The last time foreign tourists spent more money in Japan than their Japanese equivalents spent overseas, the Apollo moon landing was still fresh in the memory, Osaka was hosting Asia’s first World’s Fair and a dollar bought three-and-a-half-times more yen than it does today.
But now Japan has earned its first “tourism surplus” in 44 years – a testament to the transformation of Asia’s economies that has turned once prohibitively expensive Japanese cities into affordable destinations for many middle-class Chinese, Thais and Indonesians.
Japan’s aggregate tourism-related revenues exceeded expenditures by Y17.7bn ($172m) in April, current account data released by the finance ministry yesterday showed, the largest such surplus on record and the first since July 1970.