6th Okinawa International Movie Festival

Okinawa Convention & Visitors Bureau manager Sen Tamaki revealed that 6,413,700 visitors came to Okinawa in 2013, the most ever to travel to Japan’s southern islands.

Okinawa, known as the Ryukyu Islands historically and to many locals today, has seen a steady increase of tourists over the last 40 years, rising from just under a million in 1975, to six million in 2007. A slight dip in numbers followed, but 2013 saw an all-time high, boosted by an increase in low-cost carrier (LCC) airlines.

550,800 of those visitors came from foreign countries, a 44 per cent increase on 2012, when 382,000 visited, and by far the largest influx of non-Japanese the prefecture has seen. Nevertheless, foreign visitors still only accounted for 8.6 per cent of the total, and Tamaki told members of the international press that the bureau were working to address this at a press conference on Sunday March 23.

“We requested to the government for a VISA just for access Okinawa and not the mainland, but it wasn't accepted,” Tamaki said. “The government can't allow Okinawa to have a special kind of license for drivers either,” he added, responding to questions about how difficult it can be for non-Japanese to travel around on local transport.

“But Taiwanese can now use their licenses here,” he added, before acknowledging his next challenge, to allow Geneva Convention member states to receive permission to drive in Okinawa from authorities within Okinawa, rather than needing papers from Tokyo or mainland offices as is currently the case.

Of the foreign visitors, some 42.8 per cent came from nearby Taiwan, which has a close affinity to Okinawa. A further 15.3 per cent came from another island – Hong Kong. Korea accounted for 14.5 per cent, China for  8.7, and the rest of the world for the remaining 18.7 per cent.

Okinawa’s main airport in Naha now connects to 7 international airports, and 20 domestically. Tamaki explained that during 2014, his team will continue to work to create competitiveness in the airline market to help in bringing prices down.