From here, translated into Japanese.
The picture in question is this (well, a picture of tourists taking that picture).
People have been taking pictures of famous landmarks ever since cameras became common place. I don’t support the bad behavior of the tourists, this is just human nature to take pictures of places one visits.
Whenever I see a headline about “tourists behaving badly,” I cross my fingers and hope to read something like: “the [British/Canadian/Australian/Swedish/Argentinian…] tourists blah blah blah.” But my hopes are usually dashed faster than a kid’s dream of a pony on Christmas morning. More often than not, the perpetrators are good ol’ American assholes. It’s why I always tell people that although I was born and live in America, my ancestors hail from anywhere else. At this rate, I’m considering investing in a DNA test just to claim some obscure heritage and distance myself from the chaos!
When I visited London, I climbed to the top of St Paul’s cathedral and took a few wholly unremarkable panoramic shots of the city. I also took some pictures of Stonehenge worse than what you can find online because tourists are limited to how close get. And I took roughly one million photos in the British museum, only a few of which aren’t (best I can tell) online in better quality. I’m sure we can all tell similar stories about our vacations.
But vacation photos aren’t about quality or even a unique artistic tale. They’re totems and emblems of your experience. If somebody wants to make a trip to a famous (even Internet famous) photo spot to memorialize their trip, that’s not stupid. It’s being human.
And so, unfortunately, is being a jerk.
It’s cool to rag on people for being jerks, but “lol those idiots are taking a picture of something other people take pictures of” is silly and - I’d wager a few quatloos - hypocritical.
Related: when I’m in a museum and I’m not allowed to take photos of something famous I get (mildly) anxious and upset. No I don’t want to buy a postcard. I want my shitty photo. I want a sense memory.
Once I did some unauthorized exploration of off-limits parts of an ultra-famous and popular site. But it never occurred to me to take pictures of myself doing so, nor did I litter any cigarette butts, carve my name into the walls, or otherwise leave a trace.
Your feelings are not backed up by “research”.
A probable undercurrent to current resentment towards tourists in Japan is good ol’ xenophobia. There has long been prejudice against “gaijin” among many Japanese; attitudes toward immigration may be even more negative than in America.
Assholish behavior by tourists isn’t helping matters.
Obligatory musical theme for the thread by Nick Lowe (who evidently got along well in Japan).
True. I may be guilty of confirmation bias. I think the takeaway is that all humans should be banned from public spaces. Public (and most private) spaces should be the domain of wild animals, who, except for killing and maiming, are generally well behaved.
The difference is that you didn’t just go someone just to get the photo. That’s what is being described as silly. Not maybe capturing a photo while you were there for some other reason.
The assumption here is that people are specifically choosing to travel to this location just to get that particular photo. And that’s why it gets so full and blocks traffic. If they were there for other reasons, you’d expect them to be more spread out.
Just got back yesterday from Eastern Europe, and now I feel better about taking so few photos. And most of them were just quick shots of a rooftop or a bridge.
And none of them could be captioned “Look, here’s an average Slovenian shopkeeper sweeping in front of his store while a tourist takes a dozen portraits of him until the perfect blend of humility and frustration shows on his artistically wrinkled brow…”
I should hope not. What sort of ungracious tourist would refer to Slovenia as Eastern Europe?
Sorry. Balkan.
Right. I (a virtuous human) went to a place to see a thing and take photos of it. They (the unvirtuous humans) went to a place to take photos of a thing and see it. We are not the same.
The only solution to the Instagram, “lots of people want exactly this photo taken from a very small place” problem is to fence off that place from tourists, at least for a little while. Or possibly to make it cool for your photo to be different.
The solution to the “repeatedly block a woman walking down the street to get exactly the right photo of her” problem is for tourists to stop being assholes. I am not like that tourist. I hope none of you are, either.
Yeah, as a photographer, my general rule tends to be – see where everyone else is taking a photo? Good. Now don’t go there. Find a shot that is different than everyone else’s.
But this isn’t about photography, or even about tourism, really - it’s about meme culture, and the name of the game in meme culture is conformism.
Oh, I understand where this sits in culture generally.
Arrest and deport them immediately. Problem solved.
A print with a view of Mt. Fuji behind a Lawson Kawaguchiko conveniernce store sounds like the ultimate Masami Teraoka work of art.
I shall also like to signal my virtue as well, too.
I think I made a pretty decent case that for the assumption I mentioned. If this is just people who came to this city for other reasons and grabbed a pic while they were there, it wouldn’t be just one place that was crowded.
If you see a bunch of people all crowded around a single location, blocking traffic and making things less safe, all doing the same one thing? I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that doing that thing is what they are there for.
Also, I hate this attitude that anyone who disagrees with me must be “virtue signaling.” Yeah, you avoided the term, but you used the concept. And that concept does the very thing it decries.
There’s a reason my post is longer than the one sentence. I make a case for what I’m saying. I would prefer if people who disagree with my arguments would refute the arguments, not imply I just think I’m better than everyone else.
For the record, I think I’m better than everyone else.