The number of foreign visitors to Japan remained significantly suppressed in September, with the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) revealing just 17,700 arrivals for the month.
September’s figure represents a 99.2% decline over the same month in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Due to the spread of COVID-19, since the end of January 2020, many countries have taken measures to curtail overseas travel and Japan has made quarantine even stricter and invalidated visas. Due to the changing situation of the pandemic, these measures in both Japan and abroad have been repeatedly eased and reinstated. Japan continues to prevent new entrants to the country, suspending operation of the business track and residence track for international arrivals and enhancing quarantine measures to prevent the spread of new variants of the virus. This inevitably keeps the number of foreign visitors to Japan at a very low level.
There have been some steps forward however, with Japan this month reducing the quarantine period for fully vaccinated individuals entering the country from 14 days to 10 days.
September’s visitation included 4,000 arrivals from China, 2,200 from South Korea, 1,700 from the United States and 1,000 from Vietnam. For the period from January to September 2021 combined there were 33,000 arrivals from China, 23,400 from Vietnam and 15,700 from the US.