Tourism Development in Japan

Themes, Issues and Challenges

Richard Sharpley, Kumi Kato

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367221478
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000205671
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This significant and timely volume focuses on the unique trajectory of tourism development in Japan, which has been characterized by an historical emphasis on promoting both domestic and international tourism to Japanese tourists, followed by the more recent policy of competing aggressively in the international incoming tourist market.

Initial chapters present an overview of past and present tourism, including policy and research perspectives. Thematic perspectives on tourism and specific contexts and places in which tourism occurs are then examined. Strains of Japanese tourism such as sport, surf, forest, mountain, urban, tea, pilgrimage and even whaling heritage tourism are among those analyzed. The book also explores tourism's role in confronting difficult pasts and presents, and the challenges facing the development of tourism in contemporary Japan. A short postscript outlines some of the challenges and possible future directions tourism in Japan may take in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

Written by a team of well-known editors and contributors, including academics from Japan, this volume will be of great interest to upper-students and researchers and academics in development studies, cultural studies, geography and tourism.

1Introduction

Tourism in Japan – from the past to the present

Richard Sharpley and Kumi Kato

Introduction

In 2018, Japan received almost 31.2 million international tourist arrivals (JNTO, 2019a).¹ Moreover, at the time of writing, a total of 10.98 million international arrivals had been recorded during the first four months of 2019, representing 4.4 percent growth on the same period in the previous year (JNTO, 2019b). On the one hand, such figures might appear unremarkable. Indeed, as the world’s third largest economy with highly developed international transport links and a wealth of cultural and national attractions, Japan’s tourism sector might be considered to be performing relatively unfavourably compared with other countries. For example, in 2017, the UK attracted 37.6 million international arrivals and Germany 37.4 million, whilst Thailand received 35.4 international arrivals that year (UNWTO, 2018). Moreover, worldwide international tourist arrivals increased by an estimated 6 percent in 2018, with growth of between 3 and 4 percent forecast for 2019 (UNWTO 2019).

On the other hand, when contextualized within both the recent history of Japan’s tourism sector in particular and the growth of global international tourism more generally, these figures can only be described as dramatic. As can be seen from Table 1.1, following more than 40 years of average growth reflecting the wider expansion of the international tourism sector, the annual number of international tourist arrivals in Japan over the last decade has almost quadrupled. More specifically, between 2012 and 2017 in particular, an average annual growth rate of around 28 percent was achieved. This compares with an overall increase in worldwide tourist arrivals of approximately 50 percent over the last decade and, between 2005 and 2017, an average annual growth rate of 4.2 percent (UNWTO, 2018). In short, in recent years not only has Japan significantly outperformed the global international tourism sector as a whole, but also has done so despite experiencing a more than average 18.7 percent decline in arrivals in 2009 following the global economic crisis and, most notably, a 27.8 percent decline in 2011 as a result of the east coast earthquake and tsunami, causing the

Table 1.1 Japan: international arrivals and outbound tourism 1965–2018

Year	International arrivals	Growth on previous year (%)	International tourism receipts (US$mn)	Outbound tourists	Growth on previous year (%)
1965	366,649	3.9	-	158,827	23.6
1970	854,419	40.4	-	663,467	34.6
1975	811,672	6.2	-	2,466,326	5.6
1980	1,316,632	18.3	-	3,909,333	–3.2
1985	2,327,,047	10.3	-	4,948,366	6.2
1990	3,235,860	14.1	-	10,997,431	13.8
1995	3,345,274	–3.5	4,894	15,298,125	12.7
2000	4,757,146	7.2	5,970	17,818,590	8.9
2005	6,727,926	9.6	15,554	17,403,565	3.4
2006	7,334,007	9.0	11,490	17,534,565	0.8
2007	8,346,969	13.8	12,422	17,294,935	–1.4
2008	8,350,835	0.0	13,781	15,9897,250	–7.6
2009	6,789,658	–18.7	12,537	15,445,684	–3.4
2010	8,611,175	26.8	15,356	16,637,224	7.7
2011	6,218,752	–27.8	12,533	16,994,200	2.1
2012	8,358,105	34.4	16,197	18,490,638	8.8
2013	10,363,904	24.0	16,865	17,472,748	–5.5
2014	13,413,467	29.4	20,790	16,903,351	–3.3
2015	19,737,409	47.1	27,285	16,213,766	–4.1
2016	24,039,700	21.8	33,428	17,116,420	5.6
2017	28,691,073	19.3	36,979	17,889,292	4.5
2018	31,191,856	8.7	-	18,954,026	6.0

Source: Adapted from JNTO (2019a) and Knoema (2019).

nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. In addition, in 2015, the number of international arrivals in Japan was, for the first time since 1970, greater than the number of outbound tourists, an important milestone given the country’s widely recognized policy during the 1980s of promoting outbound tourism (Soshiroda, 2005).

It should be noted that the figures for both inbound and outbound tourism remain dwarfed by the scale and value of domestic tourism in Japan (see Table 1.2). Latest figures indicate that, in 2017, total spending on domestic tourism amounted to JPY 21,113 trillion (around US$195 billion), giving continuing credence to Nelson Graburn’s observation some 35 years ago that ‘The Japanese are inveterate tourists, not only throughout much of the world but particularly within Japan itself … the country is, perhaps, the best organized in the world for mass internal travel’ (Graburn, 1983: 2).

Table 1.2 Domestic tourism in Japan 2012–2017 (millions)

	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Total trips	612.75	630.95	595.22	604.72	641.08	647.51
Overnight stays	315.55	320.42	297.34	312.99	325.66	323.33
Day trips	297.20	310.53	297.88	291.73	315.42	324.18

Source: Adapted from OECD (2018) and JTA (2018).

To return to the issue of the remarkable and rapid increase in international tourism to Japan, this has not of course occurred by accident. As discussed in more detail later in this chapter, since the late 1990s, the country has been seeking to develop what Funck and Cooper (2015: 46) refer to as a national ‘tourism culture’. Initially, this was driven by the belief that encouraging greater numbers of international visitors would help Japan to ‘fulfil its long-cherished role of fostering long-standing friendship and trust among nations’ (Funck & Cooper, 2015: 46); the 1997 ‘Welcome Plan 21’ sought to increase international arrivals to 8 million by 2007, a target which, as can be seen from Table 1.1, was achieved. More recent policies, however, focusing on transforming Japan into a ‘tourism nation’ (MLIT, 2012: 2), have succumbed to the more typical goal of increasing tourism as a means of supporting economic growth and development (Sharpley & Telfer, 2015), although they also continue to highlight the objectives of enhancing community well-being and international understanding (MLIT, 2012). Specifically, the 2016 ‘Tourism Vision to Support the Future of Japan’ (MILT, 2016) firmly places the objective of tourism policy on achieving national economic growth and regional revitalization through continuing growth in international arrivals. Hence, the 2007 ‘Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Plan’ established a target of 10 million international arrivals by 2010, although this was to be frustrated by the 2009 global economic crisis. The subsequent new ‘Tourism Nation Promotion Basic Plan’, approved in 2012, proposed targets of 18 million arrivals by 2016 and 25 million by 2020 (MLIT, 2012), both of which have since proved to be highly conservative. Hence, the 2020 target has been revised ambitiously upwards to 40 million, rising to 60 million by 2030 (MLIT, 2016; Murai, 2016).

Since 2013, the increase in tourism to Japan has been facilitated by both the implementation of policy measures and a number of external factors. For example, airline deregulation and the relaxation of visa requirements for visitors from ASEAN nations and, in particular, China, have boosted regional tourist numbers, whilst the depreciation of the Yen and the rapid growth in China’s outbound tourism have also played a significant role (Andonian et al., 2016). Consequently, not only do tourists from East Asia, specifically South Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, together currently comprise almost three quarters of Japan’s international tourism market, but China alone accounts for more than 8.3 million, or almost 27 percent, of all international tourist arrivals. As such, questions may be raised with regard to this arguably excessive dependence on regional markets as well as the viability (or indeed desirability) of hosting 60 million tourists in a country that, in popular destinations such as Kyoto, is already experiencing so-called ‘overtourism’.

Irrespective of such debates, however, the important point is that development of tourism in Japan, as well as the academic study of it, is clearly at a significant juncture. Although having welcomed international tourists in steadily growing but nevertheless, in global terms, relatively limited numbers during the latter half of the 20th century, Japanese tourism policy was primarily focused on promoting domestic and outbound tourism. Moreover, and perhaps not coincidentally, academic attention was (and to a great extent, remains) primarily concerned with understanding the motivations, behaviour and impacts of Japanese tourists travelling either domestically or overseas (e.g., Guichard-Anguis & Moon, 2009), with many studies building on the foundation provided by Graburn (1983) in his seminal anthropological study of Japanese domestic tourism. In contrast, with some notable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Tourism in Japan – from the past to the present
• 2 Tourism research on Japan – overview of major trends: Japanese and English-language materials
• 3 Urban development and tourism in Japanese cities
• 4 Transition of forest tourism policies in Japanese national forest management
• 5 A systematic review of sport tourism research in Japan
• 6 Mobilizing stoke: A genealogy of surf tourism development in Miyazaki, Japan
• 7 Japan’s mountain tourism at a crossroads: Insights from the North Japan Alps
• 8 International exchange in tea tourism: Reconceptualizing Japanese green tourism for sustainable farming communities
• 9 Pilgrimage tourism in regional communities: The case of Tanabe City and Kumano Kodo
• 10 Confronting difficult pasts: The case of ‘kamikaze’ tourism
• 11 Whaling heritage and tourism development – ‘sliced, diced and boiled down’
• 12 Debating sustainability in tourism development: Resilience, traditional knowledge and community: a post-disaster perspective
• 13 International tourists in Japan: Their increasing numbers and vulnerability to natural hazards
• 14 The expansion of peer-to-peer accommodation rentals in Japan: Issues and challenges
• Postscript
• Index