TOKYO, Feb 18 - Visitors to Japan fell 4.9% in January from the previous year to mark the first decline in four years, government data showed on Wednesday, as Chinese tourists stayed away amid simmering tensions between the two Asian nations.
Inbound visitors totalled 3.6 million last month, the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) said, falling for the first time since January 2022.
The drop was driven largely by a 61% fall in arrivals from China to 385,300. Beijing has been urging its citizens to avoid travel to Japan since November, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's parliamentary comments that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to a "survival-threatening situation" and trigger a potential military response from Tokyo.
The shift in the Lunar New Year holiday season, which fell in mid‑February this year rather than late January in 2025, also weighed on arrivals, JNTO said.
Masato Koike, senior economist at Sompo Institute Plus, said he expected the decline in Chinese visitors to persist for some time, noting that the last time bilateral relations chilled, in 2012, it took 15 months for Chinese tourist numbers to recover.
"If this situation drags on, the impact on the Japanese economy could be substantial," he said. Chinese visitors accounted for the largest share of inbound spending in 2025, at 21.2%.
South Korea remained the top source of visitors in January, jumping 22% to 1.18 million - a record for a single month and the first time any country or region surpassed the 1.1 million mark.
Visitors to Japan from other Asian countries, including Thailand and Indonesia, also increased.
Shoji Imai, who manages a kimono rental shop in Tokyo's popular Asakusa district, said the falloff in Chinese tourists was notable but that visitors from other countries were filling the void.
"We still have customers from countries like Thailand and Singapore so overall sales haven't changed much," he said.
Arrivals from Taiwan rose 17% to 694,500, while visitors from the United States grew 14% to 207,800. Hong Kong registrations fell 18% to 200,000.
Japan's inbound tourism had been climbing steadily since pandemic‑era restrictions were lifted, with monthly volumes frequently exceeding pre‑COVID levels.
(Reporting by Hina Suzuki and Kaori Kaneko, Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Anil D'Silva)
