As Japan was reorganized on a war footing during the prewar Showa Era, various measures restricting consumption within citizens’ lives were enacted by the government. School trips to pay respects at the Ise Jingu Shrine, however, were widely carried out by schools throughout Japan as ‘specially permitted school trips’ due to the Tenno ideology or emperor system. This study is an examination of the influence of these school trips to the Ise Jingu Shrine on the development of postwar Japanese tourism. In conducting the study, the cultural aspect of tourism was focused on.
In the postwar Japanese travel market, the travel boom known as ‘mass tourism’ took place. The Japanese travel style in the category of the mass tourism is often referred to as ‘a hurried group excursion. ‘Where do people’s motivations for a trip originate ? And where does their travel style come from ? An earlier study has pointed out that the development of tourism is largely influenced by such external factors as socio-economic environment and media information regarding tourism. But while these external factors can act as promotional or suppressive factors, they are not fundamental in determining the desires of people. The arising of a motivation to travel and the development of a travel style take on form only when there is already a basis in the mind that responds to these external factors, which must have been fostered over a long period of time. It might be supposed that such a basis had already formed in the mind of people in the prewar period. Based on the above-mentioned awareness, in order to examine the epoch-making nature of postwar Japanese tourism, this study shows how the basis of Japanese tourism has been formed, first through analyzing the practice of travel contemporary with that period, and second, through examining the process in people’s mind towards travel style in prewar period while looking the ‘school trip to Ise Jingu Shrine,’ which many schoolchildren had experienced, as a model case.
While the school trip to Ise Jingu Shrine has often been studied from the perspective of militaristic indoctrination, the ideology of the Tenno system and of ritualization, and with regard to the history of its establishment and development, studies based on the cultural aspects of tourism are rather few. In addition to the significance and effect of the school trip in terms of reverence for the imperial household, the veneration of gods, respect for ancestors, and as an opportunity for educators to train and discipline, it consequently contributed to a better exchange of communication between teachers and pupils, and among the pupils themselves. The experience of the school trip itself as well as on-the-spot group training and the contact with friends have had an influence on the formation of the mass culture, in which the pupils got involved during the course of their later lives.
In this study, I took a different approach from the conventional perspective in the history of school trips, and as a result, the extent to which the school trip to Ise Jingu Shrine has influenced the development of postwar Japanese tourism was revealed.
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