Japan reports record 17.8 million tourists in first half of 2024

Tourists travel on a sightseeing boad sailing in front of the torii of Itsukushima Shrine (back), the popular tourist destination of Miyajima island in Hiroshima Prefecture on June 10, 2024. (Photo by Philip FONG / AFP)

Tokyo, Japan — Japan welcomed a million more foreign visitors in the first half of 2024 compared to pre-pandemic levels, logging a new record of 17.78 million, the national tourism organization said Friday.

The weak yen is attracting large crowds to Japan, with many tourists splashing out on everything from kimonos to knives and pricey meals.

The January-June figure beat the previous high from 2019 of 16.63 million, with the influx prompting locals at hotspots such as Kyoto and Mount Fuji to raise overtourism concerns.

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By country, South Korean visitors to Japan topped the chart at 4.4 million in the six-month period. China was second at around three million, five times as many as in the same period last year.

Visitors from Taiwan were in third place and the United States in fourth.

Over the whole of 2023, 25 million visitors came to Japan, after strict pandemic-era border restrictions were lifted.

The country has set an ambitious goal of luring 60 million tourists a year by 2030 — around double 2019’s full-year record of 31.88 million.

Last month, Ichiro Takahashi, head of the Japan National Tourism Organization, called the target “a figure that we can very much achieve by making the right efforts”.

“There are still many little-known places in Japan that are left unexplored by tourists from overseas — I believe Japan has infinite tourism resources,” he told reporters.

But some residents are fed up with unruly behavior and etiquette breaches by the tourist crowds.

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In a town near Mount Fuji in May, authorities mounted a large barrier at a popular viewing spot next to a convenience store in an attempt to deter photo-taking.

In tradition-steeped Kyoto, locals have complained of tourists harassing the city’s famed geisha, with visitors now banned from some private alleys.

And the mayor of Himeji, a city in western Japan famous for world heritage site Himeji Castle, has said authorities are considering making fees for overseas tourists four times higher than those for locals.

New crowd control measures have been put in place on the most popular hiking trail on Mount Fuji. An entry fee of 2,000 yen ($13) plus an optional donation is being charged for the Yoshida Trail, with numbers capped at 4,000 per day.