Japan welcomed 10,683,500 international visitors between January and March 2026, the first time the first quarter has ever topped 10 million, even as a diplomatic dispute with China cut off one of the country’s biggest source markets, according to Japan’s own tourism data and reporting from Travel Market News.
Key Points
- March 2026 alone brought 3,618,900 visitors, up 3.5% year-over-year and a record for the month, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
- Chinese arrivals fell 46.2% year-over-year in March, and continued sliding through the spring, down 60.4% in May, per JNTO’s own release.
- China was Japan’s second-largest source market in 2025 with 9.1 million visitors, making the drop-off significant even against Japan’s overall growth.
- Other markets picked up much of the slack: South Korea, Taiwan and India all posted double-digit growth, offsetting roughly 72% of the shortfall from China, according to Travel Market News’ analysis of JNTO figures.
The China slowdown traces back to a diplomatic flashpoint. After Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made remarks about Taiwan in November 2025, Beijing issued a travel advisory discouraging trips to Japan, and Chinese arrivals cratered in the months that followed, down roughly 45% year-over-year in December, around 61% in January, and still falling by double digits into spring. For a market that sent more than 9 million visitors to Japan the year before, that’s a steep, sustained pullback with no clear end date attached to it.
What makes Japan’s numbers notable is that the first-quarter record happened anyway. Japan closed out 2025 with 42.7 million visitors overall, itself a 15.8% jump from 2024, and the growth engine hasn’t stalled even with China largely out of the picture. South Korea and Taiwan, Japan’s closest, cheapest-to-reach markets, kept booking trips, and demand from India grew more than 30% in some months, according to JNTO’s tracking.
A historically weak yen is doing a lot of the heavy lifting behind those numbers. The currency has slid to around 162 to the U.S. dollar, near 40-year lows, making Japan unusually cheap for visitors paying in dollars, euros or won even as prices climb for locals, according to Travel Market News’ analysis. Foreign visitors spent a record ¥9.5 trillion in Japan in 2025, and the government is now leaning into new fees to manage the crowds that spending has brought, including a national departure tax that tripled to ¥3,000 in July 2026 and a Kyoto accommodation tax that now runs as high as ¥10,000 a night for luxury stays. Japan’s tourism authorities have framed the new levies as funding for crowd control and regional dispersal rather than an attempt to slow arrivals down, with an official target of 60 million visitors and ¥15 trillion in spending by 2030.
It’s worth noting the momentum has since cooled a bit: JNTO’s own May data shows overall year-to-date arrivals through May running about 1.1% behind 2025’s pace, as China’s absence finally outweighs gains elsewhere. But the first-quarter record stands regardless, and it shows a tourism economy that’s no longer dependent on any single feeder market to keep setting new highs.
