contents tourism

Center for Advanced Tourism Studies

Arakawa Hiromu's best-selling manga Silver Spoon, which began serialization in 2011, kicked off an impromptu migration of fans to the story's setting, the Tokachi-Obihiro region of Hokkaido. Both local tourism officials and agricultural stakeholders quickly devised a number of strategies to capitalize onthe newfound interest in their region. Their efforts only intensified when anime and film versions were released in 2013 and 2014. This article examines the ways local officials, business owners, and other constituents have pursued not only profits from Silver Spoon-inspired tourism, but also the chance to offer a different picture of agricultural life than is typically disseminated in the media. Below, I demonstrate how the promotion of Ban'ei horse racing, a wide-variety of agricultural products, and hands-on farming and food production experiences are at the heart of local community's attempts to appropriate the cultural capital of Silver Spoon to craft narratives of Tokachi identity, heritage, and pride.