A writer who visited Kyoto on 300 days in a single year exposes the harsh truth behind Japan’s pre-COVID “inbound tourism boom”: it was not national prosperity but severe “tourism pollution.”
The essay critically examines how mass tourism from China and South Korea—countries that continue anti-Japanese indoctrination—damaged Kyoto’s cultural environment and contributed to Japan’s social and psychological decline.
A powerful call to rethink tourism policy and restore the cultural dignity and quiet beauty that Kyoto and Japan must protect.

Since I have not lived in Kyoto since December 2011, I was, in effect, the greatest Kyoto wanderer in the world.
On October 31, 2020, I wrote that very line.
Since I have not lived in Kyoto since December 2011, I was, in effect, the greatest Kyoto wanderer in the world.
After all, in 2012 alone, I visited Kyoto—(including Shiga and Nara, but overwhelmingly Kyoto)—on 300 days of the year.
A few years ago, I visited Arashiyama one hundred days in a single year.
I photographed Togetsu Bridge, the gardens of Tenryu-ji Temple, and the Osawa Pond of Daikaku-ji Temple—capturing the flowers, birds, seasons, wind, and moon throughout spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Today, because the weather was so extraordinarily clear—without a single cloud—I headed to Kyoto, to Arashiyama.
I was astonished.
There were so many people on the train to Kyoto and on the train to Arashiyama.
A friend who accompanied me said:
“We don’t need Chinese anymore. We don’t need Koreans either.”
I agreed entirely.
I was once a camera boy, so crowds never bothered me.
But as my friend said, that was the truth.

Mr. Suga.
That was never “building a tourism nation”; it was tourism pollution.
Especially in Kyoto, we do not need any more tourists.
Above all, so many young women have been telling you exactly that.
The reality is that the so-called inbound tourism—nothing more than tourism pollution—caused losses many times greater than the revenue it generated.
In the first place, inviting unnecessary tourists from China and South Korea—countries that continue Nazi-style anti-Japanese education—and even broadcasting train and subway announcements in Chinese and Korean, was an act of utter foolishness that only inflamed their arrogance.

As I have already stated, because I hold and practice the philosophy of never visiting their countries as long as they remain what they are, I do not know the details—but I am absolutely certain that they never broadcast Japanese announcements on their subways or trains the way Japan has done.
It is unthinkable.

Mr. Suga.
We must stop allowing Chinese and Koreans, as they are today, to enter Japan in excessive numbers.
Such foolishness must end.
We must never repeat such foolishness again.
Chinese and Koreans, as they exist today, must not be allowed into Japan.
That alone is what will truly benefit them.
Unless we do so, they will continue existing forever as peoples defined by fathomless malice and plausible-sounding lies.
Helping such nations in any way is an act of stupidity that must never again be committed.
This is the fact—and the truth—that the Wuhan Virus taught the world.
Calling it the word of God would not be an exaggeration.
The only ones who fail to understand this are the fools in the Vatican.