Why don't most Japanese people use passports?

This year is the second consecutive year that Japan has been ranked highest on the Passport Index by the investment and settlement consultancy firm Henley & Partners. Accordingly, Japanese citizens can travel to 190 out of 199 countries and regions worldwide without having to apply for a visa.

In the 2019 rankings, Singapore also ranked first with Japan. South Korea ranked second with 188 countries and territories visa-free, while the US and UK ranked only 15th on the list.

Despite having the highest freedom in being able to travel anywhere in the world easily, it seems that the Japanese... don't care. This is proven when only 23% of Japanese citizens own a passport according to statistics from Nikkei Asian Review. This is the lowest passport ownership rate among the G7 industrialized countries. The question is:Why are most Japanese people not interested in traveling abroad?

One big reason analysts point to is Japan’s aging population. As of the end of 2018, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said the proportion of elderly people in Japan’s population was the highest in the world. The number of people aged 65 and over reached a record 35.57 million, up 440,000 from the previous year and now accounting for 28.1% of the total population. In some prefectures in Japan, the figure is over 30%. Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research estimates that the proportion will reach 35.5% by 2040.

With such a rapidly aging population, most Japanese people only tend to travel and relax domestically or in neighboring countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. Because the elderly cannot ensure their health while young people are too busy with work or taking care of their families.

Another big cultural reason is that Japanese people are often worried or afraid of unexpected dangers when traveling. Japan has always been ranked as one of the safest countries in the world. This safety combined with the inherent cautious nature has made Japanese people always worried, even afraid of the insecurity of new destinations.

Immigration expert Xiaochen Su shared about this issue in the Japan Times in March 2019. The series called “Chikyu no arukikata” (How to Walk on Earth) is the best-selling world travel guidebook in Japan in the past 35 years with 8 million copies published. In this book, Japanese authors have described in great detail the negative issues, risks and even dangerous crimes that can occur while traveling to many destinations around the world. This has unintentionally deepened the cautious mentality and created the view that “traveling is very dangerous” among Japanese youth.

Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, tourism to Japan increased by 250% from 2012 to 2017. This trend is expected to continue to increase with the Tokyo Olympic Games in the summer of 2020.

My Tong