Related, Japan is holding a general election on Sunday, with the current prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, using overtourism as a campaign point. From what I saw, she is something like an interim...
A Japanese cherry blossom festival near Mount Fuji has been cancelled after officials cited a rise in disruptive tourist behaviour.
On Tuesday, officials in the central Japanese city of Fujiyoshida announced they would no longer host the Arakurayama Sengen park cherry blossom festival this year. The weeks-long event has been held for the past decade and attracts about 200,000 tourists annually.
Authorities cited repeated incidents of disruptive behaviour from tourists in the city, which lies to the west of Tokyo. In addition to “opening private home doors without permission to use the restroom,” officials reported “trespassing, littering,” and tourists “defecating in private yards and raising a fuss when residents pointed this out,” the city said.
Parents have also raised concerns about children being pushed aside on school routes as tourists crowd sidewalks, city officials said, according to Kyodo News.
Related, Japan is holding a general election on Sunday, with the current prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, using overtourism as a campaign point. From what I saw, she is something like an interim prime minister, who got the position without being elected by the general population, and that's part of why they're holding a general election so soon after she became PM. Apparently, she is polling very well, and the general election gives her party a chance to win additional seats in the legislature
They're being very classy and not naming names. But honestly this kind of uncivilized behaviour needs to be called out and internationally ridiculed. Not cool. i was going to link the many, many...
They're being very classy and not naming names. But honestly this kind of uncivilized behaviour needs to be called out and internationally ridiculed. Not cool.
i was going to link the many, many bad tourist news articles I've heard about but decided against it. just brings everyone down.
I hope the Japanese people do what they need to do to protect their neighbourhoods, even if it will make it harder for me to visit....
A lot of it is also just populist bullshit to drum up the xenophobia. People aren't actually kicking deer at Narita park. Besides tourists, there are various diaspora that catch their particular...
A lot of it is also just populist bullshit to drum up the xenophobia. People aren't actually kicking deer at Narita park.
Besides tourists, there are various diaspora that catch their particular ire whose existence constitutes 0,3% or less of the total population.
Japanese xenophobia should show the rest of the world how futile and pointless the rhetoric actually is. There is no shot the 0,1% migrant population of Tokyo is to blame for the problems in Japan, but these political parties sure make it look like it is.
Cpt, we have video of the guy kicking deer. This isn't just nationalistic xenophobia and political platform even if that is true -- I can read 小紅書 for myself and see people cheering on hate...
Cpt, we have video of the guy kicking deer. This isn't just nationalistic xenophobia and political platform even if that is true -- I can read 小紅書 for myself and see people cheering on hate towards Japan, which is encouraged by the Communist Chinese regime, and I can see for myself tour groups that boast poaching young cicadas or ocean animals. I didn't want to list a bunch of other literal shit but it's real, people going to Japan spitting in their streets shouting 我們的 ("this is ours") like some kind of moon flag planting pride.
Is everything perfect in Japan? No. But are 2010s-2020s tourists becoming a huge problem that they didn't have for decades before, if only due to sheer volume? Yes.
Edit deer vid -- I would love it if someone can confirm this is fake rage farm content thanks
Edit edit: japanalysis talks about it at around 12:00 -- the 2024 incident is real but the nationality is not known, or possibly a local
Most of the deer videos are either fake or are the nationality is not identifiable: https://youtu.be/uQ5u16NUKMU?si=ziulJdF8F6uL_YVj Not to mention that the law of averages applies. There was a...
Is this Japan’s version of “They’re eating the dogs!”? I have to wonder if this is just a general reaction to the rest of the world’s greater tolerance for chaos. If the same effects of tourism...
Is this Japan’s version of “They’re eating the dogs!”?
I have to wonder if this is just a general reaction to the rest of the world’s greater tolerance for chaos. If the same effects of tourism were seen in America (and whatever’s actually being done by tourists in Japan is certainly done by tourists and residents alike here) we would ignore it or handle it while accepting it’s an inevitability.
No, it's pretty much "they're eating the dogs". Conservative parties are using the same playbook to drum up support. Other examples include San Seito (the extreme conservatives / professional...
No, it's pretty much "they're eating the dogs". Conservative parties are using the same playbook to drum up support.
Other examples include San Seito (the extreme conservatives / professional trolls) making a huge part of their campaign.. the KURDISH population in Japan. You didn't know there were Kurds in Japan? Yeah, well, there's a whopping 2,000 Kurds living in Japan, yet there's enough political drama on them to have a whole wikipedia page on it.
That's pretty much how all law enforcement works, yes. This isn't unique, it's just easier than ever to pretend it is. What's important isn't 0% crime rates, it's as close to 100% accountability...
If the same effects of tourism were seen in America, we would ignore it or handle it while accepting it’s an inevitability.
That's pretty much how all law enforcement works, yes. This isn't unique, it's just easier than ever to pretend it is.
What's important isn't 0% crime rates, it's as close to 100% accountability as possible when crimes do happen. Amplifying it as a "war on [insert interest here]" is a purely political stance often used to distract from proper accountability on real issues.
Tourists, overpopulation or immigrants are being blamed for all the ills of today’s world. We see this theme before, in Europe, America (continent, not just a country) and no surprise now in Asia....
Tourists, overpopulation or immigrants are being blamed for all the ills of today’s world. We see this theme before, in Europe, America (continent, not just a country) and no surprise now in Asia. The solution is simple, tax tourists, limit tourists or completely close it. To my simple brain the problem isn’t tourists, overpopulation, or immigration- it’s the economic pressures. No surprise that politicians are filling that void with panphobia. From what I understand of the article is that they want whoever is creating this chaos to be properly dealt with but overreacting with full blown stopping all to me is being created by people who would benefit from it. Follow the money and you will get to the bottom of this scam.
I think you hit the jackpot: economic pressures. Average people are getting squeezed hard by wage suppression, inflation and rising housing/utilities/insurance costs. So some politicians, instead...
I think you hit the jackpot: economic pressures. Average people are getting squeezed hard by wage suppression, inflation and rising housing/utilities/insurance costs. So some politicians, instead of fixing anything, fan the flames of hatred to make outside groups the scapegoat. It's working for some in Canada, it seems to be working for Sanae Takaichi, it's working for Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and many others.
I'm glad that some of the tourist hate is fanned by politics, because it means not that many tourists are being jerks. But I will standby my original comment that this isn't just Japan being xenophobic. There's a lot of finger pointing and hate to go around for everyone. I will try to watch my own outrage a bit more and contribute less to it, going forward.
Still. Even if all tourists are perfectly well behaving, it can feel annoying having the population of your town double with visitors and everywhere you go things are crazy crowded.
You're falling for the 2024 American election rhetoric all over again. Yes there's always some disorder. But social media capturing and amplifying it to make it seem like this is a "crisis" is the...
But I will standby my original comment that this isn't just Japan being xenophobic.
You're falling for the 2024 American election rhetoric all over again. Yes there's always some disorder. But social media capturing and amplifying it to make it seem like this is a "crisis" is the exactly what they want. Watch national elections in japan pass and suddenly there's less "disorderly conduct" (aka, the ad cycle is done and they can lay off the coffers).
Even if all tourists are perfectly well behaving, it can feel annoying having the population of your town double with visitors and everywhere you go things are crazy crowded.
why? new people are cool if they aren't disorderly. It stimulates the economy, gives new people to talk to, expereinces to hear about, and overall builds confidence in a town (as someone who lived in quite a few dying areas).
To repeat, Japan has about 0.2% non-japanese people, in a country of 300 million. That's already dream goal for the most xenophobic countries. 6 million non-citizens spread across the landmass of roughly California is not going to suddenly make your favorite bar or cafe too crowded to go to. It may even build up more.
even if it hit 0% somewhere, it's not going to fix any actual issues Japan or any other country has. It just means they will have one less distraction, or worse: will need to generate a distraction. Some visitor is not the one laying me off, making housing go through the roof, nor making my life actively worse. Why would I point a finger at them.
There's definitely some level of xenophobia involved and some of the issues and claims are likely exaggerated, but there have been some problems with tourists misbehaving in Japan. In 2024, Kyoto...
There's definitely some level of xenophobia involved and some of the issues and claims are likely exaggerated, but there have been some problems with tourists misbehaving in Japan. In 2024, Kyoto banned tourists from most of the Gion district due to overcrowding and harassing geisha. I first learned about it from a video around the time the ban was enacted, and it had a clip of someone getting right in a geisha's face with their phone. Even without taking into account cultural differences and customs, that level of disregard for personal space would be frowned upon everywhere.
The fact is, everywhere you go, there's always some subset of tourists that are incredibly entitled. This is true of literally everywhere (see: all the news stories about tourists defacing or damaging landmarks), but I can imagine Japan having even more problems with that than other places given the popularity of anime and manga. There are people who genuinely fetishize Japanese culture in a way other countries just don't have to deal with. I suspect many of the most problematic visitors are "influencers" traveling there to make content, since they can already be some of the most entitled people on the planet.
I do wonder if the pandemic has made these sorts of issues stand out even more, though. They got to see a largely tourist-free Japan for a bit, and it took a while for tourism to return to pre-pandemic levels. So that would make all the problems that typically accompany tourism feel even more glaring and noticeable.
For Japan specifically, from what I've gathered (and seen to some degree during recent visits) the overcrowding issue could be diminished greatly if tourists just spread out a bit. For some reason...
For Japan specifically, from what I've gathered (and seen to some degree during recent visits) the overcrowding issue could be diminished greatly if tourists just spread out a bit. For some reason or another (social media maybe?) the overwhelming majority of tourists all hit the same handful of hotspots like Kyoto, Nara, Akihabara, Shinjuku, Harajuku, etc while barely touching the rest of the country.
While walking around in Tokyo I personally observed that in the areas between the big stations, it becomes rare to see foreigners at all. I can only imagine that the effect is magnified further out from the hotspots.
I'd say it's 70% social media and 30% language barrier. You go outside the hotspots and you receive zero help in terms of navigating Japan. On top of seeing some of the most blatant xenophobia...
I'd say it's 70% social media and 30% language barrier. You go outside the hotspots and you receive zero help in terms of navigating Japan. On top of seeing some of the most blatant xenophobia from smaller towns that want nothing to do with you.
Facilitating the former is a large undertaking, and the latter is an even larger cultural issue that ultimatley needs to be spearheaded by the former. But Japan isn't exactly in the best position to work on that even if they wanted to.
Related, Japan is holding a general election on Sunday, with the current prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, using overtourism as a campaign point. From what I saw, she is something like an interim prime minister, who got the position without being elected by the general population, and that's part of why they're holding a general election so soon after she became PM. Apparently, she is polling very well, and the general election gives her party a chance to win additional seats in the legislature
They're being very classy and not naming names. But honestly this kind of uncivilized behaviour needs to be called out and internationally ridiculed. Not cool.
i was going to link the many, many bad tourist news articles I've heard about but decided against it. just brings everyone down.
I hope the Japanese people do what they need to do to protect their neighbourhoods, even if it will make it harder for me to visit....
A lot of it is also just populist bullshit to drum up the xenophobia. People aren't actually kicking deer at Narita park.
Besides tourists, there are various diaspora that catch their particular ire whose existence constitutes 0,3% or less of the total population.
Japanese xenophobia should show the rest of the world how futile and pointless the rhetoric actually is. There is no shot the 0,1% migrant population of Tokyo is to blame for the problems in Japan, but these political parties sure make it look like it is.
Cpt, we have video of the guy kicking deer. This isn't just nationalistic xenophobia and political platform even if that is true -- I can read 小紅書 for myself and see people cheering on hate towards Japan, which is encouraged by the Communist Chinese regime, and I can see for myself tour groups that boast poaching young cicadas or ocean animals. I didn't want to list a bunch of other literal shit but it's real, people going to Japan spitting in their streets shouting 我們的 ("this is ours") like some kind of moon flag planting pride.
Is everything perfect in Japan? No. But are 2010s-2020s tourists becoming a huge problem that they didn't have for decades before, if only due to sheer volume? Yes.
Edit deer vid -- I would love it if someone can confirm this is fake rage farm content thanks
Edit edit: japanalysis talks about it at around 12:00 -- the 2024 incident is real but the nationality is not known, or possibly a local
https://youtube.com/shorts/W9RcbzrGRJg?si=-KnLm-bm3YCzn-3N
Most of the deer videos are either fake or are the nationality is not identifiable: https://youtu.be/uQ5u16NUKMU?si=ziulJdF8F6uL_YVj
Not to mention that the law of averages applies. There was a Japanese tourist who peed in the Ganges and was arrested.
Is this Japan’s version of “They’re eating the dogs!”?
I have to wonder if this is just a general reaction to the rest of the world’s greater tolerance for chaos. If the same effects of tourism were seen in America (and whatever’s actually being done by tourists in Japan is certainly done by tourists and residents alike here) we would ignore it or handle it while accepting it’s an inevitability.
No, it's pretty much "they're eating the dogs". Conservative parties are using the same playbook to drum up support.
Other examples include San Seito (the extreme conservatives / professional trolls) making a huge part of their campaign.. the KURDISH population in Japan. You didn't know there were Kurds in Japan? Yeah, well, there's a whopping 2,000 Kurds living in Japan, yet there's enough political drama on them to have a whole wikipedia page on it.
That's pretty much how all law enforcement works, yes. This isn't unique, it's just easier than ever to pretend it is.
What's important isn't 0% crime rates, it's as close to 100% accountability as possible when crimes do happen. Amplifying it as a "war on [insert interest here]" is a purely political stance often used to distract from proper accountability on real issues.
Tourists, overpopulation or immigrants are being blamed for all the ills of today’s world. We see this theme before, in Europe, America (continent, not just a country) and no surprise now in Asia. The solution is simple, tax tourists, limit tourists or completely close it. To my simple brain the problem isn’t tourists, overpopulation, or immigration- it’s the economic pressures. No surprise that politicians are filling that void with panphobia. From what I understand of the article is that they want whoever is creating this chaos to be properly dealt with but overreacting with full blown stopping all to me is being created by people who would benefit from it. Follow the money and you will get to the bottom of this scam.
I think you hit the jackpot: economic pressures. Average people are getting squeezed hard by wage suppression, inflation and rising housing/utilities/insurance costs. So some politicians, instead of fixing anything, fan the flames of hatred to make outside groups the scapegoat. It's working for some in Canada, it seems to be working for Sanae Takaichi, it's working for Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and many others.
I'm glad that some of the tourist hate is fanned by politics, because it means not that many tourists are being jerks. But I will standby my original comment that this isn't just Japan being xenophobic. There's a lot of finger pointing and hate to go around for everyone. I will try to watch my own outrage a bit more and contribute less to it, going forward.
Still. Even if all tourists are perfectly well behaving, it can feel annoying having the population of your town double with visitors and everywhere you go things are crazy crowded.
You're falling for the 2024 American election rhetoric all over again. Yes there's always some disorder. But social media capturing and amplifying it to make it seem like this is a "crisis" is the exactly what they want. Watch national elections in japan pass and suddenly there's less "disorderly conduct" (aka, the ad cycle is done and they can lay off the coffers).
why? new people are cool if they aren't disorderly. It stimulates the economy, gives new people to talk to, expereinces to hear about, and overall builds confidence in a town (as someone who lived in quite a few dying areas).
To repeat, Japan has about 0.2% non-japanese people, in a country of 300 million. That's already dream goal for the most xenophobic countries. 6 million non-citizens spread across the landmass of roughly California is not going to suddenly make your favorite bar or cafe too crowded to go to. It may even build up more.
even if it hit 0% somewhere, it's not going to fix any actual issues Japan or any other country has. It just means they will have one less distraction, or worse: will need to generate a distraction. Some visitor is not the one laying me off, making housing go through the roof, nor making my life actively worse. Why would I point a finger at them.
There's definitely some level of xenophobia involved and some of the issues and claims are likely exaggerated, but there have been some problems with tourists misbehaving in Japan. In 2024, Kyoto banned tourists from most of the Gion district due to overcrowding and harassing geisha. I first learned about it from a video around the time the ban was enacted, and it had a clip of someone getting right in a geisha's face with their phone. Even without taking into account cultural differences and customs, that level of disregard for personal space would be frowned upon everywhere.
The fact is, everywhere you go, there's always some subset of tourists that are incredibly entitled. This is true of literally everywhere (see: all the news stories about tourists defacing or damaging landmarks), but I can imagine Japan having even more problems with that than other places given the popularity of anime and manga. There are people who genuinely fetishize Japanese culture in a way other countries just don't have to deal with. I suspect many of the most problematic visitors are "influencers" traveling there to make content, since they can already be some of the most entitled people on the planet.
I do wonder if the pandemic has made these sorts of issues stand out even more, though. They got to see a largely tourist-free Japan for a bit, and it took a while for tourism to return to pre-pandemic levels. So that would make all the problems that typically accompany tourism feel even more glaring and noticeable.
At bare minimum, they'd definitely notice the differences and issues with overcrowding. That's a growing issue everywhere, not just Japan. Venice already implemented a day trip fee and put a restriction on tourist group sizes back in 2024, and a quick search for "cities banning tourism" brings up many examples of other places implementing similar restrictions and bans to combat overtourism.
For Japan specifically, from what I've gathered (and seen to some degree during recent visits) the overcrowding issue could be diminished greatly if tourists just spread out a bit. For some reason or another (social media maybe?) the overwhelming majority of tourists all hit the same handful of hotspots like Kyoto, Nara, Akihabara, Shinjuku, Harajuku, etc while barely touching the rest of the country.
While walking around in Tokyo I personally observed that in the areas between the big stations, it becomes rare to see foreigners at all. I can only imagine that the effect is magnified further out from the hotspots.
I'd say it's 70% social media and 30% language barrier. You go outside the hotspots and you receive zero help in terms of navigating Japan. On top of seeing some of the most blatant xenophobia from smaller towns that want nothing to do with you.
Facilitating the former is a large undertaking, and the latter is an even larger cultural issue that ultimatley needs to be spearheaded by the former. But Japan isn't exactly in the best position to work on that even if they wanted to.