News Marathon 4: 90% of Japanese surveyed worry that an increase in foreign tourists will lead to more crime

Chunichi Shimbun via Google Alerts:

89.4% of those surveyed believe that an increase of foreign tourists visiting Japan will “lead to an increase in crime” according the release of a monitor questionnaire on tourism from the Transportation Ministry released May 29. Meanwhile, the top response as to what the benefits of foreign tourists are was “getting them to understand Japan” with 76.6% of that opinion.

The survey was adminstered over the Internet in February to 777 “monitors” aged 20-79 who registered with the Ministry, with 86% of them responding.

“Criminals posing as tourists might enter the country and I worry that would cause a rise in crime” was the top response to the question, “What demerits does the increase of foreigners visiting to Japan have?” Following that was “trouble resulting from language or cultural differences” (33.4%).

As for the question on “merits”, following “getting them to understand us” was “Revenues from tourism would increase, which would be important to the domestic economy” (70.6%).

73.8% of respondents either “had no idea” or “were hearing for the first time” about the Ministry’s efforts to increase foreign tourism using the words “Founding a tourist nation” and “the Visit Japan Campaign”, revealing its low level of permeation.

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