out of the daze into which the city has lulled me. I am rankled by offenses invisible to outsiders. While part of me sympathizes with the family of sightseers blundering their way onto a crowded Yamanote Line train with their suitcases or the young women filming TikToks in the aisles of a Ministop, my Tokyo training means I know infringement of its unwritten rules when I see it. This is a city that expects people to suffer in peculiar ways. You would need to live here to know that using a bicycle bell is anathema when you can simply squeeze the brakes by way of warning. There is no way to explain that the cement curbs around the overgrown green spaces carved out of the sidewalk at many intersections are not for sitting. I couldn’t say for sure why the rumble of the plastic wheels of rolling suitcases is more frightening than jackhammers.
Apart from making the city uglier and less orderly, the tourist is a reminder of an unhappy history in which the native population has been perpetually relegated to a vassal class. In recent years, the concept of omotenashi—basic hospitality, reconfigured as essentially Japanese—has been popularized by domestic tourism boosters as a national responsibility akin to wartime thrift. As a result, the tourist acts as though they are among staff members in a grand resort or actors in a stage show; the whole hospitable nation is at their service. (It can be funny to stand on an Asakusa corner and watch American or European tourists asking for directions from harried but unfailingly courteous office drones, Chinese tourists, or old men staggering toward the off-track betting parlor.) The tourist reminds the citizen that, as far as the future of the city is concerned, they are an afterthought.
by Dylan Levi King, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: Yue Zhang
