So, the new sakoku* is about to end, albeit gradually, in small stages, bit by bit, as it were, so as not to alarm the locals. Yes, Japan is going to open its doors a tad wider to foreigners once more and that means the tourist industry may finally be resuscitated, albeit remaining on life support.
And boy could the industry do with some good news. Since the decision to pull up the drawbridges and man the battlements, few foreigners have been allowed to enter the country.
As of March this year, when the government started to relax the rules, a little, 10,000 foreigners per day were allowed in to Japan. However, students, business people, and foreign relatives continued to be kept out – all of whom had genuinely pressing reasons for flying in: courses to begin, meetings to attend and money to make, and sick relatives to visit, respectively. As for tourists, with their I-only-come-for-a-look-around attitude, well, they could go sing, naturally.
This all seemed to be rather popular with the electorate, apparently, which is why it continued for so long. (I also admit to my own personal conflicted emotions about fewer aircraft in the sky being better for the environment.) But then the inevitable happened: the international tourist industry came to a grinding halt and shops closed, staff were laid off, and businesses dependent on foreign visitors generally collapsed. Furthermore, many careers were stalled and recent graduates applying for jobs in the airline industry were told recruitment would be on hold for three years, thus forcing many young people to radically rethink their futures.
As visitors stopped coming, Japanese people themselves were encouraged, then discouraged, then encouraged again to make up the massive drop in the finances by visiting places in their own country with the assistance of government-funded (i.e. their own tax money) discount schemes, such as the Go To Travel campaign. It did a bit for some to keep them afloat, but it didn’t do much for those reliant on international travellers, namely the airports and airlines.
A case in point is Chubu Centrair International Airport (Centrair, for short), an airport, one of only two (the other airport being at the other end of the journey), I have visited in these past two or more years. With my first hand experience, and eyes, obviously, it was not difficult to see that the recently renovated airport was a bit short on footfall. All very nice for those who were using its services at that time because there was virtually no queuing anywhere, but a kick in the coffers for the airport and food franchise owners in its food courts.
In 2019 more than 12 million passengers passed through the airport, almost half of whom were from international flights. In 2021, there were 2.8 million passengers, and only 55,151 of those were international (and even this was thanks to a good second half recovery). When JPCloud contacted the airport management, the spokesperson said domestic flights have now recovered to about half of 2019 (Pre-Covid19) levels, and international flights ‘have had a little recovery.’ Compared to pre-pandemic numbers of 2 million annually, ‘little’ is the optimum word. To mitigate such losses, the airport, which is located 35 km from Nagoya in central Japan, has been offering airlines discounts on operating fees as a support system providing special discounts on landing fees for new flights and multi-frequent flights, they added.
Naturally no modern country can operate in total isolation for long, but rules for coming in and going out of the country have been notoriously strict, and inconsistent, as well as somewhat opaque. (Visit the government’s immigration website and see if you think it’s clear.) Finally the Japanese government has bowed to pressure from business leaders and is loosening its stranglehold on the migratory flow of human beings in and out of its island nation.
The changes are, so far, very weak: only a doubling of numbers for those allowed in, from 10,000 to 20,000. However, this is expected to gradually increase as confidence mounts and Covid-19 infections do not. In addition, quarantine on arrival in Japan will be ended so there will be no more week-long hotel imprisonment for the poor souls landing here after a long-haul flight. All good news.
Meanwhile, airports such as Centrair can start to consider re-instating all those international routes, which, we hope, will bring down the prices all round and allow for more choices of how to get where we want to go. For example, pre-pandemic Centrair had flights to Philippines (Manila), South Korea (Seoul), Taiwan, US (Detroit), Singapore, Germany (Frankfurt), Thailand (Bangkok), Finland (Helsinki), and Vietnam (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City) but now direct flights are only going to Manila, Taipei, Bangkok, and Hanoi, with little choice on times**. Such a paucity of choice leads to more stopovers and more convoluted routes to where people want to go.
Of course, the pandemic has, depressingly, inflicted dramatic losses in passenger numbers and turnover for airports worldwide, and the tourist industry as a whole, so Centrair is just one further casualty. But whereas flights and travel elsewhere in the world were picking up, particularly in Europe and the Americas, Japan left itself somewhat lagging thanks to that self-imposed isolation (providing the echoes of sakoku, as mentioned). None of which is helped by the now-huge price of an international ticket. What cost me around a 100,000 Japanese yen (740 US dollars***) in pre-pandemic times is now around 200,000, and much more if I want to reduce the waiting time and stopovers. If I want to take my whole family back to my country of birth, it’s a rather painful experience, financially speaking, and is sadly indefinitely postponed. (I get that no one made me move here, so I’m not complaining.)
And so, in reality, with prices still sky high (pardon the pun), few of us ordinary folk in the foreign community of Japan can afford to fly to our families in our home countries any time soon. But thanks anyway to the Japanese government for the tentative decision to open the borders a little more – at least it gives optimism a chance to spread its warm glow after more than two years of restrictions, momentarily at least. But of course, there’s always room for pessimism. For a start, Covid infections are in fact no lower than they have been for the past 18 months, so whether the border restrictions continue to relax or return to the emotional default mode of Japanese conservatives should infections rise remains to be seen.
Notes:
*sakoku was the period between 1603 and 1865 when Japan closed its borders to virtually all foreign nations and lived as a feudal society in self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world.
**Skyscanner.jp accessed on June 8, 2022.
***xe.com currency converter accessed on June 11, 2022.
