Mount Fuji Overtourism Spike
The town of Fujiyoshida, near Mount Fuji, has seen such big crowds for cherry‑blossom photo spots that officials canceled the local festival and implemented increased security and vehicle restrictions to cope. ( ) Nationally, Japan is responding to overtourism pressures with policy moves too — including plans to raise the international departure tax to 3,000 yen from July — even as blossoms hit peak near Lake Kawaguchi. ( )
A cherry-blossom festival near Mount Fuji was canceled this spring because one photo spot got too popular to manage. Fujiyoshida said the crowds at Arakurayama Sengen Park had gone beyond what the city could safely accommodate. (asahi.com) That park is the postcard shot: cherry blossoms in front, a five-story pagoda in the middle, and Mount Fuji in the background. The image spread online after the coronavirus pandemic and pushed spring visitor numbers sharply higher. (asahi.com) More than 200,000 people now come during the festival period, and more than 10,000 a day can pour into the park during the roughly two-week peak in April. People waiting to reach the viewing deck have faced lines as long as three hours. (asahi.com) The pressure did not stay inside the park gates. The Asahi Shimbun reported roads jammed with tourists, cigarette-butt litter, schoolchildren pushed off sidewalks, and cases of visitors entering nearby homes to use toilets without permission. (asahi.com) Fujiyoshida’s mayor, Shigeru Horiuchi, said residents’ “quiet lives” were being threatened behind the beautiful scenery. The city still kept crowd controls in place from April 1 to April 17, including security staff, traffic management, and temporary toilets, because officials expected visitors to come even without an official festival. (asahi.com) They were right to expect that. On April 8, Japan Guide said the cherry trees around Lake Kawaguchiko were at full bloom and likely to stay at their best into the following week, while warning that the weekend would be one of the busiest of the season. (japan-guide.com) That same report said it skipped Chureito Pagoda, the famous pagoda view near Lake Kawaguchiko, because overtourism had caused local residents “plenty of inconvenience.” In other words, the most photogenic angle of Mount Fuji had become hard to cover without adding to the problem. (japan-guide.com) The overflow is easy to see a few miles away. The Fujikawaguchiko Cherry Blossoms Festival on Lake Kawaguchiko’s north shore is running from March 28 to April 15 this year, with about 200 Somei Yoshino cherry trees along 1 kilometer of lakeside and nightly illuminations until 9 p.m. (kawaguchiko.net) Japan is now treating this as a national policy problem, not just a local headache. Focus on Travel News reported on April 9 that Japan will raise its international departure tax to 3,000 yen from 1,000 yen in July, with the money meant to help fund infrastructure and anti-congestion measures. (ftnnews.com) The government is also aiming to increase the number of regions using overtourism countermeasures from 47 in 2025 to 100 by 2030. At the same time, it is still targeting 60 million inbound visitors by 2030, up from about 42.7 million in 2025, which shows the balancing act: Japan still wants more tourists, just not all in the same handful of places at the same hour. (ftnnews.com)
