Paper short abstract:

After the 2011 triple disaster, tourism became a means to attract people and economic revenue back to Tohoku. I analyse how tourism workers and tourists make sense of disaster sites through tourism, focusing on their emotions and affects, and how these produce and manipulate imaginaries of place.

Paper long abstract:

Crises and disasters are considered times of intense difficulty or danger and are often deeply emotional experiences. In some instances, the ways crises are portrayed in the media can spark people's curiosity and imagination and drive tourists to visit places subject to present or past dangers. In the last decades, tourism stakeholders looking for 'alternative' tourism forms have capitalized on the potential of places connected to disasters, dangers and atrocities. In tourism studies these forms of tourism are known as 'dark tourism'.

My presentation analyses on one hand the narratives of tourism workers, who are now making an effort to imagine, model, create and negotiate the disaster-hit towns as tourism destinations. On the other hand, it investigates how foreign tourists who decide to visit Tohoku after the 2011 triple disaster perceive and experience place. Tourists, researchers, and volunteers didn't experience the disaster first hand. They make sense of it emotionally by superimposing their feelings and experiences to the landscape and narratives they see and hear. Tourists engage continuously with complex embodied, affective and deeply emotional nets that surface more vividly and poignantly in dark places. My contribution looks for a critical understanding of emotional and affective narratives of the experience: how do tourists and tourism workers negotiate, live and recount their trip to Tohoku? What are the strategies put forward by these stakeholders?