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On December 22, 2017, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held the eighth meeting of the Ministerial Council on the Promotion of Japan as a Tourism-Oriented Country at the Prime Minister's Office.

During the meeting, an exchange of views took place on the basic policy regarding the uses of revenues from the international tourist tax (provisional name) and other matters.

Based on the exchange of views, the Prime Minister said,

“The Abe Cabinet has made intensive efforts, positioning tourism as a pillar of our Growth Strategy and as a trump card for vitalizing local economies. As a result, the number of annual foreign visitors to Japan increased from 8 million people before the inauguration of my administration, to 24 million last year, and at the current pace it is expected to exceed 28 million this year.

However, I have no intention of being content with these numbers. With leading nations in tourism such as Italy and France as our targets, we need to implement highly effective measures toward achieving the goals of 40 million visitors per year by 2020 and 60 million by 2030.

To that end, a decision has been made to establish an international tourist tax, and today, we compiled a basic policy and concrete measures regarding the uses of revenues from this tax.

This new tourism funding will be allocated to advanced, high cost-performance measures in order to turn Japan into a country that people around the world will want to visit. For instance, at our international airports, we will install gates that people can pass through using an instant face recognition system in order to create a more pleasant travel experience. Alongside that, we will make use of reviews of administrative programs to ensure transparency in our activities and have third parties conduct thorough checks.

When I travelled around the country for the recent House of Representatives election campaign, I once again saw firsthand the local areas’ tremendous expectations for tourism. With the right ideas, a local area’s culture or history will be transformed into killer contents that attract tourists from all over the world, and they can be communicated to the world using social media. Tourism creates major opportunities for each local area.

The Government will continue to work together in making every effort to build a new Japan that is a leading tourism nation, based on the principle of doing everything that the Government can possibly do.”