Meng Qu

Hokkaido University | Hokudai · Center for Advanced Tourism Studies

The Setouchi International Art Festival (SIAF), also known as the Setouchi Triennale, attempts to revitalize twelve remote islands with depopulating and aging communities by hosting an international art festival to promote tourism. Citing the presence of more than a million visitors during each festival iteration, SIAF officials and the media have...

Small enterprises play a vital role in the drive toward sustainable tourism and in the sector more broadly, and their importance is accentuated in rural contexts. Beyond entrepreneurial spirit, what are the critical success factors that allow them to flourish? This study links tourism entrepreneurship, rural development and multi-stakeholder partne...

The links between art events and sustainable development in rural contexts where revitalisation is pressing is becoming increasingly obvious. The village of Mitarai is an example of a small peripheral community in Japan faced with the impacts of depopulation, ageing and socio-economic decline. The urgency to stem further regression has seen art eme...

The decline and socioeconomic stagnation of rural communities is a growing concern across the world. To promote community resilience, art-and creativity-based strategies are emerging as important means for rural revitalisation. This study adopts a neo-endogenous perspective to examine how socially engaged art can represent an effective tool for rev...

The spatial structure of Bed and Breakfast (B&B) development plays a crucial role in promoting integrated urban–rural development. However, existing B&B research has predominantly focused on single large cities, neglecting to explore the spatial patterns of B&B development and their influencing factors from the perspective of urban–rural difference...

The globalization of island studies has resulted in a greater recognition by island studies scholars of the need for more regional-based island research to encompass the diversity of island knowledge and experiences. Island research in East Asia provides examples of both English and native language perspectives across four distinct socio-cultural c...

Japanese peripheral rural communities have been undergoing a dramatic demographic and social- economic decline, with many facing the concrete threat of disappearing over the next decades. This condition is the outcome of decades of out-migration, lack of local employment opportunities and cuts in essential public services, a situation similar to th...

This paper examines how creativity-based social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial networks in the context of small-scale rural art festivals can advance social and regional revitalization goals in peripheral island communities. This qualitative- and action-based research explores the effects of artistic activities on rural revitalization through...

For rural and peripheral communities with long-established or growing links to tourism, the sector provides a vital fillip to more traditional economic activities, particularly primary production including agriculture, aquaculture, forestry, mining and allied extractive industries. As such, tourism often helps shift path dependencies of destination...

The Challenges of Island Studies includes six individual research articles and one panel discussion emerging from the international symposium titled “Prospects and Chal- lenges for Envisioning Regional Science for Small Islands” organized by the Research Institute for Islands and Sustainability (RIIS). In the first part, the individual research cha...

Understanding the past, current, and future trajectory of cultural tourism has been the major focus of both scholars and industry stakeholders engaged both in the culture and tourism sectors. As an influential scholar at the leading edge of cultural tourism and creative tourism studies, Richards’ Rethinking cultural tourism reviews the evolution of...

Small island communities in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan are undergoing a dramatic demographic and social-economic decline, with many facing the possibility of disappearing over the next decades. Like much of rural Japan, they are characterized by processes of aging and depopulation that result in a stagnating economy, the degradation of public ser...

For Japan's small island communities, already facing an existential demographic crisis due to their aging, shrinking populations, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic has proven to be a critical stress test. On islands with nascent tourism economies that have replaced declining primary and secondary industries, the situation has threatened to reverse prec...

Art’s social transformation as an interdisciplinary research topic inevitably faces issues caused by the limitations of each academic discipline and geographic context, ranging from ‘art’s rural revitalization’ in Japan, ‘art’s rural development/regeneration’ in China, to international theories about ‘creative ruralities and community place-making’...

Many small island destinations owe their spatial character to their entanglements with stakeholders involved in the arts. Space is the dynamic outcome of complex relational processes, which makes it impossible to identify a straightforward development path — including when it comes to the arts and tourism. Using assemblage thinking, we scrutinize t...

This is the third of a series of three International Creative Tourism Webinars in Spring 2021 within the umbrella of CREATOUR International. Conceived as “global conversations,” the webinars aim to create a platform for connecting research and practice in a spirit of co-learning. As we look forward to “re-emergence” phases of social life and trave...

Aging, depopulation, and stagnation are serious problems for island communities in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. As a result, many of these communities have seen their distinguishing features and cultural identities disappear, and some face outright extinction. The Setouchi Triennale strives to revitalize twelve of these islands through art festival tou...

Japan's nationwide population decrease, accompanied by its shrinking rural through aging, depopulation, and stagnation is projecting a global trend of rural shrinking on a big scale. Aging, depopulation, and stagnation are serious problems for island communities in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea. As a result, many of these communities have seen their dist...

Book Review

The historical harbor village of Mitarai on the island of Osakishimojima epitomizes the problem of social decline in Japan's Seto Inland Sea. This research focuses on both Mitarai's local community and the wider society. Through conducting a year-long survey of island residents, this research highlights how villagers expect to overcome the challeng...

In order to understand the art island as a new type of socially engaged community revitalisation practice it is necessary to move beyond considering art simply as an aesthetic object. This article is informed by relational aesthetics, creative geography theories and with regard to three evaluation axes concerning artwork, community and new business...

This brief summarizes the preliminary findings of a research project on domestic urban-to-rural migration to the islands of the Seto Inland Sea, Japan. We focus on in-migrants who established small independent businesses on the islands, and particularly those engaged in tourism, creative industries and organic farming. The study explores the motiva...

Terrorist attacks in tourism places have unsurprisingly tended to cause widespread anxiety and fear for both travellers and host communities In Conflicts, Religion and Culture in Tourism, conflict, religion and culture coalesce with the inference that through religious and pilgrimage tourism, conflict resolution and better understanding between peo...

Aging, depopulation and stagnation are serious problems for the island communities of the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. The Setouchi International Art Festival (SIAF), engages with revitalizing twelve remote islands and their rural communities through art festival and tourism. The Triennale’s Director has claimed that the art festival has become a mode...

In India, organic farming is increasingly considered a promising way to increase the income of small-scale farmers, while at the same time protecting ecologically fragile areas. is is especially true for farmers in areas considered “marginal,” such as those in the Himalayan hill areas of the state of Uttarakhand. is research focuses on the current...

The article takes Japan Setouchi Triennale as A Case Study to anaylze and study its sustainable development from the aspect:"Contemporary Art Intervention", "Art Festival Tourism" and "Village Regional Regeneration". It also makes a survey on the problems existed in "art intervention in village" art tourism pattern to discuss the important role tha...

In the digital age, we create new technological forms and media artworks that de ne new relationships between the environment and us. Artists and actors are increasingly using their own mobile computing devices and AR to create artworks. When we experience an artwork in an “Augmented Space”, we can consider it as an interactive event. As a result,...

本文以日本濑户内海举办的当代艺术三年展为研究对象，从“当代艺术介入”“”艺术旅游“和”乡村地域再生“三个角度对其可持续发展进行分析与研究，并对当代艺术介入乡村的艺术观光模式存在的问题展开调研与分析，探讨了艺术节对当地社会的文化影响，指出该活动在促进当地可持续地域再生方面起到重要作用。 The article takes Japan Setouchi Triennale as A Case Study to anaylze and study its sustainable development from the aspect:"Contemporary Art Intervention", "Art Festival Tourism" and "Village Regional Rege...