Japan tourism concentrates in Kyoto

Japan’s tourism problem is no longer “too few visitors after Covid.” It’s the opposite. Japan pulled in a record 42.68 million foreign visitors in 2025, but the crowds are bunching into a surprisingly small slice of the country. The new survey making news this weekend shows just how lopsided that has become — and why Kyoto keeps ending up as the symbol of overtourism. ### What actually got measured? The survey looked at Japan’s top 100 destinations for inbound travelers and found that 72 of them were concentrated in just seven of Japan’s 47 prefectures. That’s the headline number. It turns a vague feeling — “tourists are everywhere” — into something more precise: tourists are not everywhere. They’re clustering hard in a handful of places, especially Kyoto, Hokkaido, Tokyo-adjacent resort areas, and the usual marquee stops. (straitstimes.com) ### Why does Kyoto keep coming up? Kyoto is where the imbalance becomes visible. The city has the temples, old streets, and postcard version of Japan that many first-time visitors want. The area around Kiyomizu Temple landed 12th in the ranking, and Kyoto keeps showing up in the same conversation as Niseko, Hakone, and Fuji Five Lakes — places where tourist demand is intense, photogenic, and spatially concentrated. That means the pressure is not spread evenly across a city. (mainichi.jp) It piles onto very specific neighborhoods and transit corridors. ### Is this just a Kyoto story? Not really. Kyoto is the face of it, but the pattern is national. Preliminary accommodation data for 2025 show Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Hokkaido, and Okinawa accounted for 69.7% of all foreign guest stays in Japan. Even more striking, 31 prefectures each accounted for less than 1%. So the country is breaking visitor records while huge parts of it barely register in the inbound map. (straitstimes.com) ### Why does concentration matter so much? Because crowding is not just an annoyance. In places like Kyoto, it spills into daily life — buses jam up, roads clog, trash management gets harder, and residents start feeling like their own neighborhoods have become corridors for other people’s vacations. The economic upside is real, but it lands unevenly. A weak yen and booming demand help hotels, shops, and attractions in hotspot regions, while less-visited prefectures miss much of the gain. (straitstimes.com) ### What is Kyoto doing about it? Kyoto has already shifted from talking about overtourism to actively managing it. The city has rolled out seasonal congestion measures, targeted bus responses, baggage-free travel promotion, efforts to reduce Kyoto Station overconcentration, and area-specific controls in places like Higashiyama, Arashiyama, Gion, and around Fushimi Inari. In spring 2025, Kyoto said some of those steps helped keep waits at a key Kiyomizu-bound bus stop generally within about 10 minutes, with peaks around 15. (straitstimes.com) ### Why don’t tourists just spread out on their own? Basically, travel demand follows shortcuts. First-time visitors want the names they already know. Tour operators sell what is easy to market. Social media compresses choice even further — everyone chases the same temple view, the same torii tunnel, the same lakefront Fuji shot. So even if Japan has dozens of quieter alternatives, the attention economy keeps funneling people back to the same few icons. That’s why “regional dispersion” has become the policy phrase officials keep using. (city.kyoto.lg.jp) ### What changes next? The catch is that Japan’s tourism boom probably isn’t fading on its own. Monthly JNTO data showed December 2025 was the strongest December on record, which suggests the surge carried through the year rather than peaking and cooling. So the next phase is less about attracting visitors and more about steering them — by season, by route, and by region — before the backlash in places like Kyoto gets worse. (straitstimes.com) ### Bottom line Japan has a success problem. The country is winning the global tourism race, but the map of who benefits — and who bears the strain — is badly skewed. Kyoto is where that imbalance is easiest to see. (straitstimes.com) (jnto.go.jp)