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May 3, 2000 Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan“Nikko knows that it has world-class sites, but does it know what the average cultural tourist is willing to spend in order to see them?” Is it possible to add up all the numbers correctly and still get a wrong answer? The city of Nikko* is an anomalous case of a community that has thrown all its resources into cultural, historical and natural attractions, only to face declining tourism revenues year after year. Fermata traveled to this UNESCO-designated World Cultural Heritage site to take a look at the problem. The twin horsemen of the travel apocalypse, laziness and irrational optimism, cursed this trip from the outset. Erroneous weather reports had promised rain–nay, guaranteed it–the day before, so as I saddled up to pedal the twenty-one miles to Nikko, I made the fatal error of interpreting yesterday’s reprieve as a permanent stay of execution. Rather than bringing adequate rain gear and warm clothing, the only useful things that came along were a thin plastic rain jacket and lycra legwarmers. But more about that later… Heading out of Utsunomiya on Highway 119*, the revolution in Japan’s tourism patterns made itself glaringly apparent. A decade ago, this peak travel period known as Golden Week meant enduring a minimum four-hour traffic jam to make the twenty-one mile drive to Nikko. The additional ten miles from Nikko to magnificent Kegon Falls were only for the hardest of the hard core–an additional four to five hour drive up the winding mountain slope known as Irohazaka*. Leaving town, a short backup in the beginning hinted at the massive gridlock glory of days past, but it soon thinned out and was clear all the way to Nikko. Y2K* got saddled with some of the blame for this year’s ghost town phenomenon because considerable numbers of people stayed home over the New Year with the intention of making up for lost overseas travel time during Golden Week. But most of Nikko’s once-legendary tourism business has been siphoned off by increasingly competitive destinations elsewhere. One of the biggest competitors is nearby Nasu, a city that attracts large numbers of Tokyo urbanites with a plethora of dumb attractions that includes can’t-miss faves such as the Teddy Bear Museum* and the Music Box Museum*. Although this seems to contradict the following statement, that city dwellers have become more sophisticated travel shoppers, such is in fact the case. More nicely put, urban tourists have a wider ranger of places to choose from, and whereas Nikko used to be the only major game in the vicinity, it’s now a very crowded field.
The map offers two courses. The second one veers away from the congested, major attractions of Toshogu Shrine and Rinnoji Temple, and that’s the one I took. The moment you step off the main thoroughfare Nikko becomes a small, silent town up in the mountains. The first stop on the tour was a stele commemorating the two men who helped bring an end to the city’s riotous disturbances that occurred when the government ordered Shinto and Buddhist sects to separate.
This is one of the first places that the causes of Nikko’s tourism woes started to make themselves felt. Although the city has taken great care to preserve its historical background, Japanese history is not easily comprehensible, even to the interested tourist. For starters, the history itself is written in the equivalent of a dead language: kanji that few people can read describe obscure events that, even when reminded of, the reader can’t remember. Fermata has asked numerous Japanese people what comes to mind when they hear the word "Nikko," and the response is uniform–history. The follow-up question, "How do you feel about history?" elicits an answer that Nikko city planners must dread: "I could care less about it." Unlike U.S. history, which can be simplified for tourism purposes into simple themes that even the most toothless of minds can masticate, Japanese history has neither starting points nor easily summarized epochs.
The next stop on the map was Banretsu Shrine. Despite not knowing anything about the history, as the sunshine tore through the overcast skies, and nature shimmered and danced in the cool spring air, it didn’t really matter. The route was incredibly well marked, and special care had been given to the roadsides, which were not only widened for pedestrians but
At Jokoji Temple I met a man watching birds. He
had just spotted a Brown-eared
Bulbul eating a bee, and assured me that this was not normal Bulbul
diet. We walked together to the next site on the map, Ganmanga-fuchi Rapids.
At the river we saw a Brown
Dipper* fishing for its dinner; it sat on the water, sunk beneath
the surface, then popped up again like a cork. Its Japanese name "water
crow," somehow fits…As you approach the rapids there is a long
line Arithmetic doesn’t seem to be the strong suit of Nikko, either, as a brief review of some city informational material revealed. There is a tea ceremony implements museum (entry fee: $5), a modern art museum (entry fee: $7), a lacquerware museum (entry fee: $4), a Rinnoji Treasures museum (entry fee:
A common retort is that Kyoto charges high prices for all of its famous historical sites, but the query here is obvious: is Nikko really on a par–in the mind of the tourist–with the ancient capital of Japan? The critical comparison of how Nikko stacks up in the mind of its potential customers with other major historical sites is a comparison that the city needs to make through economic surveys. Another massing of storm clouds stopped the rest
of the walking tour; I literally turned tail and pedaled. On the downhill,
easy hammer home I forked Trip du Jour, May 3, 2000
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