Japan Suffers from “Excessive Influx of Tourists”

Foreign tourist arrivals to Japan set a new record in July, with 3.29 million foreign visitors coming to the Land of the Rising Sun in just one month, which is 41.9% more than in the same month in 2023.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), tourist arrivals, “stimulated by the weak yen, exceeded the July 2019 pre-pandemic figure by 10.1%.”

In July, the threshold of three million tourist arrivals to the islands was surpassed for the fifth consecutive month, compared to 21.07 million foreign tourist arrivals from January to July. Tourists make money for the hospitality industry, but they also cause a lot of problems: Tokyo’s Ministry of Agriculture has blamed tourists for the depletion of strategic rice reserves.

The largest number of visitors came from China (776.5 thousand people). South Korea is in second place with 757,700 visitors, followed by Taiwan (571,700), Hong Kong (279,100), the USA (251,200), the Philippines (55,500), and Thailand (53,500).

The yen’s weakness also gave a boost to Japan’s exports, which totaled 9,600 billion yen (about $66 billion) in July, up 10.3% from the same month last year. According to Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), exports of the world’s fourth-largest economy “were mainly driven by semiconductors and automobiles and supported by yen weakness.” In particular, exports of semiconductors increased by 25.2% and automobiles by 6.2%. The weak national currency has increased yen-denominated imports, leading to a “trade deficit of 621.8 billion yen.”