Japan’s Izu Peninsula is located near Mt. Fuji. It has a long history that include Ohenro, a pilgrimage to temples and shrines that had been very popular at one time. Ohenro has become less popular and, unfortunately, fewer and fewer tourists have been visiting the area in recent years.

Izu Peninsula is large and distant, with a small number of visitors touring around the entire peninsula. Most tourists limit their visits to the sightseeing spot at the entrance and do not continue farther. One of the reasons may be that temples and shrines do not provide a welcoming atmosphere to young people. To encourage young people to visit temples and shrines, we came up with the idea of holding a stamp rally tour.

This booklet is made of cloth. To encourage young people to visit temples and shrines, we therefore decided to create a Stamp Passport Book with Japanese hand towels. All design prints are in black. Color is added to the cloth by pressing the colorful stamps placed at all the spots visited on the tour. Stamp spots are 25. The important point is that tourists must visit the designated number of shrines and temples to complete the book. When a red string is untied, the booklet unfolds into a hand towel. The stamp ink is oil-based, so it will not run even when dipped in hot spring water. The main feature of the hand towel is the design of Kanji characters. For example, in the kanji ?? (Izu), shrine and temple are used in a symbolic manner. Added skillfully to Japan’s traditional writing is a modern aesthetic quality.

This stamp passport book program successfully increased the number of tourists to Izu Peninsula.

The sales was 300% higher than our forecast.

There are more and more shrines and temples wanting to sell and place stamps.

The original plan was to end the program in spring of 2016; however, it was decided that this program will be continued.

Further increase of tourists is expected.