The estimated number of foreign visitors to Japan in September increased 11.7-fold from a year earlier to 206,500, government data showed Wednesday, with the figure likely to jump in the coming months after Japan removed almost all its COVID-19 entry restrictions earlier this month.
The figure exceeded 200,000 for the first time since February 2020 but was down 90.9 percent from September in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
Visitors in the month were primarily businesspeople, technical interns and international students.
Although the government resumed accepting foreign tourists in early September on tour packages that were unaccompanied by tour guides, the number of visitors entering the country for tourism remained sluggish at 19,013.
On Oct. 11, the government removed its cap on daily arrivals and its ban on individual, non-prearranged trips to revive the country's struggling inbound tourism sector.
Tourists are no longer required to travel on package tours or obtain a visa if they are citizens of one of 68 countries and regions with which Japan had a waiver agreement before the pandemic.
The lifting of the restrictions "has a tremendous impact. The weak yen is also a tailwind." Koichi Wada, the head of the Japan Tourism Agency, said at a press conference. He expressed hope that tourist numbers are poised to make a full-fledged recovery.
The tourism ministry told parliament Wednesday that it is discussing quarantine operations with the health ministry, aiming to resume the acceptance of international cruise ships.
In September, the biggest number of foreign arrivals was from South Korea at 32,700, followed by Vietnam at 30,900, the United States at 18,000 and China at 17,600, according to the tourism organization.
Meanwhile, the number of Japanese who went overseas in September totaled 319,200. The figure was 6.1 times higher than a year earlier but an 81.8 percent drop from the same month in 2019.
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