Social & Cultural Geography

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rscg20

Affective dark tourism encounters: Rikuzentakata

after the 2011 Great East Japan Disaster

Annaclaudia Martini & Claudio Minca

To cite this article: Annaclaudia Martini & Claudio Minca (2021) Affective dark tourism
encounters: Rikuzentakata after the 2011 Great East Japan Disaster, Social & Cultural
Geography, 22:1, 33-57, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2018.1550804

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1550804

© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa View supplementary material

UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group.

Published online: 30 Nov 2018. Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 3908 View related articles

View Crossmark data Citing articles: 7 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rscg20
SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
2021, VOL. 22, NO. 1, 33–57
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1550804

Affective dark tourism encounters: Rikuzentakata after the

2011 Great East Japan Disaster
Annaclaudia Martinia and Claudio Mincab
a
Department of Cultural Geography, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; bDepartment of
Geography and Planning, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article discusses the case of Rikuzentakata, a town almost Received 13 June 2018
completely destroyed by the 2011 tsunami provoked by the Accepted 26 October 2018
Great East Japan Disaster. It shows how the town has directed KEYWORDS
some of its recovery efforts toward the development of a specific Dark tourism; post-disaster
form of post-disaster tourism. Two main strategies implemented tourism; geographies of
by the local authorities are analyzed in detail: first, the celebration affect; tsunami; Tōhoku
of Ipponmatsu, or the Miracle Pine, a symbol of resilience in the
face of devastation; second, the promotion of Rikuzentakata as the MOTS CLÉS
tourisme noir; tourisme de
‘Hiroshima of the North’. Both these discourses were based on the
catastrophe; géographies de
engineering and the apprehension of specific affective post-disas- l’affect; tsunami; Tōhoku
ter atmospheres and perceived by residents and local authorities
as key for attracting international visitors. Our analysis highlights PALABRAS CLAVE
how a politics of affect built around the tsunami has been spatia- turismo de duelo; turismo
lized and grounded using material landmarks (The Miracle Pine), pos-desastre; geografías de
but also narratives of hope and resilience based on comparisons afecto; tsunami; Tōhoku
with Hiroshima. Such affective atmospheres, we conclude, were
planned and performed as an attempt to facilitate cross-cultural
communication and allow visitors to contemplate death and dis-
aster on their own terms, while at the same time involving them in
a broader processes of healing from trauma and recovery for
Rikuzentakata and its residents.

Rencontres affectives du tourisme noir:

Rikuzentakata après la catastrophe de 2011 au
nord-est du Japon
RÉSUMÉ
Cet article discute du cas de Rikuzentakata, une ville
presqu’entièrement détruite par le tsunami de 2011 provoqué par le
séisme de la côte pacifique au Japon en 2011. Il montre comment la
ville a dirigé certains de ses efforts de relèvement vers le
développement d’une forme spécifique de tourisme de l’après-catas-
trophe. Deux stratégies principales mises en place par les autorités
locales sont analysées en détail: tout d’abord, la célébration
d’Ipponmatsu, ou du « pin miracle », un symbole de la résilience face

CONTACT Claudio Minca [email protected] Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie

University, Sydney, Australia
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the here.
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
34 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

à la dévastation; ensuite, la promotion de Rikuzentakata comme une «

Hiroshima du Nord ». Ces deux discours reposent sur la conception et
la perception d’atmosphères affectives spécifiques de l’après-catas-
trophe et sont perçus par les résidents et les autorités locales comme
pièces essentielles de l’attraction des visiteurs internationaux. Notre
analyse met en évidence comment une politique de l’affect construite
autour du tsunami a été spatialisée et fondée en utilisant les repères
matériels (le pin miracle) mais aussi des discours d’espoir et de
résilience fondés sur des comparaisons avec Hiroshima. Nous
concluons que de telles atmosphères affectives ont été planifiées et
mises en œuvre dans une tentative de faciliter la communication
interculturelle et de permettre aux visiteurs de contempler la mort et
la catastrophe à leur façon en même temps qu’ils s’impliquent dans un
processus plus large de guérison d’un traumatisme et de relèvement
pour Rikuzentakata et ses habitants.

Encuentros de turismo de duelo afectivo:

Rikuzentakata después del gran terremoto de
Japón oriental en 2011
RESUMEN
Este artículo analiza el caso de Rikuzentakata, una ciudad casi com-
pletamente destruida por el tsunami de 2011 provocado por el gran
terremoto de Japón oriental. Muestra cómo la ciudad ha dirigido
algunos de sus esfuerzos de recuperación hacia el desarrollo de una
forma específica de turismo posterior al desastre. Se analizan en
detalle dos estrategias principales implementadas por las autorida-
des locales: primero, la celebración de Ipponmatsu, o el pino mila-
groso, un símbolo de resistencia frente a la devastación; segundo, la
promoción de Rikuzentakata como la ‘Hiroshima del norte’. Ambos
discursos se basaron en la ingeniería y la aprehensión de ambientes
afectivos específicos posteriores al desastre y fueron percibidos por
los residentes y las autoridades locales como clave para atraer a
visitantes internacionales. Este análisis resalta cómo una política de
afecto construida alrededor del tsunami se ha espacializado y asen-
tado usando puntos de referencia materiales (el pino milagroso),
pero también narrativas de esperanza y resiliencia basadas en com-
paraciones con Hiroshima. Se concluye que tales ambientes afectivos
fueron planeados y representados como un intento de facilitar la
comunicación intercultural y permitir a los visitantes contemplar la
muerte y el desastre en sus propios términos, mientras que al mismo
tiempo se los involucra en un proceso más amplio de curación del
trauma y de recuperación para Rikuzentakata y sus residentes.

Introduction
On 11th March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit the region of Tōhoku, in Japan. The
earthquake was followed 30 min later by a massive tsunami, whose waves overcame the
protective ‘tsunami walls’ along the coast and swept up to 6 km inland provoking almost
16,000 casualties (Japan National Police Agency, 2018) and virtually erasing entire towns
from the map (Yamamoto et al., 2015). The tsunami caused also a meltdown at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the most severe nuclear accident in history after
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 35

Chernobyl. Despite Japan being very advanced in terms of seismic hazard prevention,
the sheer size of the event came as a total surprise (Kerr, 2011) and the post-disaster
recovery has been hugely challenging (Matanle, 2011). International tourism in the
region, and in Japan as a whole, plunged steeply since the tourists feared the exposure
to dangerous levels of radiations. For the global audience watching the unfolding of
these events through newscasts and the Internet, Japan had suddenly become unsafe.
However, while Tōhoku has always been considered a rural and relatively secluded
region, attracting very few tourists compared to other parts of Japan, already in 2012,
with the first set of short-term recovery efforts underway, some towns began developing
new tourist projects, inviting Japanese and foreigners to visit and help in the recovery.
In an effort to show support, during a hot, humid mid-August day of 2016, I (the first
author) visited the Fumonji temple, in Rikuzentakata, while the obon, the festival of the
dead, was taking place. The garden in front of the temple was punctuated with hundreds of
statues of different size and shape, and many more were in the process of being realized: at
least 10 people were at work, hitting, shaping and refining blocks of stone. For 1 week every
summer, anyone can participate in the Gohyaku rakan, an event during which people carve
their own rakan, a statue of a disciple of Buddha, to commemorate the victims of the 2011
tsunami. I worked on my own sculpture for 2 days as well, alongside fellow researchers from
Tōhoku University and many local residents. As I walked in the garden during a break from
chiselling my own sculpture, I saw rakan shaped like cats, dogs, Christian angels, men and
women with tea cups, glasses, flowers, and even one reproducing John Lennon. Koyo
Kumagai, the monk in charge of Fumonji, explained that many people in Rikuzentakata
and the nearby towns have lost someone in the disaster: realizing these sculptures was a
way for them to mourn and remember their loved ones. In fact, each sculpture represented
a person who died in the tsunami, and the workshop was planned to continue every year
until all victims had their own rakan.1 The rakan-carving workshop was first organized in
2013 with the explicit purpose of ‘providing a place to express and share emotions and
thoughts on the natural disaster’, as well as producing a memorial site, as it is explained on
the dedicated Facebook page (Resilience for Future in Rikuzentakata, 2013).
Later in the afternoon, I took a stroll with my finished sculpture, n.328, and chose a
spot in the garden for it. Some people around me were carefully carving their own
sculpture, others were silently walking around, a few simply contemplating. A peaceful
atmosphere was created by their presence, while visitors not involved in the workshop
walked to the temple to pay respect to their ancestors. Completing my rakan and
leaving it to rest on sacred ground was a powerful experience. It made me wonder
how that experience was felt by the residents, whose personal connection with the
people memorialized with this practice was much more profound (see Figure 1).
It is commonly believed that in Japan emotional recovery from trauma can be
hindered by cultural norms and rules aimed at holding back anger, rather than expres-
sing it (see Araki & Wiseman, 1996; Gulz, 1992). For Nelson Graburn, ‘Japanese culture is
said to foreground a surface of culturally and situationally appropriate expressions,
tatemae, but to securely conceal the honne’ (Graburn, 2012, p. 51), or inner truth,
especially to outsiders (see also Ishii, Vargas, & Vargas, 2011; Kato, 2000). Dr. Kanatsu,
a Japanese-born professor based in the U.S. accompanying a group of college students,
told me that Rikuzentakata is a place where you can experience the power of fubenjikko,
or ‘doing without saying’, a quiet tenacity that refuses strong emotional expressions
36 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

Figure 1. Rakan statues at Fumonji temple, Rikuzentakata, Japan. (Photo by A. Martini).

such as anger or violence (Rikuzentakata, 16/08/016). The act of carving a rakan to

memorialize the 2011 disaster may thus be seen as a performance aimed at confronting
negative feelings and unspeakable pain that would otherwise remain unexpressed. The
town of Rikuzentakata has however looked at other possibilities to voice its residents’
painful memories and heal the trauma. One of the most important initiatives in this
respect has been that of framing stories, experiences and material remnants of the
disaster in forms that would possibly attract international visitors. In this article, we
discuss how tour guides and members of the community involved in tourism in
Rikuzentakata have deliberately engineered and performed affective landscapes aimed
at eliciting catharsis, empathy, pity and other manifestations of affect in the tourist, in
order to help the local communities to recover from the trauma. In particular, we analyze
how the local municipality has developed a specific form of ‘post-disaster tourism’
(Amujo & Otubanjo, 2012) in order to achieve several distinct objectives: to support
the local economy, to become an internationally recognized hub for those interested in
this kind of disaster, and to alleviate a sense of trauma and loss among the local
communities. We also suggest that such landscapes of disaster are eventually under-
stood by international tourists in line with their own cultural background and through
familiar affective processes of attunement and resonance.
It is not uncommon for tragic and death-related events to be appropriated and used for
entertainment or education purposes. Visits to places of death, disaster and atrocities are
notoriously referred to as ‘dark tourism’ (Foley & Lennon, 1996). This facet of the tourism
experience has often been accentuated by the media and portrayed as motivated by
intrusive curiosity or morbid interest. However, tourist motivations for visiting places of
death and disaster are not always straightforward, and death is not always associable with
the macabre (see Muzaini & Minca, 2018; Ong, Minca, & Felder, 2015; Stone, 2013; Stone &
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 37

Sharpley, 2008). Some destinations can indeed strategically appeal to the tourists’ fascina-
tion with death, but also to their desire to memorialize and witness. While emotions have
received some attention in tourism and dark tourism studies (Nawijn & Biran, 2018;
Robinson & Picard, 2012; Tucker, 2009; Waterton & Watson, 2014), affect has been mostly
side-lined, with the few notable exceptions of research focussed on specific forms of affect
like hope and empathy (Tucker, 2009; Buda, d’Hauteserre, & Johnston, 2014; Willis, 2014;
Buda, 2015; Pocock, 2015; Tucker & Shelton, 2018).
This article thus intends to contribute to existing debates in dark tourism studies by
arguing that affect can elicit strong emotional reactions in tourists visiting dark sites and
contribute to significantly shape their experience. Thinking of sites of dark tourism in
terms of ‘affective geographies’ (see, among others, Davidson & Bondi, 2004; Pile, 2010;
Thrift, 2007) may help incorporating novel perspectives on the subjective, often side-
lined, elements of those sites: their atmospheres, the subtle political value of affect in
designing and interpreting post-disaster landmarks and practices, and the fine-tuning of
the visceral, affective cross-cultural resonance that can result in healing processes for
both tourists and local communities. In engaging with debates on the geographies of
affect, we follow Sianne Ngai’s suggestion that emotions differ from affects not in quality
or kind, but rather in the degree of intensity (Ngai, 2005, p. 27). We do so inspired in
particular by the work of Sara Ahmed (2004), Ben Anderson (2006, 2014)), and Derek
McCormack (2008) and their emphasis on the existence of diverse active intensities in
affective endeavours, often marked by intersubjective charge. Following this line of
thought, affect in dark sites like post-tsunami Rikuzentakata is presented here as gen-
erating relations of power and specific politics of place that tend to be (re)produced
through narratives, performances and material landmarks.
The article is structured in four distinct sections. First, we outline its theoretical
underpinnings compared to the relevant literature on dark tourism and the geographies
of affect, while explaining our methodology. Secondly, we discuss how plans for tourist
development have been presented as a strategic response to the impact of the tsunami
in Tōhoku, and the town of Rikuzentakata in particular. In the third part we thus examine
more in detail how tourism has been engineered, negotiated and apprehended in
Rikuzentakata in order to solicit affective responses using disaster narratives, on-site
performances, and the celebration of tangible landmarks. We conclude by arguing that,
while local tourist operators tend to frame their stories and experiences in ways that
may evoke affective responses in the tourists, at the same time these stories and
experiences also offer to local communities an opportunity to communicate the trau-
matic event to others and build new geographies of affect based on empathy, catharsis
and hope as attempts at healing and as a promise for a better future.

Dark tourism and affect

The term dark tourism, coined by Foley and Lennon (1996) to define tourist visits to
places of death, disaster and atrocity, in the past 20 years has gained relevance in
tourism studies (Lennon & Foley, 2000; Lisle, 2007; Miles, 2002; Seaton, 1996; Sharpley &
Stone, 2008; Skinner, 2012; Stone, Hartmann, Seaton, Sharpley, & White, 2018). Another
term at times used to refer to this subfield is ‘thanatourism’, described by Tony Seaton as
‘travel to a location wholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic
38 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

encounters with death’ (Seaton, 1996, p. 236). The two terms are often used inter-
changeably by scholars of tourism (Tarlow, 2005) and coexist with an array of other
labels: ‘negative sightseeing’ (McCannell, 1976), ‘black spots’ (Rojek, 1993), ‘milking the
macabre’ (Dann, 1994), ‘fascination with assassination’ (Foley & Lennon, 1996), ‘dissonant
heritage’ (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996), ‘difficult heritage’ (Logan & Reeves, 2009),
‘tragic tourism’ (Lippard, 1999), ‘morbid tourism’ (Blom, 2000), ‘grief tourism’ (O’Neill,
2002), ‘fright tourism’ (Bristow & Newman, 2004), ‘atrocity tourism’ (Ashworth &
Hartmann, 2005), ‘battlefield tourism’ (Seaton, 1999), ‘holocaust tourism’ (Lennon &
Foley, 2000) and ‘disaster tourism’ (Ashcroft, 2000). Post-disaster tourism is sometimes
conflated with dark tourism (Tucker, Shelton, & Bae, 2017). In cases like the one
investigated here, however, disaster and post-disaster tourism are preferred terms,
with the understanding that such tourism creates new ‘dark’ attributes, based on
disaster, in sites that were not attracting tourists beforehand (Biran, Liu, Li, & Eichhorn,
2014). The blurred boundaries of such definitions point to a sort of ‘post-disaster dark
tourism’ (Prayag, 2016, p. 157) that ‘highlights the links between tourism and the issue
of disaster recovery, whether it is recovery of the tourism industry per se or the social
and economic recovery of the place more broadly’ (Tucker et al., 2017, p. 307).
Most publications in both the broader field of dark tourism and in disaster tourism
studies tend to identify supply and demand factors (Stone & Sharpley, 2008), provide
multiple case studies (Ashworth & Hartmann, 2005; Dann & Seaton, 2001), focus on
tourism industry recovery and marketing/rebranding (Mair, Ritchie, & Walters, 2016) and
analyze motivational elements in tourists (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996). Recent research
in dark tourism has however denounced the predominance of descriptive and ‘applied’
approaches (Biran, Poria, & Oren, 2011) by urging the need to acknowledge the political,
ethical and emotional implications of dark places. Affect is still largely ignored in this
literature (Light, 2017), with a few exceptions (Buda et al., 2014; Tucker, 2016; Tucker &
Shelton, 2018), despite the fact that a close scrutiny of the affective layers of dark tourism
sites may potentially help reconcile the negative ethical stigma often attached to this form
of tourism with the sense of necessity felt by some tourists to visit such ‘attractions’
(Robinson, 2015). Understandings of affect in dark tourism practices may in fact represent
a constructive way to respond to the crowd of negative stereotypes characterizing such
practices in popular discourses, normally reproduced by the media and identifying dark
tourism as a morbid or immoral activity. These stereotypes tend to underplay the potential
role of dark tourism in educating the visitors about past and present tragic events but also
in vanquishing grief, in evoking empathy, catharsis and hope, and in healing from trauma.
Theories of affect may thus enable us to ‘formulate a more complete understanding of the
elements that influence the kinds of experiences that are created in destinations’
(d’Hauteserre, 2015, p. 78), and that produce ‘particular “worldly orientations”, emotions
and moods’ (Tucker & Shelton, 2018, p. 67).
In human geography, affect is often treated in line with Ben Anderson’s definition as a
‘processual logic of transitions that take place during spatially and temporally distributed
encounters’ (Anderson, 2006, p. 735). Each transition is accordingly felt as an intensity
that exists in-between places, people and objects, and that can attach and permanently
alter the meaning of almost anything (Sedgwick & Frank, 2003, p. 62). Affect, in this
interpretation, is characterized by being provisional, blurry, unfinished, unconstrained by
defined boundaries, and thus not clearly divorceable from emotions, thoughts and the
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 39

body (see Gregg & Seigworth, 2010; Harrison, 2007; McCormack, 2008; Philippopoulos-
Mihalopoulos, 2016). Such characteristics, however, do not render affect irreducibly non-
representational and other-than-conscious: while it moves between individual and
collective bodies, affect emerges both in unpredictable and deliberately constructed
circumstances, as a set of unbridled potentialities that can be harnessed, steered and
consciously registered as emotions (see Massumi, 2002; Shouse, 2005; Thrift, 2007).
Within this line of thought, Anderson (2006) exemplifies the flow of interconnections
between emotions and affects using the example of hope to define a ‘layer cake’ model.
In this model, hope exists in three modalities: (1) as affect, that represents a flow of hope
(the first, deepest, noncognitive layer); (2) as a feeling, as a sense of hopefulness (the
second layer, precognitive, that lies between affect and emotion), and (3) as emotion,
that is, an actually expressed hope (the third, cognitive layer) (Anderson, 2006, p. 747).
Affect flowing in to dark sites can move from one modality to the other in often subtle,
unspoken ways, not easily brought into representations because ‘certain spectacular or
horrific events and encounters escape their retelling’ (Laurier & Philo, 2006, p. 353), as
they engage with the unspeakable (Willis, 2014). At the same time, affect does not bear
‘the spectre of a psychological individualism’ (Richard & Rudnyckyj, 2009, p. 57) present
in emotions. These ‘dark’ sites indeed have the potential to provide powerful affective
experiences and are often constructed by tourist operators with the intention to obtain
such effect (Weaver et al., 2017). Dark tourism broadly invites people to acknowledge
our mortality and the fragility of life, often appealing to discourses of moral, spiritual and
ideological reward (Bowman & Pezzullo, 2010, p. 189).
There has been a tendency, in some declinations of affect studies, to elide the ethical
and political domains of affect, portraying it as mute attunement to specific environ-
ments (Barnett, 2008), thus overlooking its potential as an analytical framework for
understanding sociospatial processes (Ansaloni & Tedeschi, 2016). Affective space,
argues Clive Barnett (2008, p. 190), ‘emerges as a medium for the inculcation of various
hateful, hopeful desirous or respectful dispositions’, which are not passively received,
but actively accepted, or refused, since reconfigured by the feeling subject. In dark
tourism sites, the modulation and regulation of affect is thus often actively engineered
by tourist operators, institutions and the media (including the social media) to reorient
and (re)organize the event of death or disaster and make it accessible to visitors.
Causevic and Lynch (2011, p.781) call it ‘phoenix tourism’, a form of tourism in which,
after a conflict, the meaning of a place is reimagined and designed to fit the new tragic
circumstances for which it gained attention. In some ways, this process shows similarities
to that related to heritage-making and the management of heritage experiences (see,
among others, Light, 2007; Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996). Both negotiate political
intensities inscribed in many tourism ventures and in ‘the social, historical, cultural
and political contexts in which atmospheres emerge and dissipate, and the attunement
of some to become absorbed within them’ (Edensor & Sumartojo, 2015, p. 252). In places
where tourists are confronted with landscapes charged with remnants of death and
disaster, atmospheres are constitutive of how movement in space is experienced (Brown
& Pickerill, 2009) and are ‘geopoietic’, in the sense that they generate and are generated
by place through the interaction of bodies and affect (Adey, 2015). Material remains,
narratives and landscapes are therefore saturated with affect in a messy and contingent
way (Ahmed, 2004), creating topographies of death and disaster situated in a politically
40 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

oriented space permeated with agency, expectation, objectives, social and community
ties and memories (Barnett, 2008; Duff, 2010; Muzaini & Minca, 2018; Ong & Minca,
2018). Tourists can thus attune to a ‘vibe’, a mood, an atmosphere (Ash, 2013) and create
associations between various material entities. ‘Affect’, as Kavka suggests, ‘is material
that matters’ (2008, p. 33), and in specific atmospheres this material potential transpires
by holding a series of opposites in a relation of tension (Anderson, 2014) that can,
partially and subjectively, resonate, be perceived, acknowledged and manipulated. In a
recent article where they discuss post-disaster tourism in Christchurch, New Zealand,
Hazel Tucker and Eric Shelton suggest that ‘whilst narratives of loss and hope offer a
repertoire of possible touristic performances, however consciously or unconsciously
enacted, they also provide a figurative analytical frame for examining possible affect-
generated action. These narratives provide a temporal context for smaller-scale stories
and link them firmly to the production of affect and mood’ (Tucker & Shelton, 2018, p.
73). Successful dark tourism is thus deliberately assembled in ways that make visible
how tourists are expected to read the site in question (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos,
2016), even though they do not experience affect in the same way and with the same
intensity (Tolia-Kelly, 2006). Places are in fact never intrinsically dark (Ashworth & Isaac,
2015; Light, 2017).
In the next sections we thus apply this perspective to our specific case, to a post-
disaster context where trauma healing and economic recovery seem to be addressed by
the same broader narratives and set of interventions, in order to elicit forms of affect in
the visitors and, with them, the local residents. The ethnographic material discussed in
this paper was collected from March to September 2016 in the Prefectures of Miyagi and
Iwate, part of the Tōhoku region. In the overall project, we have interviewed local
residents, tourists visiting the area and tourist operators at all levels: local tour guides,
representatives of local, regional and national governmental institutions, NGOs and
international travel agencies advertising tours in the disaster-hit towns. Roughly 65
participants were involved, using structured and semistructured interviews. Not all
interviews were conducted in Rikuzentakata and were about this town. In the analysis
that follows we therefore mainly consider the 30 interviews conducted in Rikuzentakata
or nearby; however, we try to corroborate our main argument, when necessary and
appropriate, also with interviews collected elsewhere. In addition to that, the first author
took part in 10 tours aimed at international tourists and conducted participant observa-
tion during the whole period spent in Japan. Material on the disaster and the recovery
was also collected at the IRIDeS (International Research Institute for Disaster Studies)
Archive for the 2011 Disaster, at Tōhoku University. Other online material was collected
from Facebook pages, blogs of tourists, websites of travel agencies and individual tour
guides, as well as the regional and national websites advertising tourism in the area. The
questions asked in the interviews were purposefully aimed at eliciting open and story-
telling type of answers, in order to invite the interviewees to share their thoughts,
opinions, emotions and offer a narrative of their own experience. Amongst the topics
covered in the interviews were: the history of the town before and after the disaster; the
recovery plans in relation to tourism; the expectations of the tourists; and the future of
tourism in the broader region. Overall, we adopted a narrative approach to analyze all
the related textual material, following the idea that tourism destinations are brought
into being, shaped and negotiated also by being framed and narrated to visitors
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 41

(Edelheim, 2015). We analyzed our ethnographic material paying particular attention to

instances in which emotional feelings were expressed. Most importantly, by weaving
together the ‘threads’ emerging from many of the interviews, we have tried to identify
narrative patterns that referred to actions, practices and bodily responses clearly related
to moments of affect and to the atmospheres of the post-disaster landscapes involved.
Complementing this material with field notes and participant observation allowed us to
gain insights into some of the complex affective responses that characterize these
experiences and the way they are narrated and performed (see also Tucker & Shelton,
2018).

Disaster tours in Rikuzentakata

Rikuzentakata is a quiet, rural town of around 20,000 people in Northern Tōhoku, a
region considered as inaka, a rural area marked by depopulation, backwardness and
isolation (Ivy, 1995), and excluded from the main tourist routes in Japan. Before the
disaster, the town attracted some domestic tourism because of its beautiful beaches,
and its shore-side forest made of 70,000 pine trees. In 2011, the tsunami washed away
80% of the buildings and took the life of almost 2000 people. As Shunsuke Kumagai, a
tourism officer at the nearby municipality of Kesennuma, recalled:

When the earthquake occurred, I was waiting for the shinkansen (bullet train) at the station.
All shinkansen stopped, the telephones weren’t working, so I was worried. I managed to
reach Kesennuma by bus. When I arrived there, the city was on fire, the sky was hell . . . The
bus driver was from Rikuzentakata and told me: ‘The city disappeared’. I couldn’t imagine
what he meant at the time, but after about one week I went there. As he said, the city
disappeared. I still remember this scene very well. I was working in tourism at that time and
I felt that our work was powerless in the face of such a natural disaster and thought “How
can I work in such a situation? How can we ask the people to visit here?”. (Kesennuma, 26/
08/2016)

The efforts of the country in the first few years after the disaster were focused, at all levels,
mainly on the recovery: cleaning the debris; resettling the people who lost their houses in
temporary accommodations; constructing seawalls, levees and rebuilding entire towns on
elevated ground; restoring the local communities; implementing new policies, programs
and institutions (Iuchi, Johnson, & Olshansky, 2013). The recovery, however, has moved
slower than expected. As Anthony, a U.K.-born travel journalist, recalled:

(my) first impression of Tohoku was that the transportation services were lacking, making it
difficult for non-car users. For the town of Rikuzentakata, I was initially shocked by how
empty it was. I expected the town to be more re-developed 5 years after the disaster, I was
surprised that no new buildings at all have been set up in the old town centre’.
(Rikuzentakata, 31/05/2016)

According to the Japan Reconstruction Agency (2017), as of November 2016 around

134,000 people were still displaced, and 50,000 in temporary homes—mostly prefabri-
cated structures intended to last just 2 years. Some of the delays stemmed from a
shortage of construction workers and materials. Workforce and materials were diverted
to the massive repairs of the Fukushima nuclear plant that employed up to 10,000
workers daily, and to construction projects for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (interview with
42 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

former volunteer Amya Miller, Tokyo, 4/06/2016). The implementation of these projects
has marginalized the Northern prefectures of Miyagi and Iwate, the ones hit the hardest
by the tsunami. This very fact, when coupled with the highly contested top-down
projects imposed by the National Reconstruction Agency (Iuchi et al., 2013), has exacer-
bated in the local communities a feeling of abandonment that was present long before
the disaster.
A few months after the tsunami, hotel managers reported the sparse presence of
occasional curious tourists and numerous international volunteers in the area (Muskat,
Nakanishi, & Blackman, 2015). By the end of 2012, some of the municipalities began to
show interest in developing tours targeting domestic and international visitors, as well
as other experiential activities aimed at combining stories of disaster and recovery with
more traditional activities such as fishing or soba (buckwheat) harvesting. To render the
Tōhoku region visible in a positive way in the international media, the central govern-
ment initially invested in a series of marketing campaigns: Get Back, Tōhoku, promoted
by Japan Railways, and Welcome to Fukushima, promoted by the Japan Tourism Agency
in collaboration with local organisations. Often, foreign residents in Tōhoku were paid to
advertise the region through Facebook, blog posts and Youtube videos such as the Go:
Tohoku channel.2 In these campaigns, the region was described as a mysterious, beauti-
ful destination that evoked the idyllic image of furusato, a rural, idealized ‘native place’
representing a spiritual home to all Japanese people (McMorran, 2008). By advertising
Tōhoku, the wider aim was to show that Japan was safe and had entirely recovered from
the disaster, with the intention of rebranding the country’s tarnished image especially
after the Fukushima accident. Stefan, CEO of Japanguide.com, a very popular website
among internationals seeking comprehensive and up-to-date information on traveling
to Japan, also stressed this necessity: ‘While there are locals who don’t like to see tourists
taking pictures of ruins, I am convinced that tourism is overall extremely useful and
important to the region. Not only in an economic way but also for the region not to be
forgotten’ (Skype interview, 03/08/2016).
However, despite these investments, the government’s strategy was often nona-
ligned, if not in open conflict, with the position of the local communities (Yankholmes
& McKercher, 2015). According to many of our interviewees, the local residents wanted
to move beyond the furusato and wished to create an experience that acknowledged
the positive characteristics of their town, but also capable of highlighting the painful
process of trauma and recovery. As Hiroko Uenohara, a volunteer tour guide in the
Tōhoku region, explained:

There is a gap between government and locals. The government announces their ideas to
the rest of the world, but we listen and . . . that’s not always true (sic). We want to tell
(people) the real conditions. So please, come to visit the affected areas and look at the lives
of those who are suffering . . . That is why we do guided tours in affected areas. Visitors
come here . . . to know the facts, how the locals were affected, how they are feeling, what
they are going to do, and go back home and speak to their neighbours and families.
(Sendai, 15/04/2016)

Since 2013, local communities and local travel agencies have been offering regular tours
of the post-disaster area. These focus on the disaster as a symbol of resilience, a hope for
future generation and a means to address misunderstandings about the event that
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 43

international visitors might have. Rikuzentakata was, and remains today, by far the most
committed town to become the symbol of the 2011 tsunami and a hub for international
tourists interested in learning more about the catastrophic event. Shortly after the
disaster, the Mayor appointed American-born volunteer Amya Miller as Rikuzentakata’s
public communication director. Together they envisaged a strategy to improve the
town’s visibility and distinction, in order to attract more volunteers but also tourists
interested in visiting during and after the recovery. The campaign they launched was
centred on a strong, powerful story, concerning a unique landmark: a survived pine tree.
On 11 March 2011, all pine trees that once surrounded the beach were uprooted by the
violence of the tsunami, except one. The surviving tree remained as a solitary symbol of
resilience in the face of nature’s fury, and was named Ipponmatsu (Solitary Pine), or
Miracle Pine. Miller has thus made sure that the ‘story of the pine’ would be picked up
by all major media, national and international, including The Japan Times,3 The
Guardian,4 Al Jazeera,5 BBC,6 CNN7 and The New York Times.8 This campaign and the
related media coverage put the town on the radar of international tourists interested in
visiting the disaster area. The town’s tourism strategy was manifold: first, to coach the
local population who had never interacted with foreigners in the past to act friendly and
welcoming; second, to use the conventional and the social media to attract national and
international attention; third, to have English-speaking staff involved in tourism-related
matters; fourth, to accept everyone who would come.
In the following section, we thus reflect on how disaster tourism in Rikuzentakata was
designed and implemented by local residents and tourist agents. According to some of
the interviews, this process has also constituted a means for the survivors and the local
communities to confront the trauma and the loss caused by the tsunami, and a potential
process of healing. Through the valorization of specific landmarks such as the Miracle
Pine, and the promotion of narratives depicting Rikuzentakata as the ‘Hiroshima of the
North’, tourists were offered an experience aimed at allowing them to perceive, interpret
and translate in their own cultural framework the affective atmosphere emanating from
the post-disaster geographies of this region.

Constructing affective atmospheres

Since 2012, local travel agencies in Rikuzentakata, often managed directly by the
municipality and involving members of the community, have been offering tours of
the post-disaster area, highlighting the tragedy and unpredictability of the tsunami, but
also the resilience of the Japanese people. For example, the English language flyer
available at the Kobe Earthquake Memorial Museum about a documentary directed by
Atsunori Kawamura entitled The Great tsunami in Japan: Reflecting on the 2011 disaster
did not highlight so much the loss and the destruction, but rather the possibility of
being ‘Empowered by a new mission: To educate future generations’ (Chikata &
Kawamura, 2015). The personal testimonies in the documentary, stated the flyer, ‘show
the power of life and hope in the face of unparalleled devastation’ (Chikata & Kawamura,
2015). Terms such as education, hope, testimony and resilience occurred relentlessly in
post-disaster tourism discourses, where different geographies of affect were constructed
around the realization of specific real-and-imagined tourism spatialities capable, at one
time, of commemorating the disaster and celebrating the recovery. To possibly appeal to
44 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

a growing number of (especially international) visitors, the municipality has thus crafted
narratives and sets of practices performed around specific landmarks capable of evoking
affect and of promoting engagement with what Waterton and Yusoff (2017, p. 7) would
describe as the ‘animacies and ambience of material worlds, and the inscriptive qualities
of our sensibility to them’.

Miracle Pine: understanding disaster, the ‘Japanese way’

Rikuzentakata has developed a tourism circuit that included several places of interest:
the Fumonji temple, and its rakan; a carpentry and folklore museum; Tapic45, a building
devastated by the tsunami but still standing and a tsunami museum, amongst many
others. However, as noted above, the strategy of the town in terms of tourism devel-
opment, media dissemination and popular imagination has revolved around one parti-
cular landmark: the Ipponmatsu, or Miracle Pine. Visitors can catch a first glimpse of the
Ipponmatsu as soon as they enter the city. Whether arriving by bus or by car—the only
means available to reach Rikuzentakata—after a sudden turn at a crossroad, it becomes
visible: a long, lean silhouette against the backdrop of the ocean (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Ipponmatsu (miracle tree) in Rikuzentakata, Japan. (Photo courtesy of Flavia Fulco, Sophia
University, Tokyo).
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 45

The omnipresent pine tree has been reproduced in the media infinite times as the
symbol of a solitary survivor standing amidst utter destruction (McCurry, 2013). When
we asked a survivor, a woman in her thirties, what was her favorite place in
Rikuzentakata, she answered without hesitation that it was the ‘Ipponmatsu, a monu-
ment of hope for the Japanese, but also for the foreigners who come here’ (Mrs. Satou,
Sendai, 07/09/2016). It did not matter that the pine was killed by salty water in 2012.
Thanks to private donations, a metallic rod was inserted into the tree, and synthetic
leaves and branches were added to it. This is a typical case in which material and
aesthetic elements of a unique landmark were purposefully designed to contribute to
specific discourses fraught with layers of affect (Stroud & Jegels, 2014) and connected to
‘material and signifying representations, as well as the remembered, anticipated and
experiential’ (Sumartojo, 2016, p. 544). The preservation of this landmark has arguably
helped to solidify the collective memory of the event, while providing continuity with
the past and immediate access to the affective sphere to which its story is normally
connected (Good, 2016). Another survivor in Rikuzentakata, who wished to remain
anonymous, claimed that one of her biggest fears is the new seawall, because everyone
trusted the previous one, and that is why many died. But, she added, ‘. . . now I can look
at the tree (the Ipponmatsu, located in front of the seawall) and I want to keep having
faith’ (Rikuzentakata, 7/09/2016). The atmosphere of tragedy and hope was picked up
also by tourists. Susumu, a college student from Hofstra University, in the U.S.A.,
confirmed that:

Out of all the photos I took, the image of the miracle tree is the one that interests me the
most. It is astounding that one tree managed to survive a massive force such as a tsunami
and stand tall five years later. I not only took a photo of the massive pine tree, but also of a
mural created by a very famous Japanese cartoonist dedicated to the pine tree. It shows the
pine tree standing tall next to a bright sun. To me, it captured the symbol that the miracle
tree had become and gives hope to the people in the area. (Rikuzentakata, 16/08/2016).

To reach the Ipponmatsu, the tourists have to slowly walk through a construction site,
following a narrow, serpentine path in the barren landscape, punctuated only by the sound
of construction workers and of the waves against the new seawall. The gigantic conveyor
belt that transports soil from the nearby hill to the coast, aptly named the ‘Bridge of Hope’,
casts a shade on a good portion of the ground nearby. After a few minute walk, the tourists
are presented with a panel showing a picture of the former pine tree forest. Here the guides
normally stop and invite everyone to look at the picture. Then the tourists are left to watch
in awe the panel, and the solitary tree in the distance. Mako, a young Japanese woman from
a volunteer guides group named Gozain, suggested that when she takes people to the
disaster-hit coast, she first tells them the story of the tsunami, and then explains that, on that
exact point, 5 years earlier, thousands of people died. Tourists, she continued, usually
remain silent, to reflect on the tremendous force of nature:

It makes you think of Judgment Day, because it is a desert, barren place. I tell them
something about life before the earthquake. There were so many houses, and people living
their daily lives. Some were farmers, others were fishermen, and I tell them about the strong
community that existed in this area. So, they try to imagine how the life was before, here,
and they experience maybe a kind of feeling they can’t explain. (Sendai, 15/06/2016)
46 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

This impossibility to explain might be referred to the communicative action of affect that
often resides outside the domain of language but is still visible in embodied practices
(Richard & Rudnyckyj, 2009). One common practice that tour guides utilize to make
tourists ‘understand’ the post-disaster context is that of showing them pictures of the
area before the tsunami, often with only brief explanations, in order to let them ‘feel’ the
magnitude of what happened. In other cases, affective responses are evoked involunta-
rily through bodily senses on site. An American participant in a tour for example recalled:
‘The sound of construction and the sight of the giant bridge used to transport soil from
the mountains around the area are the images I remember the most’ (Anonymous,
Rikuzentakata, 16/08/2018).
The act of remaining silent and reflecting on the magnitude of the disaster is thus
often part of a deliberately constructed practice on the part of the tour guides, aimed
at affording access to a volatile and transitory atmosphere. During one tour with 4
American high school teachers, one woman in her forties spent a long time in silence
in front of the Miracle Pine. When she joined the rest of the group, she mentioned
something that happened to her just before coming to Japan. She was in her house
and, despite having looked everywhere, she could not find her young daughter.
Worried sick, she finally found her, standing perfectly still and silent over the toilet
bowl. The daughter explained that the previous day they had a drill to instruct kids
on how to react in case of a mass shooting. The woman was horrified by the
possibility of something like that happening and perceived a connection between
her own traumatic experience and the unexpected violence of the tsunami. Such
moments of resonance are explained by Coddington and Micieli-Voutsinas (2017, p.
52) with the fact that experienced traumas can be ‘both timeless and literally difficult
to place’, resulting in possible slippages of memories and feelings that may stimulate
involuntary memories. Involuntary memories ‘are unpredictable and contingent . . .
enmeshed in sensation and vague intimations of previous atmospheres, they are
slippery to pin down, to describe and represent’ (Edensor, 2005, p. 837). Attuning to
the affective atmosphere of a place can in fact create a resonance that emanates
from a dynamic combination of built environment, place and people and involuntary
memories, and that makes affect perceivable (Sumartojo, 2016). These involuntary
memories may resonate with something that happened in a different place—as in
the case of the teacher—or may emanate from memories of what has happened in
the area at the time of the disaster. Another American college student, for example,
explained how, when visiting Rikuzentakata, all he could think about

. . . was the videos of tsunami water just flooding into the streets of the town in the area,
and cars and rummage being washed away by the waves [. . .] The entire time I was trying to
image how the locals felt when the tsunami came into their town. Did they run to upper
ground? Was the site where I am standing now submerged in water that day or was there a
home here? Did families see their loved ones get washed away before their eyes? Such
thoughts would run through my head while touring the town’. (Anonymous, Rikuzentakata,
2/09/2016)

These tangible landmarks, corroborated by narratives and on-site practices routinely

repeated with every new group of tourists, aim at creating a choreography ‘directed’ by
the tour guides (see Edensor & Holloway, 2008) that produces and reproduces a specific
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 47

post-disaster landscape. This process of worldmaking, however, at times may not be

purposefully or consciously produced. Nevertheless, it may still ‘include the production
of particular “affect” or “mood”’ (Tucker & Shelton, 2018, p. 68). Such performances on
the part of the tour guides are thus not affective in themselves, but they may foster the
conditions for the possibility of affective reactions since they are intentionally aimed at
making the visitors feel a unique atmosphere that intensely and deeply engages them
(Anderson, 2014). The stark contrast between images of the past and the present is thus
purposefully (re)constructed on-site, using the iconic power of the monumental pre-
sence of the solo pine tree, to elicit affective responses in the tourists. The story of the
Ipponmatsu, as narrated by tour guides and the media, and the staging of the memorial
site are apparently so effective because they succeed in creating a resonance that goes
beyond the 2011 disaster and embrace something far-reaching and universal: an affec-
tive feeling of hope. After a moment in front of the tree, the tour guides tend to shift to
stories about the survival of the tree, a tree that mirrors the survival of the city and its
people, at one time commemorating the past event and celebrating hope in the future.
In line with this deliberate attempt to connect post-disaster tourism with a broader
affective politics of hope Rikuzentakata began to be strategically promoted as the
‘Hiroshima of the North’.

Hiroshima of the North

More than 6 years after the disaster, the coastal expanse of land that used to be
downtown Rikuzentakata is still a flat, barren terrain. ‘It took us more than 5 years to
get back to our normal life, and many people are still not yet there. It is going to be a
really long way’ declared Aya, a tour guide of the independent tourism association
Marugoto9 during a tour in 2016. When asked by a tour participant how long the
recovery may take, she disclosed that even though the Municipality’s prospect was 8
years, ‘there is no possibility to finish by then . . . They decided on that timeframe
because if they say 10 years or more, the people . . . their hope will decline’
(Rikuzentakata, 07/07/2016). A broader ‘politics of hope’ and the deliberate construction
of narratives that would foster and harness hope have been a common fixture in many
Japanese discourses concerning times of crisis during and after the Second World War,
and posttsunami Japan is no exception (see Leheny, 2018; Mullins & Nakano, 2016).
Historically, Japan’s reaction to disasters, at all institutional levels, has been that of
invoking hope as a sentiment able to transform people’s pain and anger in discourses
of peace and resilience, and in this way propel change and renewal (Kimura, 2018). In
1952, Shinzō Hamai, at the time Mayor of a still devastated Hiroshima, proposed a
Reconstruction Plan in which the city would be rebuilt as symbol of peace, and
expressed his hopes ‘that when visitors from abroad come to Japan they will drop by
in Hiroshima’ (in Schäfer, 2015, p. 354).
Such attitude and similar wording have been mirrored in Rikuzentakata, now pro-
moted as the ‘Hiroshima of the North’. In one of our encounters, and in many interviews
that she gave to international media outlets, Amya Miller has declared that ‘the Miracle
Pine is a powerful symbol for the town and it conveys a message of hope, akin to the
Hiroshima Dome’ (Rikuzentakata, 09/09/2016). As Dylan, a young American who works at
the Municipality to promote international relations, similarly remarked:
48 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

. . . the tsunami was a horrible disaster, but at the same time it gives this town an amazing
opportunity to build a new city from scratch . . . I do think we have the potential to be
Tōhoku’s version of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where people would come in 50 years, 70
years, 100 years, to learn about the history of what happened here and pay their respect.
(Rikuzentakata, 09/09/2016)

Hiroshima has a heavily charged past. By associating the two cities, tourist operators use
a metaphor that reaches in and through the post-disaster landscape, and arguably
produces a ‘broader restorative truth’ (Hoskins, 2010, p. 272) aiming at establishing
affective connections between the dramatic past of Hiroshima and the present tragedy
of Rikuzentakata. As Anthony confirmed, ‘visiting . . . the Miracle Pine reminded me of
similar visits to former disaster zones such as Hiroshima’ (Rikuzentakata, 31/05/2016).
Narratives of hope and survival at the Miracle Pine, when enmeshed with the over-
arching narrative of Rikuzentakata as a Northern Hiroshima, annihilated and reborn from
its ashes, arguably allow to explore not only how stories move through landscapes, but,
more broadly, also how these storied landscapes move people or inspire ‘historical
empathy’ (Modlin, Alderman, & Gentry, 2011, p. 5).
The connection to Hiroshima also vehemently implies plans to make the town a
symbolic site projected to last in history, driven by a permanent iconic presence that
somehow has the same function of the Hiroshima Dome: the Miracle Pine. Dr. Kanatsu,
when asked about what left the biggest impression, explained that:
You have to stand on the place to “feel” the magnitude. First, the ruins teach us the
magnitude of the power of tsunami. Although it is understandable that some people hate
to see it, for human beings collectively it is essential to preserve ruins like the Hiroshima’s
atomic dome. Second there is an amazing attempt to create new towns, and therefore
communities, as artificial as Las Vegas. One has to see the yellowish colour of the soil
transported there and appreciate what it means to “remake” or “restore” community.
(Rikuzentakata, 16/08/2016)

The imaginary that emerges when these two sites are superimposed in narratives of
disaster belongs to a geography that is reconfigured as a porous amalgam of
sensations, practices and fragments of affect and memory coming together in the
concept of ‘Hiroshima’. This process in fact implies for Rikuzentakata the perspective
of recovering and becoming a city more successful than it was before the disaster; all
this, however, is performed in a background context that also vaguely echoes an
atmosphere of nuclear danger (implicitly induced by the silent presence of the
devastated nuclear plant in Fukushima, far away but often clustered together in
media narratives about tsunami towns like Rikuzentakata). Lastly, but perhaps more
importantly, Hiroshima is affectively invoked as a promise of a good future associated
to tourism development. From our interviews, it clearly emerged that the local
population understands international tourists as a key source of psychological relief
and social and economic recovery.

Cross-cultural interpretation of affect

For many Japanese, according to our local interviewees, it may prove difficult to
communicate to Westerners their reflections on death, trauma, loss and pain, since
they may have different cultural ways of expressing and perceiving emotions (see also
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 49

Athanasiadou & Tabakowska, 1998; Wierzbicka, 1997). Such differences in expressing

emotions was seen by some as something that may potentially hinder for many
survivors the possibility of sharing their experience effectively with international tourists.
One tourist, for example, after attending a tour in which a survivor narrated his personal
story, declared that he was negatively affected ‘by the lack of apparent effort to speak to
the group as a whole. He (the survivor) focused his eyes in one corner and stuck with it’
(Municipality of Matsushima, 2016). Other tourists also felt a wrench in communication,
which they attributed to cultural differences in expressing feelings. Yao, a Chinese
tourist, said that ‘(she) felt like, they don’t look like people showing their real feelings.
But you know, they are Japanese, and Japanese people always pretend everything is ok’
(Sendai, 11/08/2016). However, this is not always the case, as one of the volunteer
guides of Gozain, when describing one of his tours, recalled:

It was a winter day . . . and they [a father and daughter he was guiding] came in a very
luxurious limousine. They asked us: “what is the feeling, what is the scene, after the
tsunami?” They meant the tsunami survivors, what they feel, what they think. And I
answered, “It’s anger, anger against the tsunami.” (Mr. Satou, Sendai, 15/06/2016)

As confirmed by Dr. Kanatsu, ‘people were angry, but, they largely accepted their fate,
and started thinking about what they could do in that moment. This is a key aspect of
Japanese culture, whether one likes it or not, something that many non-Japanese fail to
understand’ (Rikuzentakata, 16/08/2016).
In a situation in which different manifestations of emotion were perceived as a
potential limitation in the communication between tourists and residents, affect has
emerged as a more appropriate means to negotiate meaning and memory between
these two groups. Affective elements, according to Barnett (2008), are inherently rela-
tional, and therefore more open to the potential of perception, interpretation and
translation across groups who identify themselves as ‘culturally different’. In such rela-
tional, subtle and fuzzy moments of affective awareness in a Japanese context of
disaster, international tourists involved in those tour were in fact not merely passive
recipients of atmospheres and affects intentionally ‘performed’ by the tour operators,
but actually contributed to cocreate them through their actions, responses and expecta-
tions (on this, see Sumartojo, 2016). Affective resonances ‘engineered’ by Japanese tour
guides and institutions were arguably somehow apprehended and incorporated by the
tourists in their own respective ‘cultural frame’, (re)structuring and reconfiguring the
ways in which individuals make sense of places of conflict (Laketa, 2016, p. 662) or, in
our case, disaster. What emerged during our fieldwork is that, by attuning and resonat-
ing with specific forms of affect, tourists were simultaneously interpreting the meaning
of the Miracle Pine and the narratives, practices and materialities attached to it. The
atmosphere produced through these encounters in sites of trauma amongst affective
narratives, practices and landmarks allowed in fact the tourists to experience what
Micieli Voutsinas defines as ‘a kind of “feeling truth” for visitors’, which is ‘vital to
representing that which is “unrepresentable” and unknowable: trauma itself’ (2017, p.
94). As Andrea, a German tourist, attempted to explain:

I imagine having tourists here can be difficult. It’s just [. . .] something really bad happened
there and you just take it and live it as a tourist and that is just . . . it’s this idea that makes
50 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

you start to feel bad. Because you want to see, and want to experience . . . I can’t reconcile
that. (Andrea, Rikuzentakata, 18/07/2016)

However, despite these difficulties, international (disaster) tourism was genuinely con-
ceived as an opportunity for residents and survivors to tell their story and have their
story known outside of Japan. To help overcome trauma the tourists were expected to
go back home and communicate, on their own terms, those stories of disaster and
trauma. The main page of the TohokuNow! website, a joint project initiated to promote
tourism in English for the towns of Rikuzentakata, Minamisanriku and Matsushima,
accordingly read: ‘the presence of international visitors is a powerful reminder of
relevancy’ (TohokuNow!, 2016). The purpose of such narratives and strategies was to
create a bridge of communication, in which tourists were directly involved in the
atmosphere of tragedy and hope that emanated from the (disaster) site and perceive
its profound affective charge. As part of these recovery plans, international tourists were
conceived not only as witnesses, but also as participants in the realization of a new,
hopefully bright future. A survivor in the nearby town of Ofunato described how for her
the process of healing percolated through small acts of normalcy:
I’m very happy that I can vacuum my place every morning! I couldn’t do it at the temporary
housing because I was worried the noise might have disturbed the neighbours. Now I have
breakfast in the fresh morning air! I feel that I’m living again calmly and comfortably. (Mrs.
Hirayama, Ofunato, 29/08/2016)

These small, familiar sensations, however, are complemented by active efforts in sharing
her experience with other residents and with the tourists. For this reason, she tells her
stories at the local market:
Rather than telling them what we lost, I try express how grateful I am for their help; I know
people come from far away for us, they use their time for us. They help and support us not
only physically but also mentally. I like to express how much I’m grateful for this. (Mrs.
Hirayama, Ofunato, 29/08/2016)

Post-disaster tourism has thus emerged here as a complex, meaningful encounter

between the tourists and those involved in its organization and promotion in
Rikuzentakata, who had to deal with an extremely sensitive, nuanced and reflexive
constituency (Rittichainuwat, 2008). The path to healing from material and emotional
trauma, the recovery of a collective sense of self, and the memorialization of the disaster
for future generations were thus intentionally incorporated, through the performance
and the enactment of the affective atmospheres described above, in layers of diverse by
somehow unifying discourses of hope and resilience.

Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the case of Rikuzentakata, a town almost completely
destroyed by the 2011 tsunami provoked by what is known as the Great East Japan
Disaster and shown how the town has directed its recovery toward the development of
a specific form of post-disaster tourism. We have focused in particular on two main
strategies implemented by the authorities: first, the celebration of Ipponmatsu, or the
Miracle Pine, a symbol of resilience in the face of devastation; second, the promotion of
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 51

Rikuzentakata as the ‘Hiroshima of the North’. Both these discourses were based on the
engineering and the apprehension of specific affective post-disaster atmospheres and
perceived by residents and local authorities as key for attracting visitors, especially
international, interested in the disaster. Our analysis has highlighted how a politics of
affect built around the tsunami has been spatialized and grounded using material
landmarks (The Miracle Pine) and associated tourist practices, but also narratives of
hope and resilience based on comparisons with Hiroshima. Such affective atmospheres,
we have argued, were planned and performed as an attempt to facilitate cross-cultural
communication, with the hope that the local modalities of post-disaster trauma recovery
and place reconstruction might be perceived and interpreted by international tourists
through processes of attunement and resonance. Affective transitive capacities have
thus been deliberately activated and stimulated in order to overcome the limitations
imposed by cross-cultural communication between the survivors and the tourists.
Storytelling in Rikuzentakata covers basic facts but, most importantly, it includes also
personal stories told by guides or survivors. Our fieldwork has revealed that the ways in
which these stories were received and apprehended by tourists was indeed seen by
many residents as a means to overcome trauma and depression, and essential for their
long healing process (Muskat et al., 2015). Tour guide Marife, a Filipino woman who has
lived in Rikuzentakata for 22 years and survived the tsunami, claimed that sharing her
story with tourists:

. . . makes me feel relieved. I feel so very fine because I shared my feelings with them and I
am sure that they were trying to understand, and they tried to be in my shoes in their mind,
how I felt five years ago. I want my listeners to cry, and to listen. (Rikuzentakata, 07/09/2016)

What is more, the post-disaster narratives performed in Rikuzentakata comprise a

selective set of spatial practices and a specific geography of remnants that are poten-
tially challenged by what tourist may actually do to respond to the affective atmo-
spheres proposed by the tour operators. According to Emma Willis, in sites of death and
disaster visitors are inevitably caught in ‘the tension between the perceived sacred
quality of trauma and the profane aspect of deadly tourism . . . [since] the tourist
approach seeks to endlessly replay the traumatic event’ (Willis, 2014, p. 4). The perfor-
mances at play, while not always deliberately constructed on affect, may nonetheless
provoke unpredictable and often non-representable affective reactions, often associated
to ambiguities and tensions that pervade also many dark tourism practices and experi-
ences (Martini & Buda, 2018). Despite the actual impossibility of ‘performing affect’, what
we have witnessed in Rikuzentakata is that the official tourist narratives and practices
were at the origin of a series of unintended ‘effects’, including the possibility of an
‘affective appreciation’ on the part of the tourist of the relationship between what was
present and what was absent, what was visible and what was indeed invisible in such
post-disaster landscapes. What has also emerged from our analysis is that, by translating
the atmosphere of disaster, trauma and recovery in their own cultural frame, some
international tourists have arguably acted as witnesses and participants to the survivors’
pain and, at the same time, commemorated the victims while helping with the recovery
(see Biran et al., 2011; Rittichainuwat, 2008). As Radica, a tourist from Trinidad and
Tobago, summarized, ‘I guess, in a sense, you can say that the media will show you
52 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

the results of the disaster, but you can’t understand it until you actually see it with your
own eyes. The experience was surreal’ (Yuriage, 15/08/2016).
Remembering disaster is always a powerful political act (Dyson, 2006): in the case
illustrated here the reproduction of collective memories was performed everyday (Rigney,
2008) by and for the survivors and the tourists, in an atmosphere recreated on-site via a
politics of affect and a specific set of narratives that aimed at allowing visitors to contem-
plate death and disaster on their own terms (Bowman & Pezzullo, 2010). At the same time,
this atmosphere was intentionally produced to involve the tourists in a broader process of
healing from trauma and recovery for Rikuzentakata and its residents. This case shows that
analyzing the ‘power of affect’, even when the affective atmosphere are deliberately staged
by the tour operators, is key to the understanding of tourist practices in sites mark by such a
painful past. Dark and post-disaster tourism studies, we claim, can thus significantly benefit
from the incorporation of affect in their analytical frameworks. A profound engagement
with questions of affect may in fact allow to interrogate the inherently ambivalent pathos
that inevitably characterizes sites and practices of this kind, often triggering unpredictable
reactions such as shock and anger, but also wonder and excitement (Martini & Buda, 2018).
Sites of death and human sufferance in fact entail, as noted Emma Willis, a complex role of
presence and spectatorship, often related to a sense of being at loss, not so ‘much [because
of the] sadness that comes from seeing something profoundly moving, but rather [because
of] the unease of not knowing how to respond’ (Willis, 2014, p. 6). Negotiation of painful
pasts, ethically problematic situations, politically oriented discourses on memory and
heritage (Godis & Nilsson, 2018), can in fact produce ‘strong emotional and affective
reactions—such as pain, fear, empathy, catharsis—from locals as well as visitors’ (Martini
& Buda, 2018, p. 2). While we recognize all the difficulties in communicating pain and
suffering to tourists in a place like Rikuzentakata, and in finding appropriate and respectful
ways to memorialize disaster, we would like to argue that only by fully engaging with the
importance and the ambivalence of affect in such tourist experiences we may be able to
appreciate how such post-disaster landscapes somehow speak, through their multiple
narratives and the related materialities, of what is otherwise unspeakable.

Notes
1. In 2017, thanks to donations from other parts of Japan, the Gohyaku rakan project was
completed with 569 statues carved in Rikuzentakata, and roughly 1000 sent from other
parts of Japan (see also http://www.kahoku.co.jp/tohokunews/201708/2017081933009.
html).
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmUc4bjEMKc.
3. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2015/03/07/travel/rikuzentakata-looks-future-new-tour
ism-ventures/.
4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/japan-miracle-pine-tree-tsunami-
rikuzentakata.
5. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/03/201239122211138361.html.
6. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35781593.
7. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/16/japan.tree.hope/index.html.
8. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/world/asia/22missing.html.
9. http://marugoto-rikuzentakata.com/.
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 53

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This work was supported by the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen & European Union (MC-Cofund) [This
work is part of a research programme financed].

References
Adey, P. (2015). Air’s affinities: Geopolitics, chemical affect and the force of the elemental.
Dialogues in Human Geography, 5(1), 54–75.
Ahmed, S. (2004). The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Amujo, O. C., & Otubanjo, O. (2012). Leveraging rebranding of ‘unattractive’ nation brands to
stimulate post-disaster tourism. Tourist Studies, 12(1), 87–105.
Anderson, B. (2006). Becoming and being hopeful: Towards a theory of affect. Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 24, 733–752.
Anderson, B. (2014). Encountering affect. London: Ashgate.
Ansaloni, F., & Tedeschi, M. (2016). Understanding space ethically through affect and emotion:
From uneasiness to fear and rage in the city. Emotion, Space and Society, 21, 15–22.
Araki, F., & Wiseman, R. (1996). Emotional expressions in the United States and Japan. Intercultural
Communication Studies, VI(2), 13–32.
Ash, J. (2013). Technologies of captivation: Videogames and the attunement of affect. Body &
Society, 19(1), 27–51.
Ashcroft, F. (2000). Life at the Extremes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ashworth, G. J., & Hartmann, R. (2005). Horror and human tragedy revisited: The Management of
Sites of Atrocities for Tourism. New York, NY: Cognizant.
Ashworth, G. J., & Isaac, R. K. (2015). Have we illuminated the dark? Shifting perspectives on ‘dark’
tourism. Tourism Recreation Research, 40(3), 316–325.
Athanasiadou, A., & Tabakowska, E. (Eds.). (1998). Speaking of emotions. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Barnett, C. (2008). Political affects in public space: Normative blindspots in non-representational
ontologies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(2), 186–200.
Biran, A., Liu, W., Li, G., & Eichhorn, V. (2014). Consuming post-disaster destinations: The case of
Sichuan, China. Annals of Tourism Research, 47, 1–17.
Biran, A., Poria, Y., & Oren, G. (2011). Sought experiences at (dark) heritage sites. Annals of Tourism
Research, 38(3), 820–841.
Blom, T. (2000). Morbid tourism: A postmodern market niche with an example from Althorpe.
Norwegian Journal of Geography, 54, 29–36.
Bowman, M. S., & Pezzullo, P. C. (2010). What’s so ‘Dark’ about ‘dark tourism’?: Death, tours, and
performance. Tourist Studies, 9(3), 187–202.
Bristow, R., & Newman, M. (2004). Myth vs. fact: An exploration of fright tourism. Proceedings of the
2004 Northeastern Recreation Research Symposium (pp. 215–221), Westfield: Westfield State
College.
Brown, G., & Pickerill, J. (2009). Space for emotion in the spaces of activism. Emotion, Space and
Society, 2(1), 24–35.
Buda, D. M. (2015). Affective tourism: Dark routes in conflict. London: Routledge.
Buda, D. M., d’Hauteserre, A.-M., & Johnston, L. (2014). Feeling and tourism studies. Annals of
Tourism Research, 46, 102–114.
Causevic, S., & Lynch, P. (2011). Phoenix tourism: Post-conflict tourism role. Annals of Tourism
Research, 38(3), 780–800.
54 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

Chikata, M., (Producer), & Kawamura, A., (Director) (2015). The great tsunami in Japan: Reflecting on
the 2011 disaster. Documentary. Retrieved from http://www.ootsunami.jp/en/
Coddington, K., & Micieli-Voutsinas, J. (2017). On trauma, geography, and mobility: Towards
geographies of trauma. Emotion, Space and Society, 24, 52–56.
Dann, G. (1994). Tourism: The nostalgia industry of the future. In W. Theobald (Ed.), Global tourism
(pp. 55–67). Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
Dann, G., & Seaton, A. V. (Eds.). (2001). Slavery, contested heritage and thanatourism. Binghampton:
Haworth Hospitality Press.
Davidson, J., & Bondi, L. (2004). Spatialising affect, affecting space: An introduction. Gender, Place &
Culture, 11(3), 373–374.
d’Hauteserre, A. M. (2015). Affect theory and the attractivity of destinations. Annals of Tourism
Research, 55, 77–89.
Duff, C. (2010). On the role of affect and practice in the production of place. Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, 28(5), 881–895.
Dyson, M. E. (2006). Come hell or high water: Hurricane katrina and the color of disaster. New York,
NY: Basic Civitas Books.
Edelheim, J. (2015). Tourist attractions: From object to narrative. Bristol: Channel View.
Edensor, T. (2005). The ghosts of industrial ruins: Ordering and disordering memory in excessive
space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 23(6), 829–849.
Edensor, T., & Holloway, J. (2008). Rhythmanalysing the coach tour: The ring of kerry, Ireland.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 33(4), 483–501.
Edensor, T., & Sumartojo, S. (2015). Introduction: Designing atmospheres. Visual Communication, 14
(2), 251–266.
Foley, M., & Lennon, J. J. (1996). JFK and dark tourism: A fascination with assassination.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2(4), 198–211.
Godis, N., & Nilsson, J. H. (2018). Memory tourism in a contested landscape: Exploring identity
discourses in Lviv, Ukraine. Current Issues in Tourism, 21(15), 1690–1709.
Good, M. (2016). Shaping Japan’s disaster heritage. The creation of new monuments and the
preservation of ruins in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. In A.
Matsuda & L. Mengoni (Eds.), Reconsidering Cultural Heritage in East Asia (pp. 1–23). London:
Ubiquity Press.
Graburn, N. H. H. (2012). The dark is on the inside: The honne of Japanese exploratory tourists. In
D. Picard & M. Robinson (Eds.), Emotion in Motion: Tourism, Affect and Transformation (pp. 49–
72). London: Ashgate.
Gregg, M., & Seigworth, G. J. (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gulz, A. (1992). Conceptions of anger and grief in the Japanese, Swedish and American cultures. Lund:
Citeseer.
Harrison, P. (2007). ‘How shall I say it . . .?’ Relating the non-relational. Environment and Planning A,
39, 590–608.
Hoskins, G. (2010). A secret reservoir of values: The narrative economy of angel Island immigration
station. Cultural Geographies, 17(2), 259–275.
Ishii, T., Vargas, J. R. S., & Vargas, J. C. S. (2011). Breaking into Japanese literature/identity: Tatemae
and honne. Impossibilia, 2, 81–95.
Iuchi, K., Johnson, L. A., & Olshansky, R. B. (2013). Securing Tohoku’s future: planning for rebuilding
in the first year following the Tohoku-oki earthquake and Tsunami. Earthquake Spectra, 29(1),
479–499.
Ivy, M. (1995). Discourses of the vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Japan National Police Agency. (2018). Damage situation and police countermeasures associated with
2011 Tohoku District – Off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake (Report of 9/3/2018). Retrieved from
http://www.npa.go.jp/news/other/earthquake2011/pdf/higaijokyo_e.pdf
Japan Reconstruction Agency. (2017). Progress to date. Retrieved from: http://www.reconstruction.
go.jp/english/topics/Progress_to_date/index.html
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 55

Kato, M. (2000). Teaching the concept of tatemae to English-speakers (Doctoral dissertation). The
Ohio State University, Columbus.
Kavka, M. (2008). Reality television, affect and intimacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kerr, R. A. (2011). Seismic crystal ball proving mostly cloudy around the world. Science, 332, 912–
913.
Kimura, A. H. (2018). Fukushima ETHOS: Post-disaster risk communication, affect, and shifting risks.
Science as Culture, 27(1), 1–20.
Laketa, S. (2016). Geopolitics of affect and emotions in a post-conflict city. Geopolitics, 21(3), 661–
685.
Laurier, E., & Philo, C. (2006). Possible geographies: A passing encounter in a café. Area, 38(4), 353–
363.
Leheny, D. (2018). Empire of hope. The sentimental politics of Japanese Decline. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Lennon, J., & Foley, M. (2000). Dark tourism. London: Continuum.
Light, D. (2017). Progress in dark tourism and thanatourism research: An uneasy relationship with
heritage tourism. Tourism Management, 61, 275–301.
Lippard, L. R. (1999). On the beaten track. New York, NY: The New Press.
Lisle, D. (2007). Defending voyeurism: Dark tourism and the problem of global security. In P. M.
Burns & M. Novelli (Eds.), Tourism and politics (pp. 333–345). Oxford: Elsevier.
Logan, W., & Reeves, K. (2009). Places of pain and shame. London: Routledge.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class. Berkeley: Univ of California
Press.
Mair, J., Ritchie, B. W., & Walters, G. (2016). Towards a research agenda for post-disaster and post-
crisis recovery strategies for tourist destinations: A narrative review. Current Issues in Tourism, 19
(1), 1–26.
Martini, A., & Buda, D. M. (2018). Dark tourism and affect: Framing places of death and disaster.
Current Issues in Tourism, 1–14. doi:10.1080/13683500.2018.1518972
Massumi, B. (2002). Parables of the Virtual. Durham: Duke University Press.
Matanle, P. (2011). The great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown: Towards the
(re)construction of a safe, sustainable, and compassionate society in Japan’s shrinking regions.
Local Environment, 16(9), 823–847.
McCormack, D. P. (2008). Engineering affective atmospheres on the moving geographies of the
1897 Andrée expedition. Cultural Geographies, 15(4), 413–430.
McCurry, T. (2013, March 7). Japanese ‘miracle’ pine returns to tsunami-hit town. The Guardian
Online. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/japan-miracle-pine-
tree-tsunami-rikuzentakata
McMorran, C. (2008). Understanding the ‘heritage’ in heritage tourism: Ideological tool or eco-
nomic tool for a Japanese hot springs resort? Tourism Geographies, 10(3), 334–354.
Micieli-Voutsinas, J. (2017). An absent presence: Affective heritage at the National September 11th
Memorial & Museum. Emotion, Space and Society, 24, 93–104.
Miles, W. (2002). Auschwitz: Museum interpretation and darker tourism. Annals of Tourism
Research, 29(4), 1175–1178.
Modlin, E. A., Jr, Alderman, D. H., & Gentry, G. W. (2011). Tour guides as creators of empathy: The
role of affective inequality in marginalizing the enslaved at plantation house museums. Tourist
Studies, 11(1), 3–19.
Mullins, M. R., & Nakano, K. (Eds.). (2016). Disasters and social crisis in contemporary Japan. New
York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Muskat, B., Nakanishi, H., & Blackman, D. (2015). Integrating tourism into disaster recovery manage-
ment: The case of the great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. In B. W. Ritchie & K.
Campiranon (Eds.), Tourism crisis and disaster management in the Asia-Pacific (pp. 97–115).
Wallingford: CABI.
Muzaini, H., & Minca, C. (Eds.). (2018). After Heritage. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Nawijn, J., & Biran, A. (2018). Negative emotions in tourism: A meaningful analysis. Current Issues in
Tourism, 1–13. doi:10.1080/13683500.2018.1451495
56 A. MARTINI AND C. MINCA

Ngai, S. (2005). Ugly feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

O’Neill, S. (2002). Soham pleads with trippers to stay away. Daily Telegraph. Retrieved from http://
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/26/nfen26.xm-l&sSheet=/portal/
2002/08/26/ixport.htm
Ong, C. E., & Minca, C. (2018). Touring the camp. Ghostly presences and silent geographies of
remnants at Galang camp, Indonesia. In I. Katz, D. Martin, & C. Minca (Eds.), Camps Revisited.
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ong, C. E., Minca, C., & Felder, M. (2015). The historic hotel as ‘quasi-freedom machine’: Negotiating
utopian visions and dark histories at Amsterdam’s Lloyd Hotel and ‘Cultural embassy’. Journal of
Heritage Tourism, 10, 167–183.
Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (2016). Withdrawing from atmosphere: An ontology of air parti-
tioning and affective engineering. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 34(1), 150–
167.
Pile, S. (2010). Emotions and affect in recent human geography. Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, 35(1), 5–20.
Pocock, N. (2015). Emotional entanglements in tourism research. Annals Of Tourism Research, 53,
31-45. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2015.04.005
Prayag, G. (2016). It’s not all dark! christchurch residents’ emotions and coping strategies with dark
tourism sites. In C. M. Hall, S. Malinen, R. Vosslamber, & R. Wordsworth (Eds.), Business and post-
disaster management (pp. 155–166). London: Routledge.
Resilience for Future in Rikuzentakata. Facebook page. posted on May 19, 2013. Retrieved from https://
www.facebook.com/133904063469557/photos/rpp.133904063469557/134318486761448/?type=
3&theater
Richard, A., & Rudnyckyj, D. (2009). Economies of affect. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute, 15(1), 57–77.
Rigney, A. (2008). Divided pasts: A Premature memorial and the dynamics of collective remem-
brance. Memory Studies, 1(1), 89–97.
Rittichainuwat, B. N. (2008). Responding to disaster: Thai and Scandinavian tourists’ motivation to
visit Phuket, Thailand. Journal of Travel Research, 46, 422–432.
Robinson, M., & Picard, D. (Eds.). (2012). Emotion in motion: Tourism, affect and transformation.
London: Routledge.
Robinson, N. (2015). Dark tourism motivations. (Doctoral dissertation). Salford: The University of
Salford.
Rojek, C. (1993). Ways of escape. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Schäfer, S. (2015). From Geisha girls to the atomic bomb dome: Dark tourism and the formation of
Hiroshima memory. Tourist Studies, 16(4), 351–366.
Seaton, A. V. (1996). Guided by the dark: From thanatopsis to thanatourism. International Journal of
Heritage Studies, 2(4), 234–244.
Seaton, A. V. (1999). War and thanatourism: Waterloo 1815–1914. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(1),
130–158.
Sedgwick, E. K., & Frank, A. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Sharpley, R., & Stone, P. R. (Eds.). (2008). The darker side of travel. Bristol: Channel View.
Shouse, E. (2005). Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved from http://journal.media-
culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php
Skinner, J. (Ed.). (2012). Writing the dark side of travel. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.
Stone, P. (2013). Dark tourism scholarship: A critical review. International Journal of Culture, Tourism
and Hospitality Research, 7(3), 307–318.
Stone, P., Hartmann, R., Seaton, A. V., Sharpley, R., & White, L. (Eds.). (2018). The palgrave handbook
of dark tourism studies. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stone, P., & Sharpley, R. (2008). Consuming dark tourism: A thanatological perspective. Annals of
Tourism Research, 35(2), 574–595.
Stroud, C., & Jegels, D. (2014). Semiotic landscapes and mobile narrations of place: Performing the
local. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 228, 179–199.
 SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 57

Sumartojo, S. (2016). Commemorative atmospheres: Memorial sites, collective events and the
experience of national identity. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(4), 541–
553.
Tarlow, P. (2005). Dark tourism: The appealing ‘dark’ side of tourism and more. In M. Novelli (Ed.),
Niche Tourism (pp. 47–57). Oxford: Elsevier.
Thrift, N. (2007). Non-representational Theory. London: Routledge.
TohokuNow!. (2016) Retrieved from http://www.tohokunow.com/
Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2006). Affect – An ethnocentric encounter? Exploring the ‘universalist’ imperative
of emotional/affectual geographies. Area, 38(2), 213–217.
Tucker, H. (2009). Recognizing emotion and its postcolonial potentialities: Discomfort and shame
in a tourism encounter in Turkey. Tourism Geographies, 11(4), 444–461.
Tucker, H. (2016). Empathy and tourism: Limits and possibilities. Annals of Tourism Research, 57, 31–43.
Tucker, H., & Shelton, E. J. (2018). Tourism, mood and affect: Narratives of loss and hope. Annals of
Tourism Research, 70, 66–75.
Tucker, H., Shelton, E. J., & Bae, H. (2017). Post-disaster tourism: Towards a tourism of transition.
Tourist Studies, 17(3), 1–22.
Tunbridge, J. E., & Ashworth, G. J. (1996). Dissonant heritage. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Waterton, C., & Yusoff, K. (2017). Indeterminate bodies: Introduction. Body & Society, 23(3), 3–22.
Waterton, E., & Watson, S. (2014). The semiotics of heritage tourism (Vol. 35). Bristol: Channel View
Publications.
Weaver, D., Tang, C., Shi, W., Huang, M. F., Burns, K., & Sheng, A. (2017). Dark tourism, emotions,
and post-experience visitor effects in a sensitive geopolitical context: A Chinese case study.
Journal of Travel Research, 56, 1–15.
Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding Cultures through their key words (Vol. 8). Oxford: Oxford
University Press on Demand.
Willis, E. (2014). Theatricality, dark tourism and ethical spectatorship. New York, NY: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Yamamoto, T., Hashimoto, Y., Yoshida, M., Ohno, K., Ohto, H., & Abe, M. (2015). Investigative
research projects related to the Tohoku earthquake (the great east Japan earthquake) con-
ducted in Fukushima. Fukushima Journal of Medical Science, 61(2), 155–159.
Yankholmes, A., & McKercher, B. (2015). Understanding visitors to slavery heritage in Ghana.
Tourism Management, 51(12), 22–32.