It’s official: 2025 was a record year for tourism. Not in Hawaiʻi, but in Japan.
So far, 2026 is turning out to be a slightly different story.
Nearly 43 million foreign visitors came to Japan last year — and they spent about $60 billion.
Both figures were up more than 15% from 2024 — which was the previous record-setting year.
But there’s also a note of caution in the figures released by the government this week.
In December, visitors from China plunged by nearly half from a year earlier.
It was in November that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could provoke a military response from Japan.
Soon after, China’s government discouraged travel to Japan — and the impact has lingered.
China has long been the largest source of overseas visitors to Japan—but that changed by the time the year-end totals came out.
For the full year of 2025, South Korea took the top spot, followed by China, then Taiwan and the United States.
As for this year, Japan’s largest travel agency is predicting a small decline in overall visitor arrivals — based entirely on the Chinese market.
But JTB expects overall visitor spending will increase again this year — because visitors from Europe, the United States and Australia will increase in numbers, stay a little longer, and pay a little more.
