If you surf, the odds are high that you also know a Japanese surfer. Next to America, Australia, and Brazil, Japan has long been regarded as an established surf nation. Yet despite the fact that Japanese surf culture has been present on the international stage since at least the 70’s, very little has been written about its unique surf history and culture in the English academic literature. So let’s begin this introduction to Japanese surf culture with a seemingly simple question, how did Japan’s surf culture begin?
Multiple beginnings
It often assumed surfing in Japan started after the Second World War. The story goes like this. Following the war, the US took over the Yokosuka naval base, located just 65 kilometres south of Tokyo. During downtime the American soldiers would surf fiberglassed longboards on the breaks scattered around the base. However, Chiba based surfer and shaper Nobuhito “Nobby” Ohkawa invites us to consider a different history. “Nobby” (Ohkawa, n.d.) traces the earliest record of wave riding in Japan back to 1821 when Haiku poet Dokurakuan Kanri wrote of a sunny afternoon on Yunohama beach in Yamagata Prefecture and the group of young grommies skimming along the waves on itago. Itago are small wooden bodyboards shaped out of the removable floor planks found on traditional Japanese-style wooden boats: talk about an outstanding tradition of “sustainable stoke”! Itago were initially used to learn to swim as well as a surf lifesaving device for exhausted swimmers or to save oneself from shipwreck. Itago eventually evolved into a more leisurely activity for beach goers to simply enjoy the waves. This simple wooden plank helped shift the idea of the sea away from a place of work towards a more leisurely space. Nobby’s history lesson show us that the practice of riding waves has played a long, complex, and important role in refiguring the Japanese seaside.
The allure of Japanese surf culture today
Today, nearly every bay that picks up swell, from the frigid seas of northern Hokkaido to the deep south of Miyazaki and nearly every break in between, is home to a vibrant Japanese surf culture. National Geographic (n.d.) has even listed Shonan (Chiba) in its world’s 20 best surf towns. When the summer typhoon swells hit Japan’s coastline lights up, producing as good a wave as anywhere on the planet. These swells attract surfers from across the globe, like Tom Curren, who after his visit in 1992, had a local spot named after him in Miyazaki Prefecture (fig. 2). These typhoons also mobilise domestic surfers who travel throughout Japan in search waves.
Domestic surf tourism is playing an important role in reimaging the contemporary seascape of Japan. Surfing means business. It is reshaping the economies and coastlines of rural, suburban, and peri-urban Japanese communities. Take for instance Miyazaki, one of Japan’s most rural, inaccessible and poorest Prefectures (fig. 3). It also happens have a temperate climate, smaller population, and consistent swell. Surfers have been travelling to Miyazaki for decades, but it was not until 2015 that the first surf tourism related economic analysis was conducted by the Miyazaki Prefecture Government. The full report has yet to be released, but the initial figures estimate the economic benefit from incoming surfers to Miyazaki to be over 1.7 billion yen, roughly 15.5 million US dollars (Miyanichi Press News, 2015). This is a much needed boost to an otherwise stagnant agriculture economy.
Surfing often takes place away from, or at least on the peri-urban edges of the mega cities that have come to characterise much of contemporary Japan. In this way, Japanese surf culture is also about expressing alternatives and revitalising rural communities using the scarce resources available to them. The surf lifestyle has brought people out of the cities and into the countryside, allowing rural communities like Miyazaki an opportunity to reinvent and reimagine themselves in difficult economic times. Take for instance the small surfing/fishing village of Aoshima located just south of Miyazaki City. Supported by various Miyazaki Prefecture Government and Municipal Government programmes designed to attract lifestyle migrants to its rural areas, Aoshima has proactively sought to re-create a new sense of place and belonging for a younger generation jaded by a city life fuelled by nuclear power and a “salaryman” society defined by its masculinity. The cultural production of this alternative surf scene is evident in films like “Good Morning Miyazaki” (Westcott, 2013) and networking projects like the recently opened Surf City Miyazaki (Surf City Miyazaki, n.d) development, which brings together surf, stand up paddling, yoga and marathon running in an effort to reinvent the Aoshima coastline (fig. 4).
For the past 40 years Aoshima has been feeling a somewhat hungover from its heydays as Japan’s Mecca for honeymooners, which reached its peak in the 70’s and left large modernist seaside hotels abondonded for decades. The efforts to incorporate surf into the seaside aesthetic and economy marks the most recent efforts to reinvigorate the vibrant and active seascape that once characterised Aoshima. Whether or not such surf related rural revitalisation attempts are economically, socially and culturally sustainable remains to be seen, but is certainly worthy of academic attention.
Surfing futures: Northeast Asia
As most surf researchers are acutely aware, looking into the very simple act of riding waves exposes a great deal of historical, cultural and political insight of any given area. I simply wanted to briefly introduce here some of the ways Japanese surf culture has shaped and continues to shape the seascape of Japan and its rural communities. But I also wanted to draw attention to the fact that it is not only in Japan where new stories of surf are emerging. Surfing has spread across Northeast Asia into places with wave riding histories as old as Japan’s, if not older, and equally influential in terms of how the surf industry will develop in the near future. The surf cultures of Taiwan, Hainan in China, Hong Kong, South Korea’s emerging surf scene and yes, North Korea’s first (Chen, 2015) and failed attempt at surf tourism development (Heden, 2016), have not yet captured the attention of the surf academic literature. As Martin and Assenov (2012) point out in their recent systematic review of surf literature, roughly 10% of countries in the world with coatstal surfing rescources have been studied. The intersections of surfing and Northeast Asian environments, the social and cultural implications of surfing in these communities, their multiple histories and points of conflict, the formations of new communities and attachments to place that surf culture invites, these are all interesting areas of research deserving of further academic attention.
If you are interested in sharing experiences or research concerning Northeast Asian surf cultures please contact me at the email address below. Looking forward to it.
Adam Doering
Associate Professor
Center for Tourism Research
Wakayama University
930 Sakaedani, Wakayama, 640-8510, Japan
Email: adoering@center.wakayama-u.ac.jp
http://www.wakayama-u.ac.jp/en/ctr/
Reference material
Chen, H. (2015). Could North Korea ever be a surfer’s paradise? BBC News (15 September), available: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33858412 [accessed 18 March 2016].
Heyden, D. (2016). North Korea Officially Kills Its Surf and Snow Tourism Hopes. The Inertia (20 March), available: http://www.theinertia.com/surf/north-korea-officially-kills-its-surf-and-snow-tourism-hopes/ [accessed 21 March 2016].
Martin, S.A. & Assenov, I. (2012). The genesis of a new body of sport tourist literature: A systematic review of surf tourism research (1997–2011). Journal of Sport and Tourism, 17(4), pp. 257–287.
Miyanichi Press News, (2015). Economic effects from incoming surfers to Miyazaki estimated to be over 1.7 billion yen. Miyanichi Press (15 December), available in Japanese: http://www.the-miyanichi.co.jp/kennai/_16270.html [accessed 18 March 2016].
National Geographic (n.d.). World’s 20 best surf towns [online], available: http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/trips/best-surf-towns-photos/#/surf-shonan-japan_55606_600x450.jpg [accessed 23 November 2015].
Ohkawa, N. (n.d.). Traditional surfing in Japan: an unknown history [online], available: http://www.nobbywoodsurfboards.com/webpages/cn74/itago.html [accessed 18 March 2016].
Surf City Miyazaki (n.d.). http://surfcity-miyazaki.jp/#section4 [accessed 18 March 2016].
Westcott, M. (Producer and Director). (2013). Good morning Miyazaki [Motion Picture]. Canada: DBFilms.
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