film location tourism

Center for Advanced Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University

This research note is part three of a three-part series documenting fieldwork at sites related to the 2003 film The Last Samurai. It contrasts the two major sites in Japan that experienced increased tourism levels as a result of the film: the shooting locations in Himeji and heritage sites in Kagoshima related to the ‘real last samurai’, Saigō Takamori. Despite the film being only very loosely based on Saigō’s life, the tourism impacts were greatest in Kagoshima, in other words the place where contents tourism relating to the actual history of ‘the last samurai’ (Saigō) occurred, and not in Himeji, where film tourism relating to The Last Samurai (the film) occurred. Comparison with the levels of tourism at shooting locations in New Zealand (in part I and part II of the article series) demonstrates a similar pattern: the tourism impacts were greatest in the country depicted in the film rather than the country where the film was made.