The Pulteney Street SurveyWinter '24
During the experience, Professor of History and Asian Studies Lisa Yoshikawa had a chance to deepen her research, but “the icing on the cake was meeting up with some of my older students in Tokyo.... This was probably the highlight for me as a teacher — two generations of my students getting to know each other and learning from each other.” Pictured here, Yonten, Peña and Garcia meet up with Andrew Upton ’12 (center right), a visual storyteller and wildlife and conservation photographer based in Japan.
Rethinking Tourism in Tokyo
Professor of History and Asian Studies Lisa Yoshikawa and recent graduates unpack the push and pull of knowledge across cultures as they explore the form and function of tourism in Tokyo.
BY ANDREW WICKENDEN ’09
In the aftermath of the Asia Pacific Wars, the Japanese government set out to revamp its tourism industry. In the wake of Covid-19, Japan again faced the question of how to welcome back foreign tourists. Last summer, Professor of History and Asian Studies Lisa Yoshikawa and three members of the Class of 2023 traveled to Tokyo to study these parallels and shed light on future possibilities for cross-cultural exchange.
“My training and general research area is international history and knowledge production — how ideas and worldviews were and are created in the context of international relations,” says Yoshikawa. A 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar, Yoshikawa has been exploring Japan’s colonial legacy, particularly how the country and its neighbors developed attitudes “about self and other to understand the world and further their interests.”
Drawing on these themes, Jonathan Garcia ’23, Roxana Peña ’23 and Tenzin Yonten ’23 designed a research project that earned a grant from ASIANetwork, a consortium of more than 140 North American colleges that promotes liberal arts education about Asia. After two semesters of preliminary research — and two years waiting out pandemic-related travel restrictions — Garcia, Peña and Yonten arrived in Tokyo with Yoshikawa in July of 2023.
Together, they retraced itineraries from old JTB (Japan Tourist Bureau) travel brochures, examining how this government-affiliated agency branded Tokyo over the past century. From gardens, shrines, “tea ceremonies and temples, to cutting edge technology,” Peña says, “Tokyo is a captivating city... [with] a blend of old and new traditions.” Now pursuing a Ph.D. in audiology at Montclair State University, she says her work on campus with Yoshikawa and Professor of Asian Studies James-Henry Holland was a “great baseline” in “cultural sensitivity, historical perspectives and language skills,” and in turn, the experience in Tokyo offered “a new way of thinking [about] what I learned in my classes.”
In Tokyo, the group paired site visits with “firsthand encounters — what Japanese tourism students call experiential tourism,” Yoshikawa explains. Garcia, Peña and Yonten connected with “Tokyoites as well as domestic and international tourists visiting the city, and had an extremely productive meeting with a group of students studying tourism at Technos College.”
Yonten says he “always wanted to explore Japan’s rich history and culture.” From the initial grant proposal and research through the trip itself, the project was “a wonderful way to cap off... my academic journey at HWS,” he says, adding: “I am also beyond grateful...to engage in this research project with my two friends, Jonathan and Roxy, alongside my advisor Professor Yoshikawa.”
As the recipient of a 2023 Princeton in Asia Fellowship, Yonten is now teaching English at the University of Finance and Economics in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. He says Yoshikawa’s support has been invaluable. “She’s always been there...[whether with] a letter of recommendation a day later or hopping on a quick meeting if I need any sort of guidance.”
As Garcia puts it, “Professor Yoshikawa is incredible at guiding us and helping us find what we need, but also giving us space to learn on our own.” Now serving with AmeriCorps in Geneva, he says his experiences abroad — both in Tokyo and on The March: Bearing Witness to Hope program in Europe — underscored the importance of “getting a new perspective.”
Yoshikawa agrees: “For students studying world languages and cultures or international relations, the importance of conducting research, whether formal or informal, on the ground outside the U.S. cannot be overstated.... Jonathan, Roxy and Tenzin each and together exemplify the best of HWS — they are all multicultural and multilingual, fiercely interdisciplinary, creative, open-minded, thoughtful and kind.... Today, very few people can avoid encountering other cultures, and we excel at HWS in preparing students for this 21st century world.”