A record number of tourists flocked to Japan last year, officials said yesterday, despite a steep fall in Chinese visitors last month as a diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo rumbled on.
Japan logged 42.7 million arrivals last year, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said, topping 2024’s record of nearly 37 million as the weak yen boosted the appeal of the “bucket list” destination.
However, the number of tourists from China last month dropped about 45 percent from a year earlier to about 330,000.
Photo: AFP
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s suggestion in November last year that Tokyo could intervene militarily in any attack on Taiwan triggered a sharp diplomatic backlash from China, which urged its citizens to avoid traveling to Japan.
The announcement yesterday showed that the warning had an impact on visitor numbers.
China has been the biggest source of tourists to Japan, with almost 7.5 million visitors in the first nine months of last year — one-quarter of all foreign tourists, official data showed.
Attracted by a weak yen, Chinese tourists splashed out the equivalent of US$3.7 billion in the third quarter of last year.
However, Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Yasushi Kaneko said it was a “significant achievement” that overall visitors numbers had topped 40 million people for the first time.
“While the number of Chinese tourists in December decreased, we attracted a sufficient number of people from many other countries and regions to offset that,” he said, adding that there had been a “steep” increase in tourists from Europe, the US and Australia.
“We also hope and want to make sure that Chinese visitors will return to us as soon as possible,” he added.
The overall increase is partly due to government policies to promote attractions from Mount Fuji’s majestic slopes to shrines and sushi bars in more far-flung parts of the archipelago.
The Japanese government has set an ambitious target of reaching 60 million tourists annually by 2030.
However Japan’s biggest travel agency JTB forecast that overall tourist numbers this year would be “slightly lower” compared with last year due to a decrease in demand from China and Hong Kong.
Nevertheless, tourism income was expected to increase due to rising prices of items such as lodging and strong spending among visitors.
It added that due to an uptick in repeat visitors to Japan, the places people want to visit are shifting from large cities to rural areas.
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