ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the recovery process from the Great East Japan Earthquake from the viewpoint of tourism. The disaster brought about various new forms of tourism: Volunteer tourism, social tourism in pursuit of kizuna (social ties), manabitabi or study tourism, kataribe or storytelling tourism on the disaster experiences, dark tourism particularly focusing on nuclear disaster ruins in Fukushima and bosai tourism aiming for disaster risk reduction. Now under the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism once again faces a serious challenge, further creating new forms of tourism such as online tourism. Examining these new forms of tourism after the Great East Japan Earthquake, this paper aims to show how these new forms of tourism could play a positive social role for the reconstruction of devastated communities. It also contributes to the understanding and solution to public issues caused by the disaster. We refer to this type of tourism as “public tourism”. The chapter demonstrates the important role public tourism can play in encouraging a more social and reflexive tourist practice in what German sociologist Ulrich Beck has called a “risk society”. In doing so, this discussion of public tourism adds to the conceptual and contextual development of “socialising tourism” in disaster recovery environments.
