Tourism in Japan is a major industry and contributor to the Japanese economy. In 2024, the total number of domestic tourists in Japan, including day trips, reached 540 million, while the number of international tourists visiting Japan was 36.87 million.[1][2] Total tourism consumption within Japan amounted to 34.3 trillion yen ($237 billion),[2] accounting for 5.6% of the country’s GDP of 609 trillion yen ($4,208 billion).[3] Of this amount, Japanese tourists spent 26.2 trillion yen ($181 billion) domestically, while foreign tourists contributed 8.1 trillion yen ($56 billion).[2] From a statistical perspective, spending by international tourists in Japan is classified as exports. As a result, the inbound tourism industry ranks as the second-largest export industry after the automobile industry, which recorded 17.7 trillion yen ($122 billion) in export value.[4] In that year, domestic tourism spending by Japanese nationals, the number of international tourists, and the total tourism spending by international visitors all reached record highs.[2]
In 2025, the number of international tourists is expected to exceed 40 million, and their total spending is projected to surpass 10 trillion yen ($69 billion), both representing all-time highs.[5]
The 2024Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report ranked Japan 3rd out of 141 countries overall, which was the highest in Asia. Japan gained relatively high scores in almost all of the featured aspects, such as health and hygiene, safety and security, cultural resources and business travel.[6]
In medieval Japan, travel became increasingly common with cultural and aristocratic figures from Kyoto, and they initiated the genre of travel literature in Japan. Notable examples of travel literature from this period include the Tosa Nikki (935), part of the Sarashina Nikki (12th century), and the volume 4 of the Tohazugatari (1313).[7] By the late medieval period, supported by a network of inns offering fixed-rate lodging and meals, travel was widespread. Hot springs such as Kusatsu, Arima, and Gero gained fame, attracting notable figures such as warriors and monks. Tourist souvenirs including ladles and toothpicks were popular among visitors. Pilgrimages to Mount Fuji also flourished.[8]
Travelling was popularised through travel literature and ukiyo-e
During the Edo period, despite restrictions on travelling through checkpoints, guidebooks facilitated the popularisation of travel. Commoners with permits could undertake leisure trips, often disguised as pilgrimages. Inns, teahouses, and local products thrived, and travel information spread via diaries and ukiyo-e prints. Pilgrimages such as the Ise Grand Shrine’s Okage Mairi became major social phenomena, marking the beginnings of a modern tourism industry. However, foreign travel was extremely rare due to Japan's isolation policy. Matsuo Bashō's 1689 trip to the then "far north" of Japan, which inspired his famous haibun work Oku no Hosomichi, occurred not long after Hayashi Razan categorized the Three Views of Japan in 1643. During this time, Japan was a closed country to foreigners, so no foreign tourism existed in Japan.
Japan opened its borders in the late Edo period, but due to its location in the Far East and the limited transport options, there were not many foreign visitors. Foreigners eventually gained the freedom to travel within Japan, and efforts to actively attract international tourists began on the Japanese side. In 1912, the Japan Travel Bureau (JTB) was established. Another major milestone in the development of the tourism industry in Japan was the 1907 passage of the Hotel Development Law, as a result of which the Railways Ministry began to construct publicly owned hotels throughout Japan.[9] During the interwar period, overseas travel to distant places such as Europe and the Americas was primarily limited to businesspeople, immigrants, and students, with leisure travel being mostly reserved for the wealthy.
In terms of domestic tourism, the dismantling of the feudal system, the development of transport networks such as railways and steamships, and the spread of information made domestic travel easier. Tourism-oriented travel became increasingly popular, and regions across Japan began developing themselves for sightseeing and leisure purposes. Long-distance domestic travel became accessible.
In 1930, the Japanese Government Railways created the Board of Tourist Industry (国際観光局, Kokusai Kankō Kyoku) with the specific goal of attracting foreign tourists to Japan. In addition to supporting the development of resort hotels, the Board was responsible for designing and printing posters and foreign-language guidebooks for distribution overseas.[10] Due to the Pacific War, the Board was abolished in 1942.
Postwar period
During the postwar Allied occupation period, most foreign tourists in Japan were GHQ personnel or visitors from the United States. In 1954, Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, contributed an article titled The Case for a Tourism-Oriented Nation to the Bungei Shunju. Matsushita argued that tourism could be considered a form of trade, and he pointed out that while exporting goods involves depleting Japan's resources, scenic attractions such as Mount Fuji and the Seto Inland Sea remain unchanged no matter how often they are viewed. He proposed that revenue earned through inbound tourism could be reinvested in other industries, and help rebuild the country's economy beyond its pre-war stature.[11]
The Visit Japan campaign, launched by the Koizumi administration in 2003 with the catchphrase 'Yokoso! Japan!', was the country's first government-backed initiative to promote inbound tourism.
For much of post-war period, Japan has been an exceptionally unattractive tourist destination for its population and GDP size. From 1995 to 2014, Japan was by far the least visited G7 country, and typically ranked below smaller countries like Sweden in total numbers[12][13] As of 2013, Japan was one of the least visited countries in the OECD on a per capita basis.[14] Japan avoided campaigns to attract inbound tourists, especially because its large current account surplus had caused international friction with some countries. There were also factors such as Japan being the world's most expensive countries at the time (for example, Tokyo was rated by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the most expensive city in the world for 14 years in a row ending in 2006), as well as the language barrier.[15]
Active promotion of inbound tourism (21st century)
From 2013, under the Abe administration, policies to attract international tourists were implemented to offset the shrinking domestic demand caused by population decline and ageing. As a result, by 2014, for the first time in 55 years, income from foreign tourists exceeded the amount spent by Japanese tourists abroad, which means Japan finally ran a tourism surplus. Within six years, the number of international visitors has more than tripled, reaching 31.9 million visitors in 2019.[16] Japan received a record 36.87 million tourist arrivals in 2024, an increase of over 47% from the year prior.[2]
Current status
Domestic tourism remains a vital part of Japanese economy and Japanese culture. Across the nation, Japanese children in many middle schools see the highlight of their years as a visit to Tokyo Tower, Yomiuriland, Tokyo Disneyland, Sensō-ji, and/or Tokyo Skytree, and many high school students often visit Okinawa or Hokkaido. The extensive rail network together with domestic flights sometimes in planes with modifications to favor the relatively short distances involved in intra-Japan travel allows efficient and speedy transport. International tourism plays a smaller role in the Japanese economy compared to other developed countries; in 2013, international tourist receipts was 0.3% of Japan's GDP, while the corresponding figure was 1.3% for the United States and 2.3% for France. In 2019, the value was up to 1.0% of GDP, driven by an increase in international tourism, while the country's GDP has remained stable.[17][18]
Tourists from South Korea have made up the largest number of inbound tourists several times in the past. In 2010, their 2.4million arrivals made up 27% of the tourists visiting Japan.[19] Travelers from China have been the highest spenders in Japan by country, spending an estimated 196.4billion yen (US$2.4billion) in 2011, or almost a quarter of total expenditure by foreign visitors, according to data from the Japan Tourism Agency.[20] From 2016 to 2020, Japanese government hoped to receive 40 million foreign tourists every year by 2020.[21] According to the Japan National Tourism Organization in 2017, 3 out of 4 foreign tourists came from other parts of East Asia, namely South Korea, mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.[22]
Following the easing of COVID-19-era travel restrictions, 2024 is on track to be a record-breaking year for the number of overseas tourists.[26] This tourism boom can be attributed in part to the weakening Japanese yen.[26] The unprecedented number of foreign tourists has led to claims that some parts of Japan are suffering from overtourism.[26][27]
In response to this surge, officials in some parts of Japan have introduced measures to counter its negative effects. For example, Yamanashi Prefecture has set a cap of daily climbers of Mount Fuji at 4,000 people and began charging an entrance fee of ¥2,000.[27] Also in Yamanashi Prefecture, a mesh barrier was set up to block a view of Mount Fuji behind a Lawson convenience store in Fujikawaguchiko due to tourist-caused disturbances in the area.[28]
As of 2024, some Japanese officials have considered instituting a two-tiered pricing system which would have foreign tourists pay more than residents at certain tourist attractions in order to counter the effects of overtourism.[29][30]
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (October 2013)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,291 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:日本の観光地]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|日本の観光地}} to the talk page.
Graburn, Nelson HH. "The past in the present in Japan: nostalgia and neo-traditionalism in contemporary Japanese domestic tourism." in Change in tourism: people, places, processes (1995): 47–70.
Henderson, Joan Catherine. "Destination development: Trends in Japan's inbound tourism." International Journal of Tourism Research 19.1 (2017): 89–98. online
Ishimori, Shûzô. "Popularization and commercialization of tourism in early modern Japan." Senri Ethnological Studies 26 (1989): 179–194. online
Jimura, Takamitsu. Cultural heritage and tourism in Japan (Routledge, 2021) online.
McOmie, William, ed. Foreign Images and Experiences of Japan: 1: First Century AD-1841. (Brill, 2021). online
March, Roger. "How Japan solicited the West: the first hundred years of modern Japanese tourism." in CAUTHE 2007: Tourism-Past Achievements, Future Challenges (2007): 843–52. online
Robertson, Jennifer. "Hegemonic nostalgia, tourism, and nation-making in Japan." Senri ethnological studies 38 (1995): 89–103. online
Soshiroda, Akira. "Inbound tourism policies in Japan from 1859 to 2003." Annals of Tourism Research 32.4 (2005): 1100–1120.
Takeuchi, Keiichi. "Some remarks on the geography of tourism in Japan." GeoJournal (1984): 85–90. online
Tokuhisa, Tamao. "Tourism within, from and to Japan." International Social Science Journal 32.1 (1980): 128–150.
Uzama, Austin. "Yokoso! Japan: Classifying foreign tourists to Japan for market segmentation." Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management 21.2 (2012): 132–154.
Yanagi, Miyuki. "Reconsideration of Japan's tourism innovation characteristics." Geographical Research Bulletin 2 (2023): 29–38. online
Yasuda, Hiroko. "World heritage and cultural tourism in Japan." International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 4.4 (2010): 366–375.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
