Following a prolonged period of surging popularity with tourists, visitor arrivals to Japan have fallen for the first time in four years, according to new figures released by the Japan National Tourism Organization. The drop is being attributed to a massive decline in Chinese visitors as the two nations continue to exchange increasingly bitter recriminations over Taiwanese sovereignty.
While analysts are expecting measures to show a record 9.5 billion journeys undertaken over the Lunar New Year season, Chinese guests have chosen to stay away en masse from their East Asian island neighbour in January, plunging 61%. At the same time, Japan’s overall monthly arrival numbers dropped to 3.6 million visitors for the month, or 4.9% fewer visitors year-on-year.
Bilateral relations between China and Japan have soured since remarks in November 2025 by Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae, saying that a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan could pose an “existential threat” and result in Japanese troop deployment. The intervening period has seen insults bandied and even threats of beheadings, as ambassadors have been summoned.
Against this backdrop, China—a major source market usually composing around a fifth of Japanese arrivals and representing the largest share of inbound spending in 2025, at 21.2%—has discouraged its citizens from travelling to Japan. The numbers show those warnings have worked, causing flights between the countries to be wiped from schedules and over 50% of Chinese hotel bookings in Japan to be cancelled.
Some Japanese commentators have spun the figures, claiming that the whopping 61% decline in guests from China has been offset by the diversification of the Japanese market. “It’s a drop overall, but negative impacts on the number of tourists have been cushioned by an increase in those coming from other areas,” said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Research Institute, as reported by The Japan Times.
That analysis is borne out by looking at other source market arrivals. South Korean visitors to China topped the visitor rankings for January, rising 22% to hit a record 1.18 million. Visitor numbers from Taiwan increased by 17%, those from the United States rose by 14%, and Thai and Indonesian arrivals also grew.
Takeda and others have also sought to play down the effect of the political tension between the two nations, pointing out that the drop in Chinese visitors to Japan appears “more dire” due to a shift in Chinese New Year holiday dates, pushed back from January to February, making a direct year-on-year comparison of January arrivals data difficult.
The long-term impact of the political stand-off remains to be seen, but Masato Koike, senior economist at Sompo Institute Plus, has warned that a similar row in 2012 affected Japan’s arrival data for 15 months.
