SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This paper provides a historical overview of a hitherto neglected area of historical research on tourism: how Japan transitioned in the late nineteenth century from the object of Orientalist fascination among Western nations, to a power projecting its own tourist gaze on its colonies of Taiwan and Korea. Despite the growing attention afforded to colonial-era tourism in European and American colonies, Japanese tourism to its principal colonies of Taiwan and Korea has yet to receive sustained critical treatment, particularly in English language research. As this paper will demonstrate, travel and tourism were mechanisms of colonial power, allowing Japan to project an Orientalist tourist gaze whilst simultaneously creating a more reliable, dedicated imperial subject. Beginning with an exploration of how modern conceptions of ‘travel and tourism’ arrived in Japan through increased interactions with the West, the paper will then examine the junctures at which Japan began projecting an imperial gaze on Taiwan and Korea. This was a two-way process, whereby delegations from Taiwan and Korea visited the colonial metropole and Japanese tourists visited their two principal colonies. Both forms of mobility impressed notions of difference on the users, allowing Japan to reinforce its anomalous status as East Asia’s sole colonial power.