TOKYO – A growing number of foreign tourists are visiting locations in Japan that are featured in anime.
The generation who grew up watching anime are visiting real-life anime locations nationwide that had not received much attention before. The trend has excited local residents with an expectation of regional development.
“Kakkoii, so cool,” 41-year-old Anqi Wang from Australia said as she gazed intently at the basketball club’s practice at Noshiro High School of Science and Technology — formerly Noshiro Technical High School — in Noshiro, Akita Prefecture.
The school is said to be the model for the fictional Sannoh Technical High School in the basketball anime Slam Dunk, whose basketball team is depicted as the strongest opponent of the protagonist’s team in the 2022 movie The First Slam Dunk.
The movie was a big hit overseas. Since the film’s release, an increasing number of foreigners have visited the school to watch the basketball team practice.
“At first we wondered why they come to watch our regular practice, but now it’s become a source of encouragement for us,” captain Haruto Sato said.
The nearby Noshiro Basketball Library and Museum that displays Slam Dunk-related items attracted 589 foreign tourists in fiscal 2023, or five and a half times more than in fiscal 2019.
“Coming to the museum and watching practice at the high school has become a new sightseeing route,” a city official said. “It’s a good opportunity to have people from all over the world know of our city.”
Kasukabe in Saitama Prefecture is the setting for the popular manga and anime series Crayon Shinchan. When the Ito-Yokado Kasukabe store — which was the model for the supermarket the protagonist’s family frequents — was about to shutter in November 2024, foreigners visited to see it with their own eyes before it closed.
The Kasukabe city government made a Kasukabe Crayon Shinchan strolling map, highlighting places associated with the series in English, Chinese and Korean. Stores shown on that map were said to have adopted Chinese electronic payment services for customers from the country.
Chibi Maruko Chan Land in Shizuoka’s Shimizu Ward customises its services for Chinese visitors’ preferences. It included Maruko and her rich classmate Hanawa-kun in its “sand painting” section, as Hanawa-kun is a popular character in China. It also sells magnets featuring local cities — a popular Japanese souvenir item in China — in the park.
The government’s cool Japan strategy has helped the nation’s anime and content industries expand overseas, with its market size growing more than threefold over the past 10 years to ¥4.7 trillion (S$43.4 billion) in 2022.
A Japan tourism agency survey showed the percentage of foreign visitors who visited places associated with movies and anime increased from 4.6 per cent in 2019 to 7.5 per cent in 2023.
On the flip side, some locations deploy security guards to cope with such tourism-related issues as noise and people taking photos in the middle of the road.
CoMix Wave Films Inc., which produces works by director Makoto Shinkai, such as Your Name, does not reveal the locations it uses as models.
“The generation who grew up familiar with anime is now old enough to travel abroad,” Kindai University Professor Takeshi Okamoto said. “Many of them are well-versed in the anime they like, and those who welcome them should come up with gimmicks to please them.
“Many anime ‘sanctuaries’ aren’t used to being touristy spots, so it will be necessary to gain the understanding of local residents and create rules.” THE JAPAN NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
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