Cotswolds, which now attracts tourists from around the world. The Cotswolds is an extremely inconvenient place; there is no railway service, for instance. What is amazing to us Japanese is that residents intentionally tried to keep their villages inconvenient, amid the high economic growth period. They created a new sense of values, in which inconvenience is preferable to convenience. The cultural and tourism resources now enjoyed by British people have been preserved through such efforts on the part of local people to create a new sense of values.
I said that cheap measures would not work to attract overseas tourists. This is why accumulating cultural and tourism assets requires change in public sense of values. To use cultural aspects as tourism resources, it is necessary to discover values in what has been ignored or depreciated. In the UK, local residents and volunteers took initiatives in discovering values in their localities, and promoting them as tourism resources. Their efforts support today's Britain and its tourism industry. Although many Japanese regard the UK as a declining power, we have much to learn from such efforts of local people.
Takada: Thank you Dr. Inose. You stated that in the UK, people changed their sense of values. When did they change them?
Inose: Historians and anthropologists believe that traditions are created. The new tradition of preference for a rural life was actually "created" during the latter half of the 19th century; I mean after the first world exposition in 1851.
Takada: Considering that Great Britain had its high-economic-growth period about a century prior to Japan, British people experienced drastic changes in sense of values after the end of the high-economic-growth period. I understand that these changes were similar to what we are currently experiencing in Japan; am I right?
Inose: Exactly.
Takada: Thank you, Dr. Inose. Changing our sense of values is related to changing our viewpoints. Dr. Inose introduced to us changes in the British sense of values: one change concerns the shift of preference from urban life to rural life, another concerns the shift in values from convenience to inconvenience. To these. I would like to add another great shift in sense of values: British people once regarded factories as mere means to manufacture articles and earn money. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, they began to preserve old factories, manufacturing machines, and mining tools, and display them as museums. In Japan, we have many old factories and relics of modern industries in various localities, such as Amagasaki. But British people were better at developing the attitude to enjoy and learn from such old remains and relics.
Now, another panelist, Mr. Hirono, is engaged in community planning in Nishinomiya and Barcelona, Spain. I heard that his interest in community planning was stimulated when he was in a small town in Southern France. I would now like to hear from Mr. Hirono, please.
Hirono: My name is Hirono. Nice to see you. My topics will be limited to my business; I offer consultation to various municipalities regarding local revitalization and cultural promotion.
When I join discussion meetings of local communities, I often find many enthusiastic people, who explain to me how the locality once flourished, deploring the present situation and expressing their wish to regain past glory. They all want to attract many more tourists to their communities; to this end, they know they must revitalize their town or village, but how? Over the past 20 years, I have been asked to offer ideas on revitalizing local communities, and I actually did offer many ideas.
To be honest, however, during those 20 years, I have seen only a few successful cases. In the first three to five years, local people are eager about revitalization plans. After five years, however, they usually begin to complain that they cannot maintain their energy to continue vitalization projects; they become exhausted and often abandon the original plan. In this way, the majority of cases in which I was involved did not succeed. I would like to introduce one exception: a revitalization plan of Takaoka City, Toyama Prefecture.
Ten years ago, Takaoka City created an outdoor musical play at the centennial of its municipality. I will now give only a brief explanation: over one thousand citizens performed a musical play featuring historic events of the city, from ancient times to the medieval age, to the modern age, and to the present. The musical play is performed at a historic building in the central part of the city. They have continued the annual performance over these ten years, because they learned that to invite tourists, they must revitalize their city. To revitalize the city, citizens must be lively, and proud of their hometown.
When offering consultation to local residents concerning the revitalization of their hometown, I used to offer ideas to invite tourists. But, as I mentioned, these attempts did not succeed, since my plans were continued only for three to five years.
I then realized that instead of attracting outsiders to the locality, emphasis must be placed on encouraging local people to learn about their own town. Although senior citizens know the local history, few young people knew how their town was created and developed. Since they do not know the local history, they are less proud of their hometown, and long for large cities, such as Tokyo. As many local people long for Tokyo and its culture, all Japanese towns have become like "small Tokyos."
I tried to encourage local people to rediscover unique
