The problem is the locals get priced out. Capitalism gonna capitalism (and, less cynically, more workers = more labor costs are needed to meet demand), so prices will rise to get max profits and cover additional costs. Japan’s wages have been stagnant for ages. Since corona, we got hit with huge inflation and price increases years in the making. Some employers have increased salaries, but others not. Basically no increases are keeping up with inflation for those who get it. This is even worse for those on fixed incomes.
What this means is that overtourism is causing a few things. One is that (often illegal) short-term rentals are being created and people are buying entire buildings, jacking up the rent, and forcing out tenants and increasing rents generally. This especially hurts the elderly and those on fixed incomes. People are also buying vacation houses which further reduces the housing stock and drives up prices where locals cannot compete with the deep pockets of those whom are not residents. These people get pushed out into more hellish commutes and into other areas, basically becoming second-class people in their own country. Some laws are being drafted to address this (and better enforcement of illegal short-term rentals is needed), but all the people who got screwed over aren’t going to get anything out of this.
Restaurants also end up increasing prices that tourists can afford but locals cannot. Hotels are doing the same. People have to live further away from work, eat out less (or not at all), not go on vacations as much or at all due to hotel prices, etc. It’s also resulted in hiring foreign-language staff whose salaries are more expensive in some cases. Tourists also get tax free shopping in some cases which means some of the money they spend isn’t even helping deal with these issues. (I’m in favor of abolishing that tax free program, personally).
So, again, this isn’t about fleecing any tourists. There are a number of problems caused by those whose currencies go a long way in Japan making life harder and more expensive for locals. Tiered pricing for tourists is one potential way to handle some aspects of this. Believe me, as a long-term (more than a decade and now holding permanent residency), this would still be annoying as we’d have to be presenting ID everywhere. It’s further murky because many Japanese still don’t even have a photo ID (though it’s effectively becoming mandatory for at least adults now) so the implementation is quite annoying.
Further, the price on foreign resident administrative fees is being jacked up by wild amounts to be “in line with europe” with some of that money going to overtourism (note what I said about salaries above; the median annual salary in a lot of Japan is below 5 million yen which is around 30k USD as I write this). This is just idiotic policy in my mind, but it shows that the government is trying to shift the pain away from Japanese citizens)
This is also not a problem unique to Japan and many countries have faced it. Some of those countries did indeed decide on tiered pricing. Some use certain entry taxes. I’m sure there are other programs as well. My point is that overtourism is hurting residents in a number of ways and something needs to be done to address this; tourism should not make life unaffordable for the average resident (and, to be clear, I’m not talking luxury resorts or something here).
A flundge. I’m not sure why, but it was the first thing that came to mind.