On two recent occasions, a foreign tourist entered Shoji Matsumoto’s barbershop, through a front door that creaks loudly when opened more than halfway, wanting a haircut.
One was Italian and the other British. Mr. Matsumoto, who is 75 years old and does not speak any of his languages, did not know what to tell them. He grabbed his scissors and began cutting, hoping that his decades of experience would help him get through the difficult encounters.
Tourists, driven in part by a weak yen that makes their money go further in Japan, have been flocking to the country since it eased its coronavirus-related entry restrictions in 2022. Some officials, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida , have expressed concern about overtourism. In March, there were more than three million international arrivals, a monthly record and an increase of more than 10 percent compared to March 2019.
Nearly two-thirds of international visitors tend to be from South Korea, Taiwan and China. Last year, spending by foreign tourists accounted for about 9 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product.
Popular sites in cities like Kyoto, Japan’s former royal capital, feel increasingly ungovernable. Visitors are flocking to previously non-touristy places, such as small towns near Mount Fuji or the Kyoto shopping district where Matsumoto cuts hair.
“Before, it was normal to see tourists in certain places,” Matsumoto said from a low chair in his barbershop on a recent Saturday. “But now they are spreading to random, unexpected places.”
That influx is testing the patience of a generally polite society.
In Kyoto and other heavily visited cities, some residents complain that hotel rooms cost them or are overwhelmed by buses and restaurants. Others say that tourists sometimes disrespect local customs, for example by chasing geishas to photograph them or eating while walking, behavior that is considered rude in Japan.
One day last month, Hiroshi Ban took six hours (twice as long as usual) to visit the Heian Jingu Shrine in Kyoto. Ban, 65, blamed the delay in part on tourists mobbing buses by counting coins to pay for fares.
“Every day here feels like a carnival,” said Ban, the event’s organizer. “We cannot enjoy our daily lives in peace.”
Even those who benefit directly from tourism revenue fear it may prove unsustainable.
Hisashi Kobayashi, a Kyoto taxi driver, said business was so good that taking a day off was like passing up easy money. But many tourism-related industries were struggling to keep up with demand as they recovered from pandemic-era labor shortages, he said.
“When Japanese people come here, they feel like they are in a foreign land because there are so many tourists,” added Kobayashi, 56, as his taxi approached a bottleneck near a popular temple. “It’s not Kyoto anymore.”
Some rural areas are feeling the pressure for the first time. One is the city of Fuji, about 200 miles by road east of Kyoto, in Shizuoka Prefecture.
After a bridge with a direct view of Mount Fuji began gaining popularity on social media late last year, Shizuoka’s tourism department said on Instagram that it was a good spot for “beautiful and dreamy photos.” What wasn’t said was that the bridge was in a residential area with no visitor parking spaces, public restrooms or trash cans.
Many visitors littered, parked in driveways and, in some cases, dodged traffic to take photos from the bridge’s dividing strip, residents said in interviews.
During a holiday last month, about 300 tourists arrived daily for four days, forming a photo-taking line that wound around the street, said Mitsuo Kato, 86, who lives next to the bridge.
“They just park here,” Kato said outside his home on a recent Sunday, as groups of South Korean tourists diligently took photographs of the clouds obscuring Mount Fuji. “So we had to put up signs.”
Officials across Japan have been responding to the rise in tourism with varying degrees of effectiveness.
In the city of Fuji, authorities built a makeshift parking lot for six cars and began building a larger one that could hold 15 cars and would include a bathroom, said Motohiro Sano, a local tourism official.
In a neighboring prefecture, Yamanashi, Fujikawaguchiko city officials last month put up a billboard-sized screen to discourage tourists from photographing a Lawson convenience store. whose blue awning sits beneath the mountain and became a staple of social media posts. The screen is now dotted with holes large enough to fit a phone’s camera lens, local media reported.
In Shibuya, a highly visited area of Tokyo, authorities announced plans to ban outdoor alcohol consumption at night in a bid to curb bad behavior by young people and tourists.
And in Kyoto, where signs at train stations ask visitors to “mind your manners,” the government began operating special buses for tourists this month.
At the city’s Nishiki market, where some residents have complained of finding grease stains on their clothes after walking through crowds of tourists eating snacks, Yoshino Yamaoka pointed to two signs hanging outside his grilled eel restaurant. .
They both said in English: “Do not eat while walking.” One had a larger font and the text was underlined in red.
“People didn’t follow it, so I put this one up with a stricter tone,” Yamaoka, 63, said of the bolder sign. But he wondered if his new approach was too strict.
“Businesses depend on tourists,” he said.
To avoid the crowds on a recent weekend, some tourists visited popular Kyoto sites at dawn or waited 40 minutes to eat at a popular ramen joint at 11 p.m. Some complained about the congestion they had helped create.
“It’s a disaster,” said Paul Oostveen, 70, a Dutch tourist, after leaving Kiyomizu-dera temple, a popular attraction.
From his empty barbershop, Mr. Matsumoto said he had successfully cut the hair of his two foreign clients and would not turn away others who stumbled upon his door.
But he was concerned about providing good-quality service to customers he couldn’t understand, he said, and would prefer those who don’t speak Japanese to go elsewhere.
Although tourism is good for the nation, he added over the hum of a radio: “There is a part of me that is not completely satisfied.”