Foreign Visitors to Japan Exceed 10 mil. in 1st Half of 2023

Jiji Press

9:00 JST, July 20, 2023

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — The number of foreign visitors in January-June is estimated to have soared about 21-fold from a year earlier to exceed 10 million, government data showed Wednesday.

In the first half of 2023, the country recorded an estimated 10,712,000 visitors from overseas, according to the National Tourism Organization. The figure was 64.4% of the level in the first half of 2019, before the spread of COVID-19.

The government’s drastic easing of its pandemic-related border control measures last autumn and subsequent lifting of those measures at the end of April this year contributed to the sharp rebound in the number of foreign visitors, especially from East Asia and the United States. Also behind the rebound was a weaker yen, which made travel to Japan cheaper.