Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) reported that foreign visitors to Japan increased by 46.7% year on year to 1,612,000 in September 2015, which were about 510,000 more visitors than the record-high result for September a year ago. The total for the first nine months of 2015 accordingly reached 14,480,000, more than the previous record-high 13,410,000 a year ago.

The following table shows monthly results in 2015 and changes from 2014:

The top market was still China with 491,200 visitors (+99.6%), followed by Taiwan with 302,900 (+37.2%) and Korea with 301,700 (+38.6%).

The annual total of visitors from China will surely exceed 4 million in 2015, as JNTO expects that a long holiday period in China may encourage travelers to visit Japan. Year-on-year growths of visitors for the first nine months were found in Korea (2,856,000 visitors), Philippine (186,000 visitors) and Vietnam (139,000 visitors).

Monthly visitor results by market are as follows: