The Chinese Cohort 60s and Japan: A journey of emotions

The Chinese outbound market exerts a substantial economic impact on the Japanese tourist industry. Yet history-inspired disputes between the two nations often cause fluctuations in the market. Through a qualitative inquiry with 27 interviewees, this study explores how the Chinese Cohort 60’s memories of, and emotions toward, Japan have evolved in the past 60 years and how the interplay of memories and emotions explain the cohort’s intention to visit Japan. Three subgroups emerged from the interview data, which exhibited different degrees of travel intention that were attributable to the variation of their memories of Japan. While all three subgroups held the declarative memory of the anti-Japanese war, regions of interviewees’ origin and their family histories were found to be significantly related to their distinctive emotions toward Japan. A Memory-Emotion-Time framework is developed that illustrates how memory and emotion influence one’s travel decisions in the context of history.