Negotiating the nation: public diplomacy and the publication of English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan in the Meiji period (1868–1912)

Favi Sonia, "Negotiating the nation: public diplomacy and the publication of English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan in the Meiji period (1868–1912)", Japan Forum, , DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2022.2033301

Tourist guidebooks are powerful instruments of public diplomacy: they can be used to subtly promote national narratives and to draw the attention of foreign publics to a country’s soft power. This article analyses, in this light, the English-language tourist guidebooks of Japan published by the Kihinkai (1893–1914), the earliest Japanese organization for the promotion of inbound tourism.ì, and relates them to the popular handbooks of Japan published by the British House of Murray, which ‘created’ Japan as an international tourist destination for a majority of of English-speaking travellers.