Dissertation Title
Performing Japanese Hawai’i: Gender, Sexuality, and Culture in Japanese Tourism to Hawai’i
Chair: Mari Yoshihara
(Proposal Defended: September 2018)
Dissertation Abstract: My dissertation explores the role of tourism in constructing Japanese imaginations of Hawaiʻi. Using multiple case studies such as Japanese wedding tourism and “power spot” tourism in Hawaiʻi, my dissertation examines how Japanese imaginations of Hawai‘i are racialized and gendered through tourism and how the different imaginations of Hawai‘i have reflected changing Japanese values on marriage, family, and femininity. It also analyzes how local tourism—especially hula tourism—in Japan has helped construct the Japanese tourist gazes on Hawai‘i. My project addresses ethical issues of tourism by exploring how the tourist industry has often collided with local communities. It points to the need for a continuing effort of the Japanese tourist industry to engage local and Native communities in Hawai‘i and of Japanese tourists to be more attentive to their tourist gazes in order to make tourism a mode of cultural contact rather than sustaining the structure of cultural colonialism.