Fukushima onsen landladies dancing the hula attract guests

Inn landladies from the Iwaki Yumoto hot spring resort in Fukushima Prefecture have been dancing the hula in kimono outside JR Shimbashi Station in Tokyo. It is one of an ingenious variety of promotion campaigns to lure back customers that were lost due to radiation fears after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and resulting tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster in the prefecture. Such determined efforts are paying off handsomely with a number of hot spring resorts in Fukushima Prefecture scoring high in the 2015 popularity ratings just released by Japan’s major travel websites. “I was weeping from day to day five years ago as I had no choice but to suspend business and I couldn’t tell what the next day would be like,” one of the kimono-clad landladies ("okami") told the crowd of spectators outside the station April 21. “But I am beginning to move forward now with a smiling face. A similar day will come to those in Kumamoto.” She was referring to a recent succession of strong earthquakes that ravaged Kumamoto Prefecture in April. The entertainment was part of the Hula Okami Project, which started last year and involves the landladies dancing outside train stations in Tokyo and at other events both in and outside of Fukushima Prefecture. The project is getting a growing number of inquiries as the slow and gentle dance movements, choreographed to complement the colorful kimono, have caught the public's eye. In 2015, Iwaki Yumoto rose to 14th place, up from 20th in 2014, in Rakuten Travel’s annual popularity ranking for hot spring resorts. Immediately after the nuclear disaster in March 2011, the Iwaki Yumoto hot spring resort began accommodating workers involved in the reactor decommissioning process at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Iwaso, an inn at the resort, reserved all rooms for nuclear plant workers until December 2011. It began accepting regular guests the following month, but customers were slow to return because many were reluctant to be seen relaxing at an inn also used by workers toiling to repair the damage caused by the disaster. The number of guests at the inn is now on the rise but still hovers at only around 60 percent of predisaster levels. Iwaki Yumoto is home to Spa Resort Hawaiians, a major resort complex. Iwaki Yumoto’s inn landladies began taking hula lessons when “Hula Girls,” a movie themed on the little known story of Spa Resort Hawaiians’ cradle days, turned out to be a box-office success 10 years ago. Their skill at hula dancing, which was usually only seen at New Year’s parties, has now turned out to be something of a godsend. “A campaign can bring a community back to life,” said Masumi Oba, Iwaso’s landlady. Junior inn masters ("wakadanna") are the main driving force behind a promotional campaign for Tsuchiyu Onsen, a hot spring resort in the prefectural capital of Fukushima. The disasters of 2011 left buildings damaged and sales figures plummeting at the resort, which is a 25-minute drive from JR Fukushima Station. The number of inns dwindled by five and now numbers 11. To combat the drop, inns at the resort and local university students worked together to create “Wakadanna Pictorial Book,” a free brochure series, in August 2014. Five junior inn masters in their 20s through their 40s, labeled with descriptions such as “aloof type” and “mischievous type,” serve as presenters of tourism spots and types of food in the brochure series, which shows them photographed like idol entertainers. Four issues were published in half a year. An affiliated manga series also began running in Sylph, a monthly manga magazine for girls, starting with the December 2015 issue. The series features real inns and their actual junior masters. “It is fun to link scenes in the manga with scenes of the real world,” said Akira Sakuma, a 41-year-old executive director of the Mukaitaki inn, who is described in the series as a “slightly villainous” type. The Takayu hot spring resort, also in the prefectural capital, is promoting itself through its distinctive water color, which is milky white with a blue tinge. Jalan, a major tourism information magazine and website, named it last year the best hot spring in Japan in the ranking of smaller resorts with fewer visitors, up from fifth place in 2014. All hot spring facilities in Takayu declared six years ago that their baths are filled with fresh and unaltered water directly from the spring. But the nuclear accident caused a drop in the number of visitors, and it has yet to return to predisaster levels. A local tourism association enlisted the help of a university professor and other parties to create a 28-page brochure in 2015 that explains the efficacy of Takayu’s hot spring water. The brochure is being distributed free of charge. (This article was written by Kenji Izawa and Natsuki Edogawa.)