Herding Monkeys to Paradise How Macaque Troops are Managed for Tourism in Japan

About this book

Herding Monkeys to Paradise is a study of the use of monkeys as a tourist attraction in Japan. Monkey parks are popular visitor attractions that display free-ranging troops of Japanese macaques to the paying public. The parks work by manipulating the movements of the monkey troop through the regular provision of food handouts at a fixed site where the monkeys can be easily viewed.

This system of management leads to a variety of problems, including proliferating monkey numbers, park-edge crop-raiding, and the sedentarization of the troop. In addition to falling visitor numbers, these problems have led to the closure or fencing in of many parks, calling into question the future of the monkey park as an institution.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Monkeys in Paradise
Monkeys and Monkey Parks
The Shadow of the Zoo
The ‘Natural Zoo’ Concept
Displaying Forest Monkeys

Chapter 2 Searching for Monkeys
Monkey Avoidance of Humans
The Mobility of the Troop
The Opacity of the Forest
Beyond the Impasse

Chapter 3 Provisioning the Monkeys
Provisioning for Science
Provisioning for Tourism
Provisioning as Crop Protection
Provisioning for Conservation

Chapter 4 Working with Monkeys
Working in the Park
Feeding the Monkeys
Policing the Park
Knowing the Monkeys

Chapter 5 Herding the Monkeys
Remote Herding
Attracting the Troop
Retaining and Returning the Troop
Seasonal Problems

Chapter 6 Keeping Out Monkeys
Park-edge ‘Monkey Damage’
Countermeasures
Counterhabituation
Contesting Responsibility

Chapter 7 Transforming the Monkeys
Proliferation
Sedentarization
Semi-domestication
Culture and Agency

Chapter 8 Restoring the Monkeys
Forest-edge Display
Forest Display
‘Monkeywatching’
Partial Restoration

Conclusion

Customer Reviews

Biography

John Knight, Ph.D. (1992) in Social Anthropology, London School of Economics, is Reader in Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast. He has published extensively on rural Japan and on human-animal relations, including Waiting for Wolves in Japan (Oxford, 2003).