Japan had 3.1 million international arrivals in August 2026, involving a fall of 9.6% compared to August 2021. The fall is largely attributed to a significant reduction in arrivals from China, as per estimates released by the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).
Arrivals from China dropped by 59% to around 418,000 visitors. JNTO partly blamed the fall on reduced flight services, following advice by the Chinese government to its citizens to stop traveling to Japan.
The decline occurs despite strong summer vacation travel from other international markets. August is traditionally a lower period for tourism in Japan, and cancellations due to cyclones and reductions in services have also contributed to this decline.
Many markets produced lower arrivals for the period. Arrivals from Australia went down 7.4% year on year. The arrivals from Thailand experienced a decline of 9.3%. Arrivals from Germany and the Philippines dropped by 5.5% and 11.6% respectively.
Despite the downturn in some sectors of travel, larger demand among other foreign countries lessened the fall already taken place in some areas. For example, South Korea showed one of the fastest recoveries among the markets and recorded a 28.7 percent growth of arrivals compared to the previous year, amounting to about 850,500 visitors in total for the period.
According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, the reason for such a significant growth in the number of visitors from South Korea can be attributed to several factors such as school holidays, flight capacity raised, and the sustained demand for visits to Japan. Thus, Taiwan experienced a 7.3 percent growth in the number of arrivals (around 666,000 visitors). Hong Kong market underwent a 9.4 percent growth in the number of arrivals with approximately 247,300 visitors.
All in all, 14 countries revealed record-high numbers for August. Among the countries which benefited from a considerable growth are Malaysia, India, the USA, Mexico, and France.
Italy and Spain reached their peak in arrivals. As to Italy, it demonstrated a 15.1 percent growth in arrivals with approximately 47,300 visitors, while Spain recorded a 14.1 percent increase with 36,500 trips made by the citizens of Spain.
According to JNTO, the yen’s overall weak performance against various foreign currencies during the period till August has positively impacted travel demand. Since a weaker yen implies that many expenses for tourists, like lodging, food, shopping, etc., become affordable to travelers with stronger currencies, this currency trend helps stimulate tourism.
However, long journey times from Europe remain one of the challenges. Due to route modifications caused by the war in Ukraine, travel times on certain routes have increased and might negatively affect future demand.
In August, inbound international travel to Japan decreased; however, outbound travel was weak too. Approximately 1.59 million Japanese travelers went abroad, which represents a decrease of 3.6 percent compared to August 2025.
These values prove how Japan’s tourism may fluctuate according to different source markets, flight availability, travel warnings or advisories, changes in weather, or fluctuations in currency.
