Japan

Japan's August 2026 arrivals fell 9.6% to 3.10 million, the steepest monthly drop of the year, the Japan National Tourism Organization reported on 16 September. Chinese visitors fell 59.0% to 418,000, while Koreans rose 28.7%. The slide began in April, when Chinese arrivals collapsed 56.8% after Beijing advised its citizens to avoid Japan.

Japan now charges visitors more even as volumes fall. Its departure tax doubled to 3,000 yen from July 2026, and from 1 April Kyoto added a top accommodation-tax rate of 10,000 yen a night for rooms above 100,000, yen while Hokkaido, Hiroshima and other areas brought in their own lodging taxes.

On 3 July 2026, three Japanese trading houses began their first direct talks on Iranian crude since 2019. The talks relied on a US sanctions waiver running from 22 June, but Marine insurers still refused Hormuz cover, so the legal route had not yet produced a shipment.

The United States revoked the waiver on 7 July and allowed only a wind-down until 17 July. Japan's dollar-cleared buyers lost the opening before they secured any cargo, while China's yuan-settled purchases carried on unaffected. The episode showed how far Japan's search for alternative oil depends on Washington's licensing choices.

On 20 August 2026 Japan's and Oman's foreign ministers called in Muscat for stronger international coordination to secure navigation through the strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Japan had no warships in The Gulf and no Article 9 route to a deployment, so its contribution was diplomatic pressure rather than a military commitment.

Japan's commercial exposure had already turned political in April, when a Japanese shipping company appeared on a US toll-interdiction list after paying Iran's Hormuz fee. That placed an allied vessel inside the dispute between Washington and Tehran.