The number of foreign visitors to Japan in 2022 was up sharply from the previous year on the back of eased border controls.
Even so, the annual number was only about 12 percent of the figure before the pandemic in 2019.

Officials at the Japan National Tourism Organization estimate the country admitted about 3.83 million visitors last year. That is more than 15 times higher than the total in 2021, which saw only about 246,000 arrivals.

Japan started easing its border controls in September. The number of visitors who arrived from then until the end of the year accounted for nearly 80 percent of the year's total.

The largest group by origin was people from South Korea at just over a million. They made up nearly a third of the total.

Visitors from Taiwan were second at over 330,000. Those from the US were close behind.

People from mainland China accounted for 30 percent of foreign arrivals in 2019. But last year they stood at around 180,000, largely due to Beijing's zero-coronavirus policy.