Has Japan’s tourism peaked? Row with China set to slow arrivals from record high

Japan welcomed a record 42.7 million foreign visitors in 2025, fuelled by a weak yen that made it one of the world’s cheapest major tourist destinations, but the boom may already have peaked.The number is expected to decline this year amid a political row between Japan and China, and staff shortages in the tourism sector, according to industry forecasts, potentially complicating the government’s ambition to attract 60 million overseas visitors by 2030.In comparison, 31.9 million tourists visited Japan in 2019, the last year before global travel collapsed during the coronavirus pandemic.Foreign visitor arrivals rose by 15.8 per cent last year, according to statistics released this week by the Japan-national-tourism-organisation" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="14815" data-entity-type="organization">Japan National Tourism Organisation. The single most important factor supporting the growth was the weak yen, which made Japan affordable even for travellers from less well-off countries.South Korea topped the list last year with 9.5 million arrivals, up 7.3 per cent, followed by 9.1 million from mainland China, a rise of 30.3 per cent.The number of visitors from Taiwan rose by 12 per cent to 6.8 million, while arrivals from the United States increased by 21.4 per cent to 3.3 million.