This paper focuses on U.S. military personnel on leave who traveled to Japan during the Vietnam War, reevaluating their economic and social impacts on Japanese society, as well as exploring why this phenomenon has been marginalized in the history of tourism in Japan.
First, it distinguishes between two types of leave personnel: (1) those visiting Japan through the U.S. military’s Rest and Recuperation (R&R) program, and (2) crew members of the Seventh Fleet docking in Japan for leave. Using the example of Atami City, which saw a significant influx of leave personnel at the time, this paper illustrates how the local government and the tourism industry established a system to accept them.
Furthermore, it demonstrates that local anti-war and peace organizations in Atami protested against (1) the spread of infectious diseases, including venereal diseases, associated with the influx of leave personnel, and (2) Atami's role as a rest area supporting the US military's war effort. As a result, the issue of American soldiers on leave developed into a political matter debated in the Diet.
Finally, the paper analyzes how the Japanese government and tourism industry justified the acceptance of leave personnel in response to criticisms by opponents. This paper focus on the rhetoric aimed at severing the intrinsic connection between war and tourism embodied in the presence of leave personnel, revealing how this severance denied not only the reality of Japan's cooperation with the war effort, but also the necessity of the Japanese government's immigration control and quarantine systems for U.S. military personnel on leave.

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Guides indicate and educate visitors about what they should see during packaged tours that symbolize modern tourism. Conversely, the proliferation of the Internet enables tourists to refer to it to plan their itineraries, obtain directions, and view sights that interest them. How will the functions of guides transform with the rise of knowledgeable tourists? This study adopts the sociological perspective to examine the alternative roles guides can undertake in contemporary tourism.
I observed a local event in Tsuwano in Shimane Prefecture as a tourism phenomenon that presented the potential for unconventional guidance. I argue based on my observations that conventional guides are required to serve as teachers; however, knowledgeable tourists are attracted to creative tourism, which may require guides to encourage dialogs between guests. Thus, the roles enacted by guides can now intersect with the functions of facilitators and evoke interactive appreciation, a phenomenon that has recently attracted significant attention in the domain of art. It is believed that facilitator-type guides represent another category of tour conductors that has emerged through dialog-based-tourism, in which guests assume the functions of traditional guides as they communicate with each other.

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Heritage and tourism have a common goal: presenting value to visitors. The transformation of urban policies and the rise of the experience economy in the late modern era has intensified the relationship between the two. This paper adopts a perspective viewing heritage and tourism practices as ongoing processes rather than static ones. Using case studies, it examines how tourism interacts with the dynamics of heritagization. The study focuses on the Sakhalin Oblast in Russia, ruled by Japan under the name Karafuto until 1945. This “border region” presents more complex social dynamics than that of the heritage of Western societies that have generally been the subject of previous studies. The findings of this study indicate that one factor that drives the heritagization of border regions is the strengthening of relations between the two countries across cultural, economic, and political dimensions. While heritagization does occur in this context, it does not always progress as actors intend because whether an object is recognized as heritage depends on the social context in which it is situated and the actor’s sense of time. Furthermore, although Japanese experts and officials may seek to preserve relics of Karafuto and elevate them to heritage status, this cultural value framework is not generally shared by the actors on the Sakhalin side. In such cases, tourism functions is a means of deferring discussion of heritage value and reaching provisional agreements among actors rather than as a facilitator of heritagization. However, recent developments have shown an unprecedented shift. In some instances, actors in Sakhalin have begun to position the history of Karafuto as part of the history of their local communities. This has led to the recognition and preservation of the cultural values associated with the Karafuto-era relics, which had not previously been considered for preservation. This shift marks an opportunity for Japanese and Russian actors to collaborate in the promotion of heritage preservation.

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From the perspective of Rodney Harrison’s critical heritage studies, this paper discusses whether corporate heritage, particularly industrial heritage, can be a forum for diverse values’ coexistence. In Harrison’s argument, many heritages are publicly owned and operated, so it is difficult to order diverse values at corporate heritage. In Ashio Town, Nikko City, Tochigi Prefecture, where the regional economy stagnated after the mine’s closure, industrial heritage was valued as a cultural asset and regarded as a means of economic revitalization through tourism, but its power was weak. The core group of companies that once managed the mine began to cooperate with the movement to promote World Heritage registration, and in recent years, they have made an investment to build a museum. Although this practice has increased heritage tourism’s financial sustainability, we must continue to consider how to make the corporate museum function so that not only local government and residents but also tourists and companies can discuss creating the region’s future.

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Heritage may require the economic benefits of tourism for its survival, and tourism seeks novelty in heritage as an object of its gaze. Thus, heritage continues to grow, leading to a sustainability crisis. In this context, Rodney Harrison raises the issue of an “abundance of heritage” and urges the concept of heritage be reconsidered.
In this paper, using the concept of "curated decay" as a clue, I explore a way of relating to the past that differs from the timefrozen preservation that has hitherto been the mainstream, as a kind of “palliative care” that remains with and looks after the past. As a domestic case study, this paper takes up the former Maya Kanko Hotel (Mayakan) in Kobe and examines this new form of preservation.

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Recent studies in tourism have focused on multidimensional relationships among the performance of various actors, tourismrelated institutions, infrastructure, media, and other factors, in which tourism is considered a process where a specific image materializes in practice. In this regard, tourism is a future-oriented practice in that a new reality can be created through tourism. Meanwhile, studies of heritage have come to view it as a social process, in which tangible and intangible traces of the past are recognized as having significance as heritage. As heritage is preserved for the benefit of future generations, heritage generates the future. Taking the relationship between tourism and heritage into account as an interaction in which tourism generates heritage and heritage produces tourism leads to exploring how tourism and heritage as future-making practices intersect and what realities consequently arise. This paper examines the characteristics of tourism and heritage as practices creating the future, and it shows how their interactions bring about changes in local communities, using the development of the tourism industry and the conservation and utilization of archaeological sites in the Mediterranean region of Turkey as case studies.

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