Abstract:
Tourism is significantly relevant in terms of how a country’s reputation may
be constructed on an international scale. On the other hand, tourism is also a very
complex field that requires synergy between a country’s economy, domestic and
international relations. This research has the objective to understand and explore
strategies towards the international tourism market on how Japan brand themselves
into a leading tourism nation, as Japan realizes its technology and culture as soft
power components. Evidently, in the process of making Japan known as a tourism
nation, Japan faced some problems and challenges where the global economic crisis
and several big natural disasters hit Japan’s vulnerable areas. How Japan rises back
from the ‘slump’ issued a question of, “What are Japan’s nation branding strategies
towards the international tourism market?”. This research uses the soft power
theory which identifies Japan’s nation branding concept and components – in
efforts to project Japan on an international scale – are implemented by various local,
national, and international governmental and non-governmental actors using the
power of culture. To sum up, Japan achieves their internationally known reputation
of tourism nation with cultural richness as pulling factor, through nation branding
efforts by their cultural tourism campaign, “Visit Japan”.
