【Fourth Round】 What will travel look like five years from now? We ask cultural anthropologist Keiichiro Matsumura what travel will look like five years ahead from the perspective of cultural anthropology which asks things implicitly.
This time we met with Professor Keiichiro Matsumura, who has been carrying out research on economics, politics and the connections between people from a cultural anthropology viewpoint. Let’s hear what he has to say.
Table of contents
The New Buds of Tourism, Exploring the Shape and Future of Tourism Five Years Ahead
This column aims to pinpoint new buds of tourism (the latest trends and changes in traveling) that are to come. However, the column isn’t limited to just the travel industry, but feature people an interview format from a variety of industries. Today we’re talking with Keiichiro Matsumura, an associate professor at Okayama University Faculty of Letters, specializing in Cultural Anthropology. Continually carrying out fieldwork on farms in Ethiopia and cities in the Middle East, he researches the lack of or abundance of resources and its distribution, developmental aid and poverty, emigration abroad, and international borders.
He has written Anthropology: Ownership and Distribution, Asking Questions about Private Ownership from Ethiopian Farm Society (Chikuma Gakugei Bunko), Anthropology that Rotates (Kodansha), The Little Ones (Mishimasha), What Will Become of Universities? (Shunjusha), and An Anthropologist Lens: Interpreting Crises (Nishinippon Shimbun) (on sale 4/18) and more.
Mr. Keiichiro Matsumura
The movement of people between countries or regions is made possible because it is either “returning” or for a “limited period of time.”
Interviewer: Mr. Matsumura has carried out research on Ethiopian farms for many years and has focused his work also on emigration of these farm villages in Ethiopia to the Middle East and Europe. We’ve heard the main themes of his work right now include the movement of people and international borders.
Mr. Matsumura: The current world is closely involved with the nation state and the movement of people. The fact I’m able to move and be in a different country or region is based on the public acknowledgement of my being from the passport Japan issued me. If the movement of people is not acknowledged by the nation state, simply crossing over an international border makes that person an illegal existence. The entire world is faced with this problem now.
The nation state is what regulates and controls the movement of people. People might think that’s an obvious fact but if you think about it in the long-term span of history of a thousand or ten thousands of years, it is only a recent development. I believe one of the biggest questions right now is how we should think about this current state of affairs.
Travel involves movement. The actual physical movement is travel in itself, and I feel it is an important question for us now.
There are many countries that open their arms welcoming travelers to their borders but it is under the condition that these people will eventually go back home. Tourist visas are generally no longer than three months and staying longer than that means you’ll be illegally staying in the country. That’s why immigration, unlike tourism, has such hurdles to overcome to become legal. However, if you have money, there are places where you can receive permanent residency on the other hand.
Interviewer: When a nation state acknowledges a person, does that mean their value or worth also comes into play?
Mr. Matsumura: That’s right. Even if the movement of people is part of the tourism industry, it plays an important part to a country’s economy. However, it also involves the ability to control where and how people live, depending on their usefulness on the flip side.
Interviewer: There are things that can only be gained when travel ends, and everyday life begins. What is the relationship between cultural anthropology and travel?
Mr. Matsumura: A well-respected anthropologist once said, “When travel ends and everyday life begins, anthropological fieldwork also starts.” Anthropologists start their work when nothing happens, and everyday life carries on. I know that this way of thinking limits travel to a very narrow definition, but cultural anthropological fieldwork is when people spend their living their everyday lives while they settle somewhere and create relationships with other people. I believe that it is difficult to create deep bonds with people when you’re only traveling and never in one spot.
Interviewer: Mr. Matsumura, is the reason why you’ve continued to work in Ethiopia because of the deep bonds you formed with people during your first fieldwork assignment?
Mr. Matsumura: When I was in university, my cultural anthropology professor was a specialist in Ethiopia who supported me and allowed me to stay and do fieldwork for one year there. That was the start of it all. I think the first village I stayed at was four to five months, but I’ve been going to the same village for over 20 years now since the first investigative research.
One of the biggest reasons why I continue to be involved with this place is that the family I stayed with has, in a way, become my own family. Another reason is I was able to expand my social circle and meet new people because I learned to speak the local language. I was able to converse with strangers walking down the road too. At first, I was involved in a way similar to traveling but eventually it started to become my hometown.
Interviewer: Mr. Matsumura, you started this “Traveling University” project with Hiroshima University’s Mr. Takeshi Matsushima in 2022. Could you please tell us what started the idea?
Mr. Matsumura: We started this project because we felt there was a divergence between what the world needs right now and the current state of universities today. We thought that there are plenty of people out there in the world that want to know and learn about knowledge and education and that it isn’t just limited to students. I know that I teach and work at a university, but I want to learn with people who really want to learn and study. We believe it was necessary for universities to create these fun learning spaces and that’s how I started this project with Mr. Matsushima.
Traveling University isn’t a corporation but rather a concept that has people in it. We hosted the first session but other people who wanted to did the subsequent sessions and are now in charge of operations.
Interviewer: Traveling University is a concept but is there anything that it needs in order to be established as such?
Mr. Matsumura: I wonder what it could be (laughs). We didn’t know if people would actually come at first but we were at capacity in a couple of days. It was a very fun and interesting experience. It was just indescribably amazing about it. It was a place to learn and it didn’t matter how much you knew or your status or profession. I felt it was a place of possibilities, it wasn’t a hierarchy that would come from test scores. You could say it the basic component of it all is that it’s traveling that satisfies people’s curiosities, for the people who want to know and learn.
Cultural anthropologists and chief priests were invited to be guest lecturers where they taught and learned with participants what it means to “live in the mountains and live with the mountains” on the grounds of Daisenji Temple and at the foot of Mt. Daisen.
An important thing to do is to catch hold of small signs of things that are already happening.
Interviewer: We’d like to know what the future of travel in five years is when thinking about it from a cultural anthropologist viewpoint.
Mr. Matsumura: I’m not a fortune teller so I cannot say for sure what will happen to travel in five years (laughs).
When we ask things implicitly, it already limits the type of answers we will get, right? Anthropology is a discipline that thinks about the way we ask things. Behind the act of “asking” is the act of “asking implicitly.” We’ve learned what it’s like to be in the travel industry during COVID-19 and know that it is impossible to predict future, even if we don’t like it. Isn’t that right?
Essentially, thinking whether a question is the right one – that act itself is important. On top of that, we know we can’t predict the future – what is the meaning behind thinking about something five years in the future? That’s something we have to consider.
If we view time from the perspective of yesterday, then today is one day into the future, right? The future is the present extended. Thinking about the future means to catch hold of what’s happening in the present. Essentially, it is important to know what’s happening right now. To think about what will happen tomorrow, we need to catch hold of the smallest things and movements happening today that nobody else notices. From my own point of view, I can say that there’s people out there that find the “Traveling University” interesting and fun, for example.
Perhaps, the most important thing lies within what people working in the tourism industry is to see and experience in the actual locations.
Interviewer: We’re explorers and we catch hold of these signs, looking from up above, but we must also catch hold of these signs from the viewpoints of those concerned. I believe we must change one’s position, environment and viewpoints to think.
Mr. Matsumura: That is exactly what I’m currently researching. If we look from up above, we’ll understand and know big events that are happening, but we won’t know anything about things that aren’t verbally spoken or put into words, changes in society, and people’s feelings unless we put ourselves in those situations. Catching those signs ourselves takes time, but we have to put ourselves in those situations – that’s the thought process of an anthropologist. In addition, as someone who is responsible for a part of society, we need to examine our thoughts regarding what kind of society we want to create. “Five years ahead” is not about distancing ourselves and analyzing phenomenon, it is about thinking about what is necessary for people to become happy and how we can make society a better place using tourism. It may be a long time before we can conclude to that idea, but I believe it to be necessary.
The Buds We Found in This Exploration
The bud we found in this exploration consisted of understanding that we must think about what travel will be like in five years using various viewpoints and not to predict or fortune tell it. This bud has connected with our own thought processes. When Mr. Matsumura said he’s not a fortune teller and he’s unable to predict the future, we were in a little bit of a shock…. Why are we asking these kinds of questions, or should we have asked them in the first place? I’m sure the readers noticed that we were lost in these thoughts as well. We should always place an importance on finding these small things and signs happening around us that nobody else notices, whether that’s explorers like us or in your own daily life.
