Japan’s nation branding towards international market through cultural tourism campaign

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”.