The Japanese tourist industry has taken a huge hit from March 11's Great East Japan Earthquake. Continuing aftershocks and the nuclear power plant crisis in Fukushima Prefecture have scared away many foreigners, delivering a blow to the government's drive to make Japan a major international tourist destination.
The Japanese tourist industry has taken a huge hit from March 11's Great East Japan Earthquake. Continuing aftershocks and the nuclear power plant crisis in Fukushima Prefecture have scared away many foreigners, delivering a blow to the government's drive to make Japan a major international tourist destination.
The number of foreigners who visited Japan in March plunged by 50.3 percent from a year earlier to an estimated 352,800, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).
It was the biggest drop in history of the number of foreign visitors, surpassing the 41.8-percent drop recorded in August 1971, which was largely the result of a surge the previous year due to the Japan World Exposition held in Osaka Prefecture.
The earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis have created the impression that it is risky to be in Japan right now, driving away foreign tourists and causing many international conferences to be canceled.
Many popular tourist destinations are plagued with empty parking lots and few visitors. Among them is Owakudani, a volcanic valley in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, shrouded in white steam billowing from active sulfur vents scattered among lava formations and bubbling hot springs. The area is known for its scenic views of Mount Fuji and is visited by hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists every year.
But on April 13, there were only about 40 cars in a parking lot that can accommodate 150.
"Tourists are beginning to come back, but they are all Japanese," said a worker at the parking facility. There were few shoppers in the souvenir shop, selling items popular with visitors from abroad, such as "manekineko" or beckoning cats.
In March, the tourist center at the Hakone-Yumoto station was visited by 446 groups of foreign tourists--down 70 percent from the same month last year.
The town office of the hot spring resort of Hakone has been making ardent efforts to attract foreign tourists. Officials have visited many overseas travel agents with hotel owners and other executives in the local tourist industry in a promotion campaign.
"Our efforts to increase foreign visitors were just beginning to pay off (before the disaster)," said Shigeru Osada, of the municipal government's tourist section.
Hato Bus Co., Tokyo's leading sightseeing bus service, is also experiencing hard times. The number of foreign passengers has plummeted to around five per day from about 200 before the March 11 earthquake.
The fallout has spread far beyond eastern Japan.
Shima Spain Village, a Spanish theme park in Mie Prefecture, had hoped to increase the number of foreign visitors significantly from last year's 1,000. That was before March 11. Reservations by foreign travelers have been canceled and no new bookings have been made since the magnitude-9.0 earthquake.
At Universal Studios Japan, the number of visitors from other Asian countries, who account for nearly 10 percent of its visitors, has plummeted.
"There are no signs of recovery yet," said a public relations official at the theme park in Osaka.
Even Kyushu, 1,000 kilometers from the quake-hit areas, is feeling the pinch of the disaster.
At Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, featuring a traditional Dutch townscape, more than 90 percent of the hotel bookings by foreigners have been canceled. The cancellations have been apparently prompted by overseas media reports about radiation leaks from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The trend is threatening to derail the central government's plan to promote tourism as part of its strategy for economic growth. The government has set an ambitious goal of attracting 30 million foreign visitors per year, up sharply from a record 8.61 million last year.
"Foreign tourists will continue avoiding Japan until various international institutions declare Japan to be a safe place to visit," said Toshiya Miyazaki, researcher at Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc. "Trying to spread information about the safety of visiting Japan through foreigners' blogs and word-of-mouth network would be more effective for the time being than any announcement by the government."
In March, the number of foreign visitors to Japan fell below 400,000 for the first time since June 2003 during the SARS epidemic, according to JNTO.
The events of March 11 have crushed the recovery of the nation's international tourism industry from the slump set off by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.
After the Great Hanshin Earthquake in January 1995, Japan saw a far more moderate decline of 6.3 percent in the number of visitors in February of the same year. Despite a confluence of negative factors in 1995 such as the Kobe earthquake, the sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March and the yen's rise, the number of foreign travelers to Japan returned to year-earlier levels in 10 months.
Since March 11, tourists from South Korea declined 47.4 percent to 89,100, while those from mainland China fell by 49.3 percent to 62,500. Visitors from Taiwan plunged 53 percent, to 42,100.
But Asian tourists are not alone in staying away from Japan. The number of U.S. visitors to Japan dropped by 45.6 percent to 38,900.
Many industry observers blame the trend on the radiation scare.
"Foreign tourists will not return until concerns about radiation disappear," said an official at a major travel agency.
The central government will have to review its strategy for promoting tourism as a means to revitalize local economies as well as its goal of attracting 30 million tourists a year from abroad.
Many international conferences scheduled to be held in Japan have been canceled since March 11. The principal reason is fear of radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but the effects are being felt nationwide.
The International Association for the Study of Pain decided to move the venue for its 14th World Congress on Pain for 2012 from the Pacifico Yokohama convention complex to Italy. Some 2,000 doctors and other experts from around the world were expected to attend the Yokohama conference.
An official at the complex's sales promotion section said, "I wish they would have made the decision concerning the conference next year after watching the situation for a while more because it will be held next year. There is no conceivable reason for the change other than anxiety about radiation."
The Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society is also considering a change of venue for its conference to be held at the Pacifico Yokohama in September.
Two international medical conferences that were due to be held in Kobe this autumn have been canceled.
Some 30 international conferences to be held in Japan have been canceled, according to the tourism agency. The number of cancellations are likely to increase in coming months, the agency predicts.
(This article was compiled from reports by Masaki Hashida, Hisashi Naito, Takuya Sumikawa and Tatsuro Sakata.)