2021 TOP 100 GOOD
PRACTICE STORY
Title of the Story: The Kamaishi Open Field Museum Concept
Destination Name: Kamaishi
Country: Japan
Submitter name: Ryuta Kubo
Email address: kubo@dmo-kamaishi.com
Position: Sustainability Coordinator /KAMAISHI DMC Co., Ltd.
Nomination Category: (Please check the boxes that indicate the focus of your story)
Please find detailed information for the categories below in the Top 100 training module ‘Good
Practice Story’.
☐ Localizing the destination supply chain☐ Decarbonizing the destination supply chain☒ Culture & Communities☐ Environment & Climate☐ Nature & Ecotourism☐ Tourism Reset & Recovery

Find detailed instructions for submitting good practices in the Top 100 training module“Good Practice Story”.
Should you have any questions on your submission please refer to our FAQ page orcontact top100@greendestinations.org

DESCRIBE YOUR GOOD PRACTICE STORY
Address each aspect of your good practice story in the different sections being specific including relevant quantitativeand qualitative information.

Issues faced

The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011 caused tremendous damage to the city of Kamaishi,
resulting in the loss of many precious lives and properties. The number of dead or missing reached 1,040, and thenumber of evacuees went up to 9,883.
In 2017, six years after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the city of Kamaishi established the "Kamaishi City
Tourism Vision" as a 10-year plan that outlines the guidelines for a new tourism strategy with the aim of pushing
forward the reconstruction of the city’s heavily damaged areas.
At the time for the city, one of the most critical objectives was to bring back the pride of the citizens in living inthis city again after facing the great difficulty of the disaster.
Therefore, as part of the main pillars of the policies, the new "Kamaishi City Tourism Vision" aims to design
citizens’ participation in tourism through which they, as hosts, can revisit the beauty of the local living, culture
and nature and to revive the pride of living in the area. The concept “Kamaishi Open Field Museum” was, then,established as a means of realizing this policy. It views the entire city of Kamaishi as an open-air museum, andeach citizen of Kamaishi as a guide, telling stories about the beauty of the city.

Methods, steps and tools applied

In the Kamaishi Open Field Museum project, we consider not only the natural and cultural heritage of Kamaishi
City, but also the daily livings of Kamaishi citizens as an important local tourism resource. We worked to develop
a series of one-of-a-kind attraction experience programs that each Kamaishi citizen can offer as a guide.
For example, a fishing experience with fishermen, tree planting experience with forestry workers, craft
experience at ironworks; hiking in national parks with a local guide, guided tours of the city streets, disasterprevention learning programs with the ones who experienced it, and sports programs by sports-loving citizens.
When developing a program, we carefully intend to emphasize the stories and personalities of each local guide.
In this way, even with the same theme and content, a fishing experience, for example, will differ depending on
which fisherman serves as a guide. Each citizen's life becomes a tourism experience, and we believe that the way
such diversity offered can truly be an attraction as a series of tourism contents.
We also hold an event "Kamaishi Open Field Museum Exposition over a few months every year," known as"Meetup Kamaishi", where the experience programs can be collectively promoted and offered both to thetourists visiting Kamaishi City during the event and the local members.

Key success factors

In order to develop such series of experience programs that make use of the stories and characters of local
citizens, it was essential to have a coordinator who would accompany each guide citizen from the planning stage.
To this end, an executive committee was formed through a public-private partnership, and a systematicmanagement system was established with the members sharing the role as a coordinator. The city of Kamaishi
provides the funds for the operation of the committee, and Kamaishi DMC acts as the secretariat, coordinating
the people involved and carrying out the entire project.
This committee not only develops experience programs, but also helps the guides and the committee members
deepen their understanding of the vision of the Kamaishi Open Field Museum project and discuss strategies tocarry it out.

Lessons learned

The goal of the Kamaishi Open Field Museum Initiative is not simply to increase the number of programs, butalso to bring up the level of involvement of Kamaishi citizens in tourism, and to raise their positive awareness ofliving in Kamaishi City. Therefore, the "Kamaishi Tourism Vision" defines KPI as "the percentage of citizens whoare proud of the city" and "the percentage of citizens who try to attract people from outside", and progress
toward these goals are measured quantitatively.
The "Meetup Kamaishi" programs, in which Kamaishi citizens themselves serve as the initiators and guides, isexpected to contribute to the achievement of these KPIs.
In a survey conducted in 2020, the percentage of citizens who are proud of their city was 32%, and thepercentage of citizens who try to attract people to their city was 20%, which are still quite low rated.
We need to understand the current situation as accurately as possible so that we can properly evaluate ourtourism strategy.

Results, achievements and recognitions

The exposition of the Kamaishi Open Field Museum, "Meetup Kamaishi" have continued to be held from 2017 tothis year. Each time, the number of programs is gradually increased; more than 100 citizens in total have served
as guides in this past four years.
Some of the programs successfully established ongoing relationships with certain outside visitors and have been
receiving repeating requests, and others were asked by local elementary schools to hold their experience
programs as part of classes.

Additional references
https://visitkamaishi.jp/