ABSTRACT
When it comes to tourism, the concept of the ludic looms large in Japan. Play is translated in Japanese as asobi, although this word is used in a far wider sense than its English equivalent. University students in the West would hesitate to use the term “play” outside of contexts involving sport or games, and yet in Japan asobi covers that activity of spending time with friends that we clumsily label “hanging out.” It also covers the salaryman engaged in an evening’s entertainment in the less salubrious part of town. And it certainly applies to leisure travel. We trace these ludic impulses from their antecedents in history, through to the fan practices that have become inextricably associated with popular culture tourism and place-making in Japan.
