Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies by Shiho Satsuka (review)

In the intriguing ethnography Nature in Translation: Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies, Shiho Satsuka explores the ways that Japanese tour guides in Banff, Alberta, translate culturally situated knowledge about nature for tourists and for themselves. Satsuka traces the lives of several guides who emigrate from Japan in search of Canada's "majestic nature," often represented in the Japanese media as idyllic. Inevitably fraught with tensions and contradictions, the practice of cultural translation is shown by Satsuka to entail frustrations and misunderstandings that entangle the guides in larger webs of political, economic and historical currents, shaping and reshaping their experiences and perspectives.

Banff National Park is Canada's eldest and one of its most revered protected areas. Established in 1885, the park now attracts close to 5 million visitors annually, some of whom come from Japan to experience a piece of Canada's seemingly endless "wilderness." The job of the guides is to translate concepts authorized by the park's governmental representatives into terms that their customers can appreciate and take some enjoyment in. For many of the guides, success means easing the tension inherent in cross-cultural translation; Satsuka details how the guides describe their concerns and the troubles associated with learning concepts that were foreign to them at first. A successful guide makes the effort seem effortless and translates ideas in exciting and interesting ways using stories and their personal images as tools of the trade.

"Landscape" (28–29) is one such concept, which had no counterpart in Japanese until its introduction during the 1890s by philosophers influenced by Western thought. The introduction of the concept of landscape in Japan ran parallel to the introduction of other concepts such as freedom and subjectivity, which remained marginal in Japanese culture until recently but provide a constellation of meanings often employed by the guides in their translations. Satsuka deftly describes how ideas such as subjectivity percolate into the language and behaviour of those who become guides and visitors to the park through their encounter with Canadian norms and ideals of nature interpretation. Many of these concepts are now a part of popular culture in Japan, expanding hand in hand with the growing popularity of international tourism and adventure tourism. While they are used often in conversation, however, these concepts lack stable definitions, and people's understandings often differ from one another's, leading to misunderstandings and, at times, conflicts.

To provide some background, Satsuka explores the beginnings of Japanese mountain climbing traditions and how ideas about nature became entangled with notions of individuality. These became expressed in newly adopted Western concepts as climbers attempted to summit the world's highest peaks, travelling internationally and returning with new ideas. The important role played by borrowed Enlightenment concepts (such as subjectivity and individuality) in popularizing mountain climbing in Japan during the early twentieth century is juxtaposed with the corporatism of Japanese culture. The juxtaposition exposes the guides' views of Japanese life as stifling individuality, and of life in "majestic nature" as more authentic and free. The guides often explain their move to Canada in terms that echo the words of Ohashi Kyosen, a Japanese pop culture icon who is largely credited with the promotion of travel as a middle-class endeavour and as a goal of retirement. In his television programs and at his store in Banff, where Japanese tourists are welcomed and catered to, Satsuka explores Ohashi's promotion of what she calls "populist cosmopolitanism" (67). This form of populist cosmopolitanism circumvents ethnonationalist sentiments and instead encourages people to free themselves from bonds to corporation and family, which prevent the feeling of independence, and encourages, as well, the desire to become "[someone who] stands on [one's] own feet" (64). The sense of freedom as a form of self-actualization that spread during the 1990s is closely linked to Enlightenment values and stands apart from traditional Japanese notions of interconnection and communitarian values (117). Nevertheless, it is this sense of freedom as an expression of individual...