| In 1987, Japan created the Kaigai ryoko baizo keikaku (Overseas Trip Doubling Program), or more commonly known as the "Ten Million Program," becoming the only government in the world to encourage Japanese to travel abroad for leisure. In general, most states' tourism policies attempt to do the opposite: to increase the number of foreign tourists visiting the country, rather than to promote a tourism exodus. This dissertation explains the Ten Million Program, addressing the strategic and rational considerations affecting Japanese policymakers in 1987. It pays particular attention to the bureaucratic motives of members of the Japanese Ministry of Transport (MOT), who hoped to use the policy to justify the establishment of new channels of access to governmental overseas development assistance funds.;Arguing, however, that even had such strategic considerations been operative in the US, the UK, France or Germany, the governments there would have been unlikely to create the Ten Million Program, the dissertation suggests that an unusual institutional environment in Japan made such a policy possible. Two features of the environment were particularly salient. First, in Japan, the government has taken a strong role in leisure, not simply in constraining it or providing public facilities like parks, but also through active promotional campaigns designed to teach people about proper leisure and the way they should enjoy themselves. Second, through kokusaika (internationalization) initiatives, the government has attempted to promote greater cosmopolitanism in Japan through certain kinds of cultural exchange programs that expose Japanese to foreign people and things, in a controlled and circumscribed manner. The Ten Million Program, in addition to satisfying certain bureaucratic motives on the part of MOT policymakers, was made possible because pre-existing government roles in encouraging certain kinds of leisure and shaping citizens' encounters with the outside world were taken for granted.;The dissertation uses a historical-institutional approach, tracing the development of Japan's travel bureaucracy since the prewar area. It also relies heavily on textual analyses of key policy documents in the field of tourism promotion and leisure development, especially in the 1970s, when the government role was most explicitly codified. |
