An increasing number of cruise ships are visiting Tokyo as tourism rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, with a docking facility in the capital operating at full capacity after years of limited service to avoid spread of the novel coronavirus.
The Tokyo International Cruise Terminal on Tokyo Bay will have 11 visits by cruise ships, including the Queen Elizabeth of Britain, by the end of this month, up from 10 a year ago, and 13 visits in April, up from nine, according to the Tokyo metropolitan government.
First opened in September 2020, the terminal in the Daiba seaside area did not host any foreign cruise ships until March 2023 due to the pandemic. Only a limited number of domestic tourism ships used the facility in 2021 and 2022.
A total of 49 cruise ship calls were logged at the pier in 2023, according to a website of the metropolitan government's port and harbor bureau, with this year's combined figures for just March and April reaching nearly half that level. It also shows seven visits planned for May, up from six a year earlier.
After the Japanese capital was selected in 2013 as the host of the Olympics and Paralympics initially planned for the summer of 2020, the city's government launched a 39 billion yen ($260 million) project to build a cruise ship terminal able to accommodate vessels with the world's largest displacements of over 200,000 tons.
Previously, many cruise ships went to a pier in Tokyo's Harumi area requiring passage under the Rainbow Bridge. But as the size of such vessels increased amid a global trend of carrying more passengers at lower fares, some ships became too big for the bridge's 52-meter clearance.
Construction for the new terminal in the nearby Daiba area, accessible for ships without passing under the bridge, began in 2015 and was completed in June 2020. The facility officially opened three months later, at a time when Japanese transport authorities had already stopped accepting foreign cruise ships due to the pandemic.
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