Contents tourism and creative fandom: the formation process of creative fandom and its transnational expansion in a mixed-media age

ABSTRACT

Today, as information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become sophisticated and media have become diversified, phenomena such as interactions between electronic media space and real space are rapidly developing in a borderless manner. Characteristic phenomena in such a situation include cross-border consumption, dissolution, and restructuring of pop culture contents by ‘creative fandoms’ (fans who act creatively) such as mixed-media developments and fanfictions of the same contents. ‘Contents tourism’, the approach that does not focus on particular media but focuses on the contents themselves to grasp the tourism phenomenon, is increasingly important on that very point. In this paper, using this concept of creative fandom, first the Comiket and its voluntary culture will be explored, then, the Washimiya case will be re-examined from the point of view of creative fandom, and finally in section five, the case of Taiwan will be analysed in order to investigate the establishment of international creative fandom. In particular, two kinds of relationships, the ones between hosts and guests and the ones between creators and consumers, are focused on, and the facts are presented with the conclusion that creative fandoms cause the breakdown of the two borders to produce new styles of tourism and cross-cultural exchange.

KEYWORDS:

• contents tourism
• creative fandom
• Comiket
• mixed-media
• Washimiya
• Taiwan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Takayoshi Yamamura is a professor of Center for Advanced Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University, Japan, and he holds a PhD in urban engineering from the University of Tokyo. He is one of the pioneers of ‘Contents Tourism’ and ‘Anime Induced Tourism’ studies in Japan and he has served the Chair of several governmental advisory boards such as the Meeting of International Tourism Promotion through Animation Contents of The Japan Tourism Agency, ANIME-Tourism Committee of Saitama Prefecture, etc. His main English work includes Contents Tourism and Pop Culture Fandom: Transnational Tourist Experiences (co-edited with P. Seaton, 2020), Contents Tourism in Japan: Pilgrimages to ‘Sacred Sites’ of Popular Culture (with P. Seaton, A. Sugawa-Shimada and K. Jang, 2017), ‘Pop culture contents and historical heritage’ Contemporary Japan (30.2), ‘Contents Tourism and Local Community Response’, Japan Forum Special Edition (27.1). Moreover, he also has important track record on Indigenous Heritage Tourism Studies, which received international acclaim, such as: ‘Authenticity, ethnicity and social transformation at World Heritage Sites’ In D. R. Hall (ed.) Tourism and Transition (2004), ‘Dongba Art in Lijiang, China’ In C. Ryan and M. Aicken (Eds.) Indigenous Tourism (2005). http://yamamuratakayoshi.com/en/

ORCID

Takayoshi Yamamura http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9407-8292

Notes

1 ⟪前進吧 ! 高捷少女⟫in Chinese and⟪進め ! たかめ少女 ! ⟫in Japanese.