Fictionality and tourism in the construction of national images. Studies on Japanese anime representations of Spain

It is a fact that one of the biggest attractions of modern Japanese culture lies in its immense, outstanding cultural capital. In recent years, the fascination that Japan has on our collective imagination has been stimulated, even more if possible, by the relevance of cultural industries (manga, anime ..) in relation to other major exporters of popular culture, especially the US. An entire generation of tourists focuses its attention on the country that contributed decisively to the recognition of animation, graphic design, comics and video games not only as popular forms of culture but as "art". Either as spectators or as tourists readers, audiences have approached to these cultural products adopting an increasingly specialized pattern of consumption. In this evolution of the consumption patterns, the concept of "author" as related to art, plays a dominant role in the product differentiation since in the ubiquitous Japanese industries few figures can really deserve that international authorship status. Indeed, this article focuses on the study of tourism phenomena around two of these figures, as well as the speeches around spaces related to their art work. The first of these case studies will Osamu Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka. Tezuka is probably the most important figure in the history of manga and anime media, having contributed decisively to the formation of its stylistic and narrative codes (Hui, 2006; Power, 2009). The second case study, more popular nowadays, will be Hayao Miyazaki, a founding member of the known studies Ghibli and winner of numerous international awards, including two awards from the American Academy of cinema. The touristic activity developed around the Ghibli Museum (Mitaka) has been studied in the past about author discourses (Deninson, 2010). On this occasion, however, won’t be the ethos of the author the object to be analysed but the nature of the museum space as author discourse in the same way that has been considered in the case of other international figures (Hodgdon, 1998).. Also, through different para-texts (interviews, reports, documentaries, ...) will be commented the role that the author discourse play in the spread of anime-related industries, including tourism. Finally, the work aims to study to what extent there is a real institutional effort in the construction of these discourses or if this “author cult” may have originated in a particular tradition of "Japanese" consumption. This form of consumption wouldn’t be exclusive but maybe idiosyncratic of the Japanese market, being later expanded into the international market due to the recent incorporation of transnational anime audiences