As Japan continues to see record travel numbers, some towns and cities in the country are struggling to keep up. As soon as one popular location fills up, tourists find another – and the new location has to go through the same growing pains as the last. That’s happening currently in the city of Furano in Hokkaido, where some residents say they hardly recognize the place they grew up.
Picking up after tourists
Hokkaido News UHB (via Yahoo! News) reports on how the city is holding up. With only 19,624 people (based on December 2024 residential data), the town has nevertheless become an attractive tourist spot due to its plentiful attractions and its excellent skiing. Some say the town is on its way to becoming a “second Niseko.”
That’s good news for local businesses. Some restaurants say their reservation calendars are booked solid, with tourists spending their money on items like expensive A5 wagyu steaks.
On the flip side, some residents are grumbling over being on clean-up duty for tourists. A big sticking point is garbage. Like most Japanese cities, Furano has precise rules for sorting out garbage. In the city’s case, it has 14 distinct categories of disposables that have to be separately sorted. Most foreign tourists don’t have the first clue about this. That means resident volunteers end up sorting their garbage for them so that trash collectors won’t refuse to pick it up.
The onslaught of skiers during winter has led to other problems. Residents complain that tourists often ski down the streets, risking collisions with kids. The number of people per season who get lost in the backcountry and require rescuing has also tripled, rising from three to nine.
Trespassing is also an issue. As in other areas that have become sudden tourist locations, like Hokkaido’s Biei, farmers and other landowners have to deal with people traipsing over their private lands to snap Instagram-worthy photos.
As young people flee, foreigners buy up property
Beyond simple inconveniences, tourism and population decline are also changing the nature of life in Furano.
As with most small cities, young people – especially women – are fleeing to larger cities where there’s more economic opportunity. Furano’s population has tumbled by over a third since 1970, dropping from 30,876 residents in 1970.
At the same time, foreigners are buying up property to use as vacation villas or AirBnB rentals. That’s caused a hard spike in home prices, with prices climbing five-fold in five years. The increasing investment is also changing the historical nature of the town, with sites such as a waterwheel being torn down to make room for sleek new modern buildings.
“It’s sad seeing people who were born and raised here leave,” one resident lamented.
Yahoo! News JP and other forum comments sections are filled with people calling Furano’s steady collapse an “invasion.” Some are calling for a ban on foreign (particularly Chinese) investment.
There’s some irony here. Furano – from the Ainu hura-nu-i – is itself a settlement created in 1897 that was part of Japan’s effort to displace Hokkaido’s indigenous people. Now, the descendants of those Japanese settlers are themselves feeling what it’s like to be steadily displaced.
However, it’s not clear there are many alternatives as Japan prepares to welcome 60 million visitors by 2030. With its population in freefall, Japan will need to rely on more foreign workers to meet the demand. Like Nagano, it’ll likely also require ongoing tourism investment to snap up residences and businesses left empty as their owners pass on.
Unless both tourism and population decline come to a screeching halt tomorrow, the story playing out in Furano is likely to repeat in small cities across the country.
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