Kyoto wants Japan travel to open quicker and foreign tourists to return, though not everyone yearns to see the masses again
- Kyoto needs the overseas visitors it had grown weary of back; some blame Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for not doing enough to reopen travel
- The city government plans to alleviate future overcrowding by attracting visitors at different times of day, out of season and to relatively unknown attractions
Once weary of hordes of foreign tourists crowding its narrow streets and ignoring etiquette, many in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto are longing for their return, missing the revenue they brought before the country largely shut its doors to overseas visitors two years ago due to the pandemic.
That includes Shoei Murayama, a former city assemblyman and author of the 2019 book The Day Kyoto Collapses From Overtourism, in which he warned that the travel industry would push out local businesses and residents.
“At long last they’re able to come back,” he said in an interview at his offices in late June. “Kyoto people have realised over the past two years that it’s tourists who were keeping them going. People’s view of tourism has changed a little.”
Although Japanese citizens made up more than 80 per cent of the 50 million visitors to Kyoto in 2019, the lack of foreign tourists still dealt a hefty blow to Kyoto, which has a population of 1.45 million.