The “flyjin” story has legs, it seems. After reading Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr, a number of years ago, I’m not convinced that tourism from overseas has ever been all that great or economically important for Japan economy as a whole.
Compared with the week before the March 11 disaster, the Immigration Bureau data confirmed departures by foreigners nearly doubled the week following the quake, from 139,782 to 244,274. Exits by those holding official or diplomatic passports, for example, were 192 and 1,320, respectively.In terms of their overall proportion, foreign students may have been the largest segment to leave the country. Some 60,000 — about one third of foreign students here — were reported to have departed during the second half of March, but this period coincided with the end of the academic year, a time when many would be traveling in any case.As Golden Week approached, more judicious analysis of the situation finally began to make its way into business publications. The April 26 issue of Shukan Economist ran a cover story titled “Nihon Hazushi,”
via Media starting to tally the economic effects of foreigner flight | The Japan Times Online.
