The Peace Memorial Park is part of the 42.7 ha buffer zone that encircles the land.

Not only is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial’s remaining building beautiful and architecturally significant, but it’s symbolic meaning is far more significant. Build in 1914 as the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall, this silent structure is the skeletal form of the remaining remnants.

It both reminds us of the promise for enduring world peace and represents the immense destructive power that humanity is capable of creating.

Nagasaki before the war

  • Japan sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty through Nagasaki between the ninth and the twelfth centuries.
  • 16th-century post used for frequent commercial freight with the Portuguese.
  • Sokuku(closed country) in the 17th and 19th centuries, Nagasaki was the sole port available for Dutch trade.
  • A multicultural metropolis with a significant European influence.

During the Edo period (1603-1867), the spread of travel changed Japanese culture. Following more than a century of political unrest, the Tokugawa era brought about unparalleled stability, which created the ideal environment for both men and women from all social classes to travel securely for a wide range of reasons, reflecting the changing cultural landscape of a nation that was becoming more mobile.

A foreign policy known as national seclusion (sakoku) was established in 1639 when the Tokugawa shogunate issued decrees forbidding Portuguese traders from entering Japan. This successfully eliminated the threat posed by subversive Christian missionaries. One Through the rest of the period, the shogunate strictly regulated the entry and exit of all foreigners and Japanese nationals from the archipelago. Japan cut itself off from the outside world, with the exception of direct commination with Dutch East India Company traders based on the little island of Deshima near Nagasaki.

Two in contrast, the shogunate persisted in keeping trade relations with its Asian neighbours mostly open, despite stringent regulations. This approach allowed Chinese traders to enter Nagasaki, where they were imprisoned in a factory close to Deshima and had to do presents for the municipal magistrate. A series of shoguns kept up diplomatic and commercial ties with Ryukyu(present day Okinawa) via the Satsuma domain, forcing the island kingdom into vassalage in 1609. As a result of Ryukyu’s continued status as a Qing dynasty tributary state following the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, the shogunate profited from connections and indirect trade with China.

The Tokugawa shogunate build and maintained a vast network of roads, post-towns, checkpoints, and sea routes beginning in the first half of the 17th century as a result of formalized forms of compulsory travel for the highest-ranking samurai and a select group of elite foreigners. This created a conspicuous political spectacle.

The bombing

 The American government unleashed an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. ‘’Little Boy’’ was the name of the bomb, a uranium gun-style device that detonated with a force of roughly thirteen kilotons. There were between 280,000 and 290,000 residents and 43.000 military livinng in Hiroshima at the time of the explosion. In the four months that followed the detonation, the bomb is thought to have killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people. The city of Hiroshima estimates that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb’s effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing.

August 9 saw the dropping of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, this time a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as ‘’Fat Man,’’ three days after the United States launched an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. There were an estimated 263,000 people in Nagasaki on the day of the explosion, consisting of 240,000

Japanese citizens, personnel, and 400 prisoners of war. The United States had conducted limited bombing strikes against Nagasaki before August 9. The population of Nagasaki was reduced at the time of the nuclear strike as a result of the widespread fear these bombings caused, even thought the damage they caused was very minor. Many people were relocated to rural areas for protection. An estimated 40,000-75,000 people perished in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb, received serious injuries. By the end of 1945, there might have been 80,000 fatalities overall.

The choice was taken on August 7, 1945, On Guam, to use the second bomb. The deliberate use of it was intended to convey the message that the United States would keep dropping atomic bombs on Japan until it unconditionally submitted and that is possessed an infinite supply of the new weapon to use against it.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima post-war

 

How Hiroshima emerged from the devastation caused by nuclear war

  • Gradual change

Reconstruction took the lead over fighting as the country’s main priority only after Emperor Hirohito’s tense voice in a radio broadcast on August 15, 1945, officially declared Japan’s surrender. Local authorities initiated a five-year recovery plan to significantly increase production after factories that were taken over for the war effort were reverted to private hands. Strangely, the local economy saw a boost from a different battle on the Korean peninsula, as demand for vehicles, canned food, and other items skyrocketed. When the Japanese shipbuilding prohibition was repealed in 1952 by the authorities of the departing Allied occupation, there was another boom.

The challenge facing city planners was how to reconcile Hiroshima’s sad past with its post-war reconstruction. The director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Kenji Shiga, stated that although some officials favoured erasing all physical trace of the disaster, others insisted on keeping records of the atomic bomb’s devastating potential.

The A-bomb Dome, also known as the remnants of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, bears witness to the outcome of the dispute. According to Shiga, ‘’some people thought Hiroshima should be completely rebuilt and that it should be torn down’’. In particular, the hibakusha preferred not to be reminded of what had transpired. That served as one illustration of how challenging it was and continues to be to find a balance between the facts of history and building a modern city.’’

Statistics and wider tourism

Due to the Genroku era’s (1688-1704) economic success in the late 17th century, travelling for pilgrimages, medical care, and sightseeing became more widespread among the populace, even commoners from towns and villages, as they discovered greater leisure.

The commencement of the Meji era (1868-1912) marked the start of the second notable phase in the development of tourism in Japan, as the nation opened up to both inbound and outward travel, and the limitations imposed on internal travel during the previous Edo era were loosened. Consequently, the requiremen for travel permits was lifted, making domestic travel much easier, and major route checkpoints were eliminated. At the same time, the groundwork was laid for the growth of international travel to and from Japan, which would continue until the start of the Pacific war.

The construction of transport infrastructure had a major role in the first expansion of tourism during this time. As the potential value of foreign exchange earned from tourism increased, so did private and public investment in this sector. In 1872, the nation’s first railway was finished. It began in Yokohama and traveled north to Shinagawa, then on to Shinbashi, all of which are now parts of modern-day Tokyo.

Then, in the early 1920s, three small businesses began offering domestic air transportation services; in 1928, these businesses merged fo from Japan Air Trasport Corporation, the country’s first national flag carrier, which started offering commercial flights the following year(Century of flight, n.d.) A year later, in 1931s, Tokyo’s Haneda airport opened. In 1930s, a growing number of American tourists were able to travel across the Pacific to Japan thanks to the availability of enormous ocean liners that provided reasonably priced travel.

This second phase in Japan’s tourist history saw improvements to the country’s transportation network as well as an expansion of the lodging industry, with the arrival of Western-style hotels being arguably the most significant developments. These new hotels served European food and had private rooms, in contrast to traditional Japanese ryokan, which had shared baths and other amenities. The first of these hotels opened in Yokohama in 1863, and Funck and Cooper (2015;34) state that it was one of the few places in which foreigners were allowed to live in Japan during the time of the Harris Treatry2. Later, one opened in the foreign-settlement district of Tokyo in 1868.

In order to encourage and facilitate incoming tourism, the Japan. Additionally founded in 1964 with the intention of fostering and assisting incoming tourism is the Japan National Tourist Organization.

The peace memorial museum and its purpose

War and conflict memorials are a common sight in the cultural environment (Hartmann, 2014), and they are now a highly sought-after tourist attraction (Butler & Suntikul, 2012). According to Ashworth & Hartmann (2005), death-related tourism is a subgroup of heritage tourism that is associated with horror and tragedy. It is sometimes referred to as ‘’thanatourism’’ or dark tourism’’ in tourism research. Studies in the past have demonstrated that ideological, geographical, and temporal elements determine how dark war legacy sites are (Ryan & Kohli, 2006), and that dark sites have political educational, entertainment, or commercial functions (Ashworth & Hartmann, 2005). As the late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen an increase in tourist interest in death, tragedy and horror, dark tourism has moved beyond a special-interest sector to the tourism industry’s mainstream (Lennon & Foley, 2000). As a result, mainstream travel operations are concentrating on the commercialization of death for the benefit of tourists (Stone, 2013).

From a political and ideological standpoint dark tourism is situated within a peace paradigm between North and South Korea, according to Kang, Scott, Lee, and Ballantyne (2012). They also argue that Eurocentric viewpoints on dark tourism may not be universally relevant to other indigenous Asian perspectives. According to this idea, dark tourism research should adopt a new paradigm that shifts its attention from the intense study of European wars, the Holocaust, or the American Civil War to a broader geographic area around the Asia Pacific Region. Hiroshima and Nagasaki provide compelling cases to illustrate how conflicts between war and peace, tourism and education have been resolved. Having gone from being war-torn cities to affluent metropolitan hubs and gloomy tourism sites. While several studies on tourism in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been conducted (Lifton, 1967, Brown (1996).

No research has sufficiently explained the dualism of education and tourism and the interplay between these two aims, which both serve to create memories (Breathwaite and Lee, 2006, Cooper, 2006, Wight, 2006, Wilson, 2008).

By highlighting the experiences of those who lived through the catastrophe, educational dark tourism highlights the genuineness of the dark tourism experience (Cohen, 2011). Though it hasn’t received much attention in academia, educational tourism has the potential to have a big influence on social discourse. In addition to beign complicated Smith & Jenner, 1997) the idea of travel for learning may also be connected to politics, which could worry both the federal and local governments. Narratives of the manufactured public memory of war make this connection particularly clear. In this sense, discussion over the reconstruction of the War in the Pacific’s memory have been sparked by Japanese historical acts and their effects throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the dark tourism theory, the views expressed by city officials on site management in relation to the provision of educational and tourism services were in line. Current Japanese society’s demographic change has been discovered to have an impact on the use and promotion of A-bomb locations. The darker sides of both towns are portrayed in site brochures which mostly focus on commercial advertising, despite local officials stressing the dark sites' role in peace education.

Tourists visiting Nagasaki and Hiroshima

  • Students make up 50% of the overall number of visits. ‘’Peace education’’ or ‘’Peace study’’ refers to educational initiatives. Learning via travel is a customary educational activity
  • Studying Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution marks a significant turning point in the social studies curriculum, and the issue of peace has been methodically included into the post-war Japanese national curriculum.

Social impact and Contribution to the economy

The Japanese city of Nagasaki is a prime example of a place involved in international action. There is no denying the city’s historical significance, even with its small population of just 430,000.

Along with Hiroshima, Nagasaki is one of only two cities that have experienced the devastation on a nuclear bomb blast. It is also a unique source of moral authority on nuclear abolition and non-proliferation.

As a vice president city for the Mayors for Peace organization, Nagasaki actively promotes the elimination of nuclear weapons on a global scale. Through the promotion of peace tourism, research on nuclear abolition, sister-city partnership, and other initiatives that highlight its past as an open city to the world, Nagasaki is engaged in both local and international city diplomacy.

Following ten years of conferences bringing together cities worldwide, Mayors for Peace was officially registered as a non-governmental organization (NGO) with special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council in 1991.

Currently, the organization boasts more than 8000 global member cities. The mayor of Nagasaki has a designated platform from which to address the subjects of nuclear non-proliferation and abolition every August 9 which is also the anniversary of the detonation of the nuclear bomb.

As a city that aims to use it’s distinctive experiences as a platform to push for change, Kitakyushu’s initiative for a Clean Environment, Sendai’s Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Minamata’s Mercury Convention are just a few examples of the Japanese cities that have served as models for international agreements and initiatives.

Conclusion

The current study, which uses qualitative methodologies, looks at how the history has been transported and the intricacy of the atomic bomb sites from the Pacific War, specifically Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in terms of tourism developed and used in the contemporary era. According to the study, dark tourism and the sociocultural and historical background of modern day Japan are strongly interwined. The study’s conclusions suggest two crucial elements that should be taken into consideration while combining the goal of peace education and war tourism at dark locations. The resources of the target cities or areas have been analyzed, and it is suggested that packaging products for both tourists and travelers with an educational focus would be advantageous because these two groups have similar reasons for travelling and levels of curiosity. For instance, Shugaku Ryoko, a war tourism and peace education program mostly provided to local Japanese students, might be expanded and altered to become vacation offerings for the global market. Furthermore, because of its historical and political backdrops, Nagasaki has been comparatively successful in rebranding itself as a multi-cultural city and a ‘’light’’ destination, even though Hiroshima and Nagasaki have both established their identities as dark locations. Thus, Nagasaki provides an example for other war-torn areas. In

 

 

order to draw in a variety of tourists, Cambodia and Vietnam, for instance, have implemented similar strategies to distance their nations from associations with significant conflicts in recent history. The current study’s limitation present chances for additional research on this subject.

 

Only the supply side of dark tourism is examined in the current study. An extended investigation might encompass the demand aspect of heritage travel, including individuals who attend school trips or tourists visiting the locations. Gaps between the production and consumption of dark tourism could also be highlightened by contrasting and comparing providers and consumers of this industry.

 

More generally, since the study was carries out in Japan, a comparative analysis of contentious dark tourism destinations in Asia, like South Korea, Vietnam, or Cambodia, could offer a deeper comprehension of the transformation of war-related locations into tourism commodities across multiple temporal and geographical dimensions.