TOKYO: The number of foreign visitors to Japan in January-June is estimated to have soared about 21-fold from a year earlier to exceed 10 million, government data showed Wednesday.

In the first half of 2023, the country recorded an estimated 10,712,000 visitors from overseas, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. The figure was 64.4 pct of the level in the first half of 2019, before the spread of COVID-19.

The Japanese government’s drastic easing of its pandemic-related border control measures last autumn and subsequent lifting of those measures at the end of April this year contributed to the sharp rebound in the number of foreign visitors, especially from East Asia and the United States.

Also behind the rebound was a weaker yen, which made travel to Japan cheaper.

In June 2023 alone, the number of foreign visitors jumped 17-fold from a year before to reach 2,073,300, crossing the two million threshold for the first time since the spread of COVID-19 led to a plunge in the number of such visitors.

Separately, the Japan Tourism Agency said in a preliminary report the same day that spending by foreign visitors in Japan totaled 1,205.2 billion yen in April-June, remaining above 1 trillion yen for the second straight quarter but still down 4.9 percent from the same period of 2019.

JIJI Press