Japan Earthquake Aftermath: A comment about Atomic Tourism

As Japan recovers from the aftermath of the latest world event impacting tourism trade, entrepreneurial tour operators are starting to think aloud about the ways to keep the travel trade alive between Japan and the rest of the world. Some have already whispered that "atomic tourism", a niche sector involving visits to significant sites of the nuclear age might hold some potential revenue. This field is set in a wider "dark tourism" realm, encompassing various visitor discoveries of catastrophic events, tragedies and sites where genocides might have occurred through the ages. People's fascination for morbidity often knows no boundaries. Let's hope that whatever new atomic tourism product emerges will be produced ethically, without appropriating fundamental elements that are rightly owned by the grieving population of Japan. There will surely be many lessons to be learned by us all from the journey of recovery this remarkable society is undertaking since March 11, 2011.