As Kyoto Attractions, Wave Pools vs. Temples

As early as June, work will begin on a mammoth aquarium complex in central Kyoto, in leafy Umekoji Park at the center of the city. A brainchild of the Orix Real Estate Corporation, the project could breathe new life into Kyoto’s tourism industry by attracting more than two million visitors a year, developers say.

But to opponents, the proposed aquarium, set to open in 2012, is a misguided enterprise that threatens to destroy Kyoto’s historic ambience. Adding to the disgrace, they say, is Orix’s plan to showcase dolphins in a 19,000-square-foot pool at a time when the nation is under fire for hunting thousands of dolphins and porpoises each year.

“Kyoto should not be building concrete boxes,” said Shinsho Kajita, head priest at the Honen-in Buddhist temple in Kyoto and leader of a growing local protest movement against Orix’s plans.

“Kyoto’s residents and its visitors care more about preserving old neighborhoods,” he said. “We have the wrong idea of economic development, and it is destroying our city.”

Whether or not Kyoto gets the 118,000-square-foot aquarium, experts say that Japan clearly needs to re-examine its approach to tourism, a $944 billion industry worldwide — bigger than autos, bigger than steel.

Despite choice destinations like ancient Kyoto and modern, bustling Tokyo, as well as beach and ski resorts, Japan attracted just 8.4 million foreign visitors in 2008 — a small fraction of France’s 79 million, the United States’ 58 million or China’s 53 million, according to the World Tourism Organization. In 2009, the number of foreign visitors to Japan dropped an additional 18.7 percent, to 6.79 million, amid the global recession, according to Japan’s government.

Japan earned just $10.8 billion from foreign tourism in 2008, a tenth of the $110 billion the United States earned from overseas tourists that year. Ukraine and Macau each attract more foreign tourists a year than Japan.

“Japan has the potential to be a tourism superpower,” said Hiroshi Mizohata, who took over as commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency in January.

Mr. Mizohata, former president of a popular local soccer team, has set an ambitious goal of increasing the number of foreign visitors to Japan to more than 10 million in two years and to 20 million by 2016. “With new ideas and initiatives, I believe we can meet these targets,” he said.

Government officials blame the lack of budget-travel options in Japan, as well as its high costs, for the country’s unpopularity as a tourist destination.

But critics point out that until now, the tourism market has been geared almost exclusively to domestic travelers, which means that much of Japan’s tourist infrastructure does not meet the expectations of foreign tourists.

Japan’s tourism strategy has also been driven by investment in engineering projects and theme parks rather than the protection of the country’s natural and cultural riches, an oversight that some experts say has cost the country dearly in tourism dollars.

Nowhere is Japan’s weakness in tourism more evident than in Kyoto, said Alex Kerr, a longtime resident and founder of Iori, a company that since 2004 has restored 10 old townhouses, or machiya, in the city to rent out to visitors.

In the postwar period, Kyoto has shown little concern for preserving the traditional neighborhoods that would most appeal to foreign tourists, he said. The pace of destruction gathered speed in the 1990s; more than 40,000 old wooden homes disappeared from central Kyoto that decade, according to the International Society to Save Kyoto.

Though ancient temples and gardens remain in the city, they are overwhelmed by the sprawling mass of gray buildings and neon signs that dominate the skyscape — the product of ineffective zoning policies in the city, Mr. Kerr said.

Visitors to Kyoto are greeted by the peculiar, needle-shaped, red-and-white Kyoto Tower, as well as the Kyoto Hotel Okura, a 16-floor granite building in the heart of the city that had to seek a waiver from local height restrictions when it was rebuilt in 1994. Three years later, Kyoto Station — a structure nearly half a mile long, with a glaring glass facade in its latest incarnation — opened in the city center.

Besides the aquarium, local politicians are pushing for more big projects in Kyoto’s city center, including a new 323,000-square-foot Railroad Museum built by the West Japan Railway Company, slated to open in 2014. The deals are expected to bring the city lucrative rent income.