Only around one in six Japanese citizens hold valid passports, fresh data has shown, with the number of residents traveling abroad slowly recovering but still below pre-pandemic levels.
The latest rate is far below the half of Americans with passports, a level that has soared from around five percent in 1990.
As of December 2024, there were 21.6 million valid Japanese passports in circulation, representing around 17.5 percent of the overall population, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about a quarter of Japanese people owned valid passports.
The country's travel document is tied with neighbor South Korea's passport as the world's second strongest after Singapore, allowing visa-free entry to 190 destinations, according to this year's Henley Passport Index.
Outbound travel from Japan has gradually resumed after the quarantine measures and border closures of the pandemic era, according to the ministry.
But the weakness of the yen -- which has shed a third of its value in the past five years -- is one factor deterring Japanese travelers along with inflation and a renewed interest in domestic travel, analysts say.
The new data comes as the nation welcomes a record influx of tourists from other countries, with more than 36 million visits recorded last year and many flocking to hotspots like Kyoto.
International travel by Japanese nationals began to increase sharply in the boom years of the late 1980s.
In 1990, more than 10 million people from Japan travelled abroad, a figure that rose to 20 million before the pandemic.
This year around 14.1 million Japanese are expected to travel abroad, according to top Japanese travel agency JTB.
"In recent years, the rapid depreciation of the yen has caused some to refrain from overseas travel, but once the currency market calms, overseas travel is expected to pick up steam," said its study, issued in January.
© 2025 AFP
31 Comments
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factchecker
Hardly surprising given the Yen has no buying power. Most Japanese cannot speak a second language either.
buchailldana
That's unbelievable.
deanzaZZR
It explains a lot, doesn't it. Island mindset.
MarkX
I think it has everything to do with the weak yen, inflation in many popular tourist countries and the graying of society. Also the media almost daily asserts how dangerous "gaikoku" is, which also scares off a lot of people from traveling abroad.
Eat the left
Nor can British, but they readily travel to Europe and beyond.
NOMINATION
Hawaii and L.A. have always been top destinations for people here but you hardly see or hear about them going for the past few years. Even with Ohtani on the Dodgers, they had a lot less Japanese fans at games probably due to the difference of ticket prices of Angels and Dodgers/exchange rate of late.
Chico3
Are you sure about this? My concern is that thousands of students travel both domestically and internationally, so I would guess that number would be much higher.
@NOMINATION - Yes. I'm sure that's true. Baseball season is generally an expensive time to fly to the US from Japan, even on the LLCs.
purple_depressed_bacon
Well it's not like they have enough paid leave to take a proper holiday anyway. The average Japanese employee gets what, 10 days or something equally absurd? That and the weak yen renders the average Japanese person unable to leave the island. They're stranded if you will.
That's because the lingua franca in Europe is English. You can get by using basic English in most if not all European countries. Can't say the same for Japan...
Geeter Mckluskie
The mindset that made the culture that millions of people flock to yearly to experience a taste of
didou
Everything is said, weak yen, soaring cost ,
Many just prefer to travel domestic, save a few yen, not having the hassle of customs clearance and airport waiting time, added with a bit of anxiety when abroad .
Why renewing a passport then
deanzaZZR
I suggest a course in logic.
Japan is not even in the top 10 of most visited nations.
Meiyouwenti
Does the fact that only 17.5% of Japanese have valid passports hurt any of the posters here?
garypen
Probably not. But, it's a bit of news that's still of interest to many.
News doesn't need to have a negative effect on the reader to be of value.
garypen
I suggest a course in reading comprehension. Geeter merely said "millions of people", which is 100% correct. He did not give it a ranking. (FYI, the number of visitors is was over 30mil last year.)
garypen
Pretty similar to the US, sadly. Yet, Americans are finding a way to do it.
OssanAmerica
How does that explain only 5% of Americans holding passports in the 1990s?
OssanAmerica
In 2023 only 13% of Chinese citizens held passports. Last I checked China was not an island.
kohakuebisu
This is very poor. Its even poorer when you consider that the No. 1 destination for Japanese used to be Hawaii, which has never been cheap, and is now LCC short hops like South Korea and Taiwan, which weren't popular twenty or thirty years ago. This means we now have fewer Japanese going abroad and the ones still going are mostly heading to nearby countries with similar cultures. From an educational and internationalization viewpoint, this is very sad. I see money spent on travelling as better than money spent on flash food or Land Cruisers.
The museum with the most Japanese visitors in the world, including Japan itself, used to be the Louvre in Paris.
Japanese salaries may be low, but the country still has lots of wealthy people. Most of the wealth is with boomers, but its still out there waiting to be spent.
deanzaZZR
2025 is not 1995. Things change. Clearly over the course of 30 years a culture of foreign travel has developed.
Certainly there is a correlation between foreign travel and average income. The trend in China is up. Trend in Japan is down.
Mocheake
I remember the good old days of the bubble. Almost every Japanese person I knew had a valid passport. The times, they are a changin' bigtime. The yen is just too weak to make travel to most places affordable.
CaptDingleheimer
About half of Americans have a passport.
But I bet a significant portion of them just got it so they could go on some tacky cruise ship that makes a stop in the Caribbean.
beachcomber
Covid and weak yen trend have affected to stay in Japan in recent days
DanteKH
To be honest 21 million is not really a small number, considering how gray is the Japan's population.
Another reasons we're already mentioned here, like the very weak currency, inflation, very high flight ticket prices, very little holidays and very low salaries compared to other developed nations, etc.
Most of the tourists you can see abroad are mostly older boomers who still have the fortune gathered during the bubble period.
falseflagsteve
17%, 17 can you believe it? You need to get around the world at least a few times in your life, variety is the spice of life as they say, lol
Pukey2
What do you expect when the yen is so weak?
Mimpe Jones 24
That shocked me. I thought Japanese were more travelled than that. Damn.
kohakuebisu
The other problem here is that the less Japanese go overseas, the less they will understand trends in international tourism and hospitality. This creates an open goal for foreigners to profit from visitors to big Japanese tourism sites like Kyoto and Japanese ski resorts. Tourism should benefit locals, not international venture capital with big developments in Niseko or some (insert country) person with five Airbnbs in residential parts of Tokyo. Japanese people should own the Airbnbs, not just get 1200 a yen an hour to clean them.
Speed
I don't think it's really a "renewed interest" than it is that it can't be helped.
I had no idea that Japan's passport was so encompassing. Good on 'em.
OssanAmerica
The US was not an island in 1995. And it hasn;t become an island since. Your comment about "island mentaliy" is ridiculous. Also exposes the fact that you weren't around in the 1980s when Japanese tourists were everywhere.
In 2024 the average annual income in Japan was JY 5,300,000.
In 2024 the average annual income in China was JY 120,698.
iron man
I was in West Asia Oil nations, in 1990, the USD was in a massive dip relative to other currencies. Maybe they couls not afford to travel to the airport. by 1996/7 Yen was massive. But, the article is about contemporary 2025. FFS, how is your carbon footprint doing? I only need to return to Sydney again then fly to Lima, nah way. A passport is not a measure of intelligence or language ability, or a reason to degrade the Japanese population, What a beautiful island.... why are you residents there? Afghanistan is beckoning for tourists.
DDK
It's not "the depreciation of the yen". Even a 30% depreciation, although big, is not the root cause of the issue. The truth is that flying out of Japan has always been expensive, a situation which has only got worse over the years. I remember the good old times when one could fly to Europe with 100k yen. Not prices below 225k are very rare.
On the other hands, Europeans always get cheap flights to Asia, which in turn means that airlines are literally milking the Japanese population.
Truly disgusting.