The 2nd PracticalTourism Study Tour Report:Toppa nPrinting VR Theater

In conjunction with the “Tourism Strategy Project”, which learns the big view andexpertise in tourism from prominent lecturers, the Tokyo Metropolitan Public
University Corporation occasionally conducts "Practical Tourism Study Tours" aimed atvisiting and touring actual sightseeing spots.
This year, which is the final year of the project, the influence of COVID-19
unprecedentedly blows the tourism industry which has been still in a tough situation.
Under these circumstances, we will conduct three tours to explore the possibility ofmicro-tourism and technology, which are attracting attention as a new opportunity in thetourism industry.
On Friday, November 6, 2020, the second Practical Tourism Study Tour was held withthe cooperation of Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. We visited the Printing Museum and VR
Theater in Toppan Koishikawa Building and learned about initiatives of the company.

Printing Museum, Tokyo
Printing Museum, Tokyo established as part of Toppan Printing's centennialproject. From the origins of printing to the latest printing techniques, there are a varietyof printing collections on display. The museum has celebrated its 20th anniversary andreopened on October 6, 2020.
The exhibits been significantly renewed with a focus on the historical transition of
printing culture in Japan that our predecessors cultivated while keeping an eye on theworld widely. At the printing house, annex attached to the museum, you can experience
letterpress printing.

VR Theatre
Toppan Printing started research and development of VR technology in 1997. They havecreated more than 50 works so far. The VR theater features a curved screen that is 12
meters wide and 4 meters high and has a horizontal viewing angle of 120 degrees, so you
can experience an immersive feeling as if you were in the image.

Photo credit, Toppan Printing Co., Ltd.

Toppan Printing Initiatives
Lecturer : Mr.Hidetaka Yazawa, Senior General Manager, Cultural Project Division

Toppan VR
Based on the "color management technology", "high-definition photographictechnology", and "high-capacity image processing technology" developed as a
printing company for many years, Toppan VR is opened to the public and utilized
through digitalarchive, visualization, and resource. In about 20 years, we have createdmore than 50 VR works by making valuable cultural assets such as world heritage sites
and national treasures in Japan and overseas into VR.
Toppan Printing and the Palace Museum in China have launched joint project andestablished “The Palace Museum Digital Institute” in 2000. The purpose of this projectis to preserve and publish ancient buildings and cultural assets of the Forbidden City byutilizing technologies such as VR developed by Toppan.
In 2018, as a part of Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China, Premier
Li Keqiang and then Prime Minister Abe had an experience with Toppan VR. In suchway, Toppan also plays a role as a bridge for cultural exchange between Japan andChina.

Utilization of Toppan VR
Toppan VR technology is used in various situations such as events, seminars, tourism,and education. At seminars held for office workers at Academy Hills in Roppongi, themonks of Toshodaiji Templegave lecture operating VR images of the precincts. Also,
the public talks using VR of three-dimensional mandalas located in the Toji Auditorium
are held at the Tokyo National Museum.
In addition, we held a VR public talk and a parent-child origami class that gathered
parents and children during the summer vacation as a collaboration project with Asahi
Press Inc.'s "Oru Dogu-chan (Paper-Folding Clay Figurines Characters)", and forforeign people, we held an event to enjoy “rakugo (traditional Japanese story telling)” in
the feeling of traveling back in time to the Edo period by making full use of VR. It wasalso used for screening at the Konica Minolta Planetarium in its all-sky video systemand projecting it onto a skating rink at Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki.
Besides the use of content, thanks to our digitally archived data, we are contributing torestoration of the stone wall of Kumamoto Castle which collapsed due to the earthquake
in 2016 by stone wall verification system co-developed with Kumamoto University.
Profound Tourism
Toppan Printing is also working with Toppan Travel Services to provide new culturalexperiences through digital (VR) × real to deeply understand, learn, and feel Japaneseculture.
It is essential for tourism to increase the number of repeat customers, and in order tomake tourists feel like revisitng, it is important to get to know about the destinations
more deeply, so we started tour program called Profound Tourism.
For companies, we offer a variety of content, including SDGs training, team building,training for foreign employees, and hospitality programs for VIPs. In addition, in orderto provide new experience value in COVID-19 pandemic, we have just started working
on an online tour where you can enjoy traditional Japanese culture without travelling to
the actual site.

What Toppan Printing is Aiming forToppan Printing aims to protect cultural properties by digital archives and to make avirtuous cycle of cultural property protection i.e., preserving cultural properties by theprofits gained from VR contents (digital archives).
In addition, we would like to propose initiatives to attractively disseminate culturalassets, stories, and people using digital technology, to combine the offer of online
cultural experiences overseas with product sales, to stimulate future visits to Japan. We
would also like to propose an initiative to create locations in Tokyo where people canwatch VR images, and to send inbound visitors to Tokyo who viewed VR images tolocal areas in Japan.