Authorities have brought in a number of guards to a small city in Japan after several complaints were made of tourists blocking the roads and crossing railways tracks to take pictures, leading to the death of one woman
Authorities in Japan are hiring guards to stop tourists from blocking roads or railway tracks in attempt of getting the ideal photo.
Tourism officials in Otaru, Japan, have stepped up measures to deter crowds of tourists from taking risks to try and get photos of pretty views. The small city in the northernmost main island of Hokkaido deployed the security guards this week to prevent people crowding on Funami-za, which is a steep street that offers amazing views of the port and sea in the distance.
Local resentment and complaints of overtourism have grown recently in the area, following the death of a Chinese woman earlier this month, after she was struck by a train having walked onto the railway tracks. Her husband reportedly told local police that his wife had been trying to take a picture of the location from the 2015 Chinese film Cities in Love and had not noticed a train was approaching.
Authorities made the decision to deploy security guards to the area after a number of complaints were made about a group of visitors blocking the narrow street to take photos, reports The Guardian.
“This road is lined with houses and has heavy traffic,” a city official told the Mainichi Shimbun. “Tourists standing on the street or walking side by side often make it impossible for vehicles to pass. The impact on residents has been significant, and this fiscal year has been particularly severe.”
“People are even entering private property without permission to take photos,” Hidetoshi Itagaki, an 80-year-old local resident, told Kyodo news agency.
This was the latest in a number of incidents involving poor behaviour from tourists. Figures revealed that a record breaking 36.7 million people visited Japan in 2024, and the Government hopes to increase the figure to 60 million by the end of the decade.
Otaru rose in popularity as a destination after the pandemic. Around 98,000 foreign tourists spent at least one night in the city in the six months rom April last year, which is the highest number since records were first kept in 1997.
However, the strain on Otaru has become evident even despite the introduction of multilingual signs asking visitors to respect their surroundings and local residents, were introduced last year.
Elsewhere in the country other measures have been introduced to limit the detrimental impacts of overtourism. On Mount Fiji, authorities introduced fees and caps on visitor numbers, in addition to erecting a screen to prevent people from crowding at a popular picture spot.
In addition, this week the Japan Tourism Agency released 22 pictograms which encourage travellers to be better behaved in the country. The signs include prompts to tourists to refrain from queue jumping and to pack light, so they do not block access to trains and buses.
