ABSTRACT
Nowadays, urban areas serve as popular tourist destinations with historic and contemporary cultural heritage. In Japan's urban spaces, these two types of cultural heritage often coexist adjacently. Some people see this situation as a lack of integrity and unity and/or an absence of harmony between historic and contemporary cultural heritage, whilst others appreciate it as a distinctive feature of Japan's cityscapes. Japan's metropolitan regions are also characterised by vagueness of borders between city centres and their suburban areas and considerably extended urban regions. Kyoto is a city where historic ‘Japanese’ and contemporary cultural heritage coexists. Although the city is Japan's ancient capital, it does not embrace the districts equivalent to Europe's ‘historic centres’. This signifies that historic Japanese cultural heritage is scattered throughout Kyoto. Due to the recent inbound tourism boom, many quarters within Kyoto struggle with overtourism and its negative impacts. By contrast, historic ‘foreign’ and contemporary cultural heritage coexists in Yokohama and Kobe. Both have developed as port cities and their historic cultural heritage is Western and Chinese heritage acting as their key tourism resources. Nevertheless, most of their visitors do not stay overnight in Yokohama and Kobe due to short travel distance from Tokyo and Osaka respectively.
