Japan seeks more visitors despite overtourism woes
Japan’s tourism chief said on Thursday that its ambitious goal of luring 60 million foreign tourists a year — more than double the current level — was well within reach, despite surging overtourism concerns.
Japan last year attracted over 25 million tourists from overseas, in part buoyed by the lifting of coronavirus pandemic-era border restrictions, from countries such as South Korea, Singapore and the United States.
Ichiro Takahashi, head of Japan’s tourism agency, acknowledged that the previously announced target of 60 million remained “tough,” but stressed it was still possible to reach.
“It is a figure that we can very much achieve by making the right efforts,” Takahashi told a briefing in the capital Tokyo.
“There are still many little-known places in Japan that are left unexplored by tourists from overseas. I believe Japan has infinite tourism resources,” Takahashi said.
Over 3 million foreign tourists visited Japan for the third consecutive month in May, government statistics released on Wednesday showed.
But the influx of tourists to Japan has reignited concerns over overtourism in recent months, with local residents complaining of their occasionally unruly behavior and etiquette breaches.
The western city of Himeji was among the latest local governments to express frustrations.
The municipality famous for Himeji Castle is mulling making the world heritage site’s admission fees for overseas tourists four times as expensive as those for local residents, local media reported.
“A wooden structure will be worn out and become more brittle after many people climb up and down,” Himeji Mayor Hideyasu Kiyomoto told Japanese media, stressing the need to “curb overtourism.”
Local citizens using the castle as a community hub shouldn’t be charged the same amount as “people who only come here once in around 10 years for sightseeing purposes,” he said.
Another flashpoint around overtourism is Mount Fuji, where a new, crowd-control gate was erected along its popular trail on Monday.
The measure followed a rare step taken last month by an exasperated Japanese town to deliberately block a view of the volcano with a large black barrier, in a bid to deter photo-hungry tourists.