Massive crowds of tourists have been filmed lining Kyoto’s historic Sannenzaka street, with the viral video sparking concern that the popular Japanese destination is struggling to cope with the numbers.
Sannenzaka, a roughly 400-metre long cobblestone street lined with shops and restaurants in eastern Kyoto’s Higashiyama district, is one of the city’s main tourist attractions as it leads up to the famous Kiyomizu-dera Temple.
While the area is no stranger to crowds, footage shared on social media shows the area is particularly packed this season, with hundreds of tourists seen jammed back-to-back on the narrow street as an official stands directing traffic.
The original clip, shared by a Korean visitor, suggested Kyoto can’t keep up with the numbers.
The video racked up 170,000 views on X after being shared by French travel YouTuber who wrote, “Kyoto, what a hell it has become. How can one enjoy one’s visit in such conditions?”
That sentiment was widely shared online.
“Unpopular opinion — Kyoto is the 7th ring of hell right now,” wrote Johnny Waldman from the Spoon & Tamago blog.
“I feel lucky to have visited before the tourist explosion,” one person commented.
Another shared a photo of Sannenzaka from 2008 when it was “a quiet side street”. “Looks terrible now,” they added.
The viral clip highlights Japan’s juggling act as it seeks to boost its tourism industry while managing the challenges of record visitor numbers.
Unpopular opinion: Kyoto is the 7th ring of hell right now
pic.twitter.com/8VhmA4V6EK— Spoon & Tamago (@Johnny_suputama) December 22, 2024
Japan brought in a record-breaking 33,379,900 foreign tourists in the year to November and more than 35 million are expected by the end of the year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JTNO).
The previous annual record was 31,882,000 in 2019, before Covid saw the country of 125 million slam its borders shut for three years.
South Korea had the highest number of foreign visitors to Japan in October at 732,100, followed by China at 582,800, and Taiwan at 478,900, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO).
Japan’s government has set a goal of increasing annual tourist visits to 60 million by 2030 and wanted to break the 2019 record by 2025, meaning it is already a year ahead of schedule.
While South Korea, China and Taiwan were the largest source of visitors, numbers coming from Australia, North America, India and other countries have already hit annual records, according to the JNTO.
Global demand for travel to Japan has grown due to the depreciation of the yen combined with an increase in flight routes, the Asahi Shimbun notes.
A headline in The Japan Times on Monday asked, “Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?”
The newspaper noted that while, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the economic benefit to Japan’s economy this year is expected to reach a record 44.6 trillion yen ($455 billion), many locals in cities like Kyoto feel the number of tourists in 2024 has been overwhelming.
The government may tout the economic benefits, but many ordinary Japanese “quietly and politely hate” the tourism boom, as the Asia Times put it last year.
So-called “over-tourism” has become a growing political issue in Japan.
A survey by Jalan Research Center last month found 60 per cent of Japanese felt there were too many tourists, with overcrowding on public transport and in restaurants, bad manners, rubbish and the effect on the atmosphere of residential areas among the most cited complaints.
Some cities have already taken action to crack down on badly behaved tourists, with Kyoto earlier this year banning tourists from entering certain alleys in Gion, the famous geisha district in Kyoto, after fed-up locals complained their neighbourhood was “not a theme park”.
Seeking to address such concerns, the Japanese government launched a new initiative this year titled Comprehensive Measures for the Prevention and Mitigation of Overtourism, focused on “excessive congestion and etiquette violations, attracting visitors to regional areas and promoting tourism in collaboration with local residents”, Olesia Silanteva from the University of Tsukuba writes.