42.68 million inbound visitors and 9.4559 trillion yen in spending. Japan in 2025, seen through the numbers

The Japan Tourism Agency has released its “Inbound Consumption Trends Survey” for calendar year 2025, preliminary figures.

The numbers are quite large.

Three numbers

• Spending by international visitors to Japan: 9.4559 trillion yen (up 16.4% year on year, a record high)
• Number of international visitors to Japan: 42,683,600 (2024: 36,870,148, a record high)
• Travel spending per person: 229,000 yen (+0.9%)

The number of people grew, while spending per person was almost flat. In other words, much of the growth in spending came from “an increase in people.”

From which countries?

The top 5 countries and regions by spending are China, Taiwan, the United States, Korea, and Hong Kong.

In the previous article, about half of Japan’s cosmetics exports go to China we wrote. Exports and imports today

The countries people are coming from to shop and the countries Japan is shipping to overlap quite a bit.

That means Japan is reaching the same customers both inside and outside the country.

What it means for the sales floor

Hearing conversations in languages other than Japanese in stores is no longer unusual.

However, looking at these numbers, it is too soon to immediately think, “Let’s change the format for overseas visitors” I think.

What we have seen many times in this series is that in the end, what is strong locally is also strong far away was the point.

Kagawa’s fans and Kochi’s washi paper both It was not created for the outside world, but came about as the result of continuing the work right in front of us that it is there.

Reference: Japan Tourism Agency, “Results of the Inbound Consumption Trend Survey for Calendar Year 2025 (Preliminary Report) and the October-December Quarter (First Preliminary Report),” Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO)

—The Value Village Editorial Team