Beginning June 10, Japan will allow the entry of people on
tours with fixed schedules and guides, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.
Tourists from areas with low COVID-19 infection rates who
have received three vaccine doses will be exempt from testing and quarantine
after entry.
Japan this week is hosting small experimental package tours
from four countries, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. That
experiment, which involves only 50 people who received special visas, not
tourist visas, is to end May 31.
After facing criticism that its strict border controls were
xenophobic, Japan began easing its restrictions earlier this year and currently
allows entry of up to 10,000 people a day, including Japanese citizens, foreign
students and some business travelers.
Japan will double the cap to 20,000 a day from June 1, which
will also include package tour participants, said Makoto Shimoaraiso, a Cabinet
official in charge of pandemic measures.
The scale of the package tours and other details will be
finalized after officials evaluate the results of the current experimental
tours, he said.
It will take some time before foreign visitors can come to
Japan for individual tourism, Shimoaraiso said.
Japan’s tourism industry, hit hard by the border controls,
is eager for foreign tourism to resume. COVID-19 infections have slowed in
Japan since earlier this year and the government is gradually expanding social
and economic activity.
Kishida said during a visit to London earlier this month
that he planned to ease the border controls as early as June in line with the
policies of other Group of Seven industrialized countries, but gave no further
details.
Foreign tourist arrivals fell more than 90% in 2020 from a
record 31.9 million the year before, almost wiping out the pre-pandemic inbound
tourism market of more than 4 trillion yen ($31 billion). -AP