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Language and tourism

Finding Switzerland in Japan

By October 6, 2010January 4th, 20122 Comments3 min read8,423 views

Finding Switzerland in JapanAs a non-speaker and non-reader of Japanese I went to Japan fully expecting to be confused. However, the only confusing moment I experienced had nothing to do with anything Japanese: when I stepped off the train at Hakone Station, I suddenly found myself in Switzerland! I was greeted by this large image of Disentis/Mustér, a town in Kanton Graubünden/Grischun. I thought the original German spelling of “Rhätische Bahn” was very striking in a place where the last thing I was expecting was a reminder of Europe – seeing that I was after an authentic Japanese experience away from global Tokyo.

The billboard is in fact an ad for Swiss Tourism – I know the characteristic red, the emblem with the Swiss Cross inside an edelweiss and the slogan “get natural” all too well from a research project into the linguistic and communicative challenges faced by the Swiss tourism industry I conducted a few years ago. The billboard is in Hakone because apparently the railway I was travelling on, Hakone Tozan Railway, is a sister railway of Rhätische Bahn.

Finding Switzerland in JapanNo sooner had I got over my surprise of finding myself staring at the Swiss Alps instead of Mt Fuji, I found myself in front of the Cafe St Moritz. There is some serious devotion to Graubünden/Grischun in Hakone! The Cafe St Moritz was also liberally displaying the Swiss flag, including on its tables. Banal nationalism again, of course, but with the imagery of another nation! The menu of the Cafe St Moritz, by contrast, doesn’t seem to be Swiss-inspired. Hot dogs must probably be considered un-Swiss 😉

Advertising takes cultural symbols and images from one place and uses them in another to create authenticity. The use of national imagery from elsewhere in marketing coffee-shops, restaurants, food and drink (and all manner of other products and services) is a feature of contemporary symbolic landscapes the world over. Finding Switzerland in Japan

My first reaction to finding Switzerland in Hakone was one of dismay: I felt like I’d stumbled upon yet another non-space of globalization where globally circulating images make one place exactly like another and Hakone becomes Disentis/Mustér, and Disentis/Mustér becomes Hakone. However, on reflection and after reading up on gaikoku mura (“foreign villages”), country-themed theme parks, I have changed my mind: if local tourism can create an exotic tourism experience, then that is a much more sustainable way of travelling. Why would you make a long and tedious journey to travel all the way to Switzerland and create a huge carbon footprint if you can experience Switzerland 70 min outside downtown Tokyo? And considering that it’s entirely possible that in the meantime some marketeer has come up with a Japanese theme for St Moritz …

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 2 Comments

  • Alexandre Duchêne says:

    Thanks for this blog, Ingrid. This is another fascinating example on how (in)authenticity gets performed. My questions would be: who is producing those advertisments, for whom, and for what purposes?
    This type of questions are actually very much linked to a new research project on “Performing Swissness” that Im directing with another colleague from Switzerland and two PhD students. We are trying to understand the ways Swiss identity is performed in and out Switzerland and how/if the images of the nation have been changing over the years. In this project we aim also to understand who are the producers of these discourses, why these discourses and practices are produced in this way and what are the possible consequences of it. So I may come up with some elements of answer once the project will be in a more advanced stage.

  • I’m always amazed by the radio commercial of a Japanese bathhouse in the Blue Mountains, about an hour and half away from Sydney. A Japanese woman speaks first in Japanese and switches to English (with a charmingly strong Japanese accent for the effect;-), introducing the bathhouse as an ‘authentic Japanese experience’ (www.japanesebathhouse.com.au/bathhouse.asp). I’ve never had a chance to visit the bathhouse, but the commercial is effective enough to make a Sydney-based Japanese yearn badly for that dip every time the woman’s voice fills up my car space on the streets of Sydney.

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