This paper explores the development of halal knowledge embedded in the Japanese tourism industry from the perspective of knowledge management. Specifically, it examines the diffusion of halal standards and certifications in the Japanese tourism market and the creation of halal knowledge in the halal tourism market. Halal guidelines like halal standards and a certification system are being diffused by private halal consultants engaged in the halal certification business. However, these guidelines create contradictions and challenges in Japan's tourism industry by revealing gaps between marketing analyses and Muslim tourists in Japan. Some discomforts and criticisms associated with halal guidelines reveal that halal is based more on tacit knowledge shaped in individual Muslim lifestyles and daily practices, than on explicit guidelines. As a result, the Japanese tourism industry has begun to recognize the importance both of halal knowledge's tacit aspects and of knowledge platforms to create shared social contexts.
This chapter offers an introduction to religion, religious tourism and pilgrimage in Asia and outlines eight themes in relation to the changing face of religion in the world as identified by geographer Stanley Brunn. These are presented and considered here to illustrate the challenges facing religion, religious tourism and pilgrimage, and society in general in modern times. The layout of the book's chapters is then described.
This chapter first summarizes the concept of entrepreneurship in religious tourism by focusing on the theory of religious economy. It then considers the characteristics of the religious tourism marketplace in Mumbai and India. Subsequently, the management strategy of an Islamic tour operator is described, based on a personal interview with the company's co-manager. The unique management strategy of the Islamic tour operator is summarized by three points: the establishment of a leisure culture based on Islamic value for lower-middle-class people in local communities; the development of customers' religious knowledge and piety through religious tours; and the circulation of the company's profit in the local community.
Since the 2000s, Japanese internet media as well as mass media, including magazines, television and newspapers, have promoted the concept of a “power spot” as part of the spirituality movement in the country. This emerging social environment for the power spot phenomenon has developed a new form of religiosity, which can be called “spiritual legitimacy,” according to the transformation of religious legitimacy embedded in Japanese society. This paper, therefore, examined the emergence of a new form of spiritual legitimacy utilizing a case study of the power spot phenomenon in the Haruna Shrine, Gunma Prefecture, in Japan. The development of the power spot phenomenon in the Haruna Shrine indicates that consumption of spiritual narratives has strongly promoted the construction of a social context of spiritual legitimacy, such as through shared images and symbols related to the narratives in the sacred site. As a result, this paper clarifies that this new form of spiritual legitimacy embodies stakeholders’ social consensus on spiritual narratives, which people have struggled to construct a social context for spiritual legitimacy to ensure hot authentication of their individual narratives and experiences.
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