TOKYO: A rural Japanese town’s decision to spend Covid-19 relief money on a giant squid monument has been vindicated, officials say, pointing to estimates that tourists pumped roughly 22 times its cost into the local economy.
Named Ika Kingu, or Squid King, the 13m-long, 4m-tall monument sits outside a roadside tourist centre in coastal Noto, a shrinking community of 15,000 people with few claims to fame besides local seafood.
The town’s use of pandemic stimulus money to build the tentacled attraction sparked a debate that was reported worldwide including by the “New York Times”, AFP, and Indian and Singaporean news outlets.
It is a familiar story in rural Japan, which has no shortage of taxpayer-funded roadside attractions meant to drum up tourism.
Noto is located 300km northwest of Tokyo in Ishikawa on the Sea of Japan coast, a prefecture perhaps best known for its capital Kanazawa.
Visitors to the tourist centre next to the statue can enjoy squid sashimi, squid tempura, squid curry and squid-ink ice cream. Shops sell 200 different souvenirs, from sake that pairs well with squid to squid-shaped lamps.
Under pressure from local lawmakers, the town hired a consultant to calculate Squid King’s economic impact.
Ika King “brought an economic benefit of 640 million yen (RM20.6 million) to Ishikawa prefecture, around 22 times its construction cost” of 26.95 million yen, said the consultant, Toshiro Shirao.
Japanese television coverage alone gave the prefecture another 1.8 billion yen worth of exposure, according to his findings.
Shirao based his report on data including visitor surveys and sales records from the tourist centre, known as Ika No Eki Tsukumall.
Roughly 165,000 people visited Tsukumall over the course of 16 months. Of them, 45% said the main reason for the trip was to see Squid King, while another 25% were there to eat squid.
‘Revitalise the community’
Tourists from the greater Tokyo region spent an average of around 20,000 yen, or RM628, there, while locals spent about 5,000 yen.
Shirao also analysed social media references to Squid King. While the statue drew heavy criticism at first, positive posts outnumbered negative ones in May and June, he said.
“Local residents love it, and it has generated sufficient returns for a public project,” Shirao said. He calculated that Ika King could generate an economic boost of 1.25 billion yen over three years and 2.08 billion yen over five years if it continues to draw similar numbers of visitors.
On a day in late August, the area was thronged with tourists. Children clambered on top of the squid and played hide-and-seek around it. People lined up for food and made the short walk to the beach for tour boat rides and other seaside activities.
“It’s created new jobs for 38 people,” including tour boat captains and shop staff, said Takao Takehana, acting head of the Tsukumall tourist centre, which has sold nearly 15 million yen worth of food and other products in 10 days during the Golden Week holiday in April and May.
Squid consumption has risen, giving a boost to the local fishing industry.
The area, after struggling for so long to attract visitors amid the pandemic, is now one of the top destinations on the Noto Peninsula.
“We’ll come up with new ideas to get visitors to come back,” Takehana said, while Eiji Yamashita, chief of the town’s promotion office, sounded confident that the statue had paid off.
“We received a variety of opinions for and against it, but it wasn’t the wrong way” to use the coronavirus grant, Yamashita said.
“It’s had quite a large economic impact,” he added. “We don’t want this to end up being just temporary – we want to use it to revitalise the community.”
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