Descendants of Japanese emigrants boost heritage tourism amid yen weakness
Japanese descendants are increasingly traveling to Japan to trace family origins, a trend spurred by social media, a soft yen and rising interest in genealogy.
A growing wave of Japanese-descended travelers is exploring Japan to locate their family roots, driven by online platforms, a depreciated yen and a global fascination with genealogy. Sergio Kohatsu, holding a passenger record of his father's 1929 voyage to Brazil, exemplifies the movement, which centers on sites like the Kobe Center for Overseas Migration and Cultural Interaction that preserves historic manifests and group photographs.
Visitor numbers at the center climbed sharply between fiscal 2024 and 2025, a surge linked to popular social-media content featuring Japanese-Brazilian couples. Supporting the trend, the Okinawa Prefectural Library now assists roughly 400,000 overseas Okinawan descendants, while Kaju, a Tokyo-based genealogy firm, launched an English website to field dozens of monthly inquiries. Scholars such as Sachiko Kawakami note that repeat visits to specific locales can spur regional revitalization, though they stress the need for better infrastructure to accommodate the growing pilgrim flow.
Why it matters
Heritage tourism by overseas Japanese descendants is boosting local economies and fostering cross-cultural understanding.
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