Japan targets 20m tourist arrivals by 2020

Tokyo

THE habit of "picking winners" through state-nurturing of selected industries went out of fashion several decades ago in Japan, but now Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government has decided to revive it by declaring inbound tourism to be in effect a strategic industry.

Until recently, "Japan has not been among the top-ranking tourist destinations in the world", says Japan Tourism Agency (JTA) director Ichiro Takahashi, but all that is apparently about to change as an official action programme to make Japan a "tourism-oriented country" gets underway.