Japan Tourism Reports Record High US Visitor Arrivals

In the month of April 2023 alone, nearly 184,000 Americans visited Japan, an 8 percent increase over April 2019.

The Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) announced that American visitor arrivals to Japan increased by 3.6 percent year-to-date in 2023 over the same period (January-April) in 2019, a year that broke the record for international travel to Japan.

In the month of April 2023 alone, nearly 184,000 Americans visited Japan, an 8 percent increase over April 2019 – making the US the only Western nation (aside from its North American neighbor, Mexico, which saw a 13.1 percent increase in its visitor numbers to Japan over the same period) to experience a rise in tourism to Japan.

“We have seen an exponential increase in the interest in travel to Japan from the American market,” says Michiaki Yamada, Executive Director of the Japan National Tourism Organization in New York.

“Following the reopening of our country’s borders to international tourism in late 2022 and the lifting of all Covid-related entry restrictions this spring, the incredible pent-up demand to experience the wonders of Japan post-pandemic means that we will likely be welcoming more Americans than ever before in the months to come.”

Japan is one of the most talked about travel destinations of 2023 with the country as a whole, along with its top cities and regions, appearing on some of the most coveted “Where to Go” Lists of the year, including: the Japanese cities of Morioka and Fukuoka in the New York Times’ annual list of “52 Places to Go in 2023”; Kyoto and Nagoya featured on Time Magazine’s list of “The World’s Greatest Places of 2023”; The Washington Post named Japan on its list of “The Top Travel Destinations for 2023”; the “art islands” of Naoshima included in CNN Travel’s list of “Where to Travel in 2023: The Best Destinations to Visit”; Kyushu featured in Bloomberg Pursuits’ “Where to Go in 2023” list; Osaka named to The Daily Beast’s list of “Where to Travel in 2023”; Japan on the Reader’s Digest list of the “20 Best Places to Travel in 2023”; Japan included in the TripSavvy list of “Where to Go in 2023: The Most Exciting Destinations of the Year”; Tokyo featured on CNBC’s list of “The 7 Cities You Must Visit Before You Die”; and the list goes on.