I just read another piece on the great “overtourism” panic. You have seen the headlines. Hordes in Asia. Beaches buried. Drunkards in the streets. The analysis points to Bali, to Phuket, and especially to Kyoto. It claims Asia has “European-style problems.” I get it. I really do. Nobody likes seeing sacred spaces treated like a frat party. But this surface-level take misses the real, electric friction of the situation. The problem is not just bad tourist behavior. The problem is a perfect storm. It is a high-context culture clashing with a low-context world. This is the central conflict of modern Japan travel.
I do not support the behavior. Let’s be clear. Chasing geisha for a photo is grotesque. Leaving trash on sacred ground is offensive. Being a loud, obnoxious presence is a failure of basic human decency. You should be cool. You should be respectful. These are the entry-level requirements for being a good person. I am not here to defend the indefensible. I am here to explain the mechanism. Understanding the why is the only way to find a how.
The situation makes a strange, terrifying kind of sense. It is a collision of unstoppable forces. You have excited, confused tourists. They are flooding into a profoundly different culture. That host culture, meanwhile, has a documented inability to say “no.” It cannot push back directly. This creates a vacuum. And chaos, as we know, loves a vacuum.
The Viral Feedback Loop
The source article I read mentions Shannon Clerk, an American tourist. She woke up at 5 a.m. to beat the crowds at Fushimi Inari. On her way down, the “large hordes” were already arriving. She describes sacred spots “overrun by non-Japanese tourists dressed in kimonos… taking Instagram photos.” This is the reality on the ground. But how did we get here? It is a digital virus infecting an analog host.
It starts small. One person does something mildly disruptive. They are exploring. They are excited. They are also from a low-context culture. They are looking for a sign that says “Do Not Enter.” They see no sign. They see no fence. They see no guard. They see only an open, beautiful moss garden. So they step in for a photo. A local might see this. They might grimace. They might quietly disapprove. But they will almost certainly not confront the tourist. Direct confrontation is a social taboo. The tourist receives no negative feedback. They get their photo. Nothing bad happened.
Then they post it. The photo goes up on a platform Japan barely uses. It is written in a language most locals do not read. It gets traction. It goes viral. A feedback loop is born. The original act was one of ignorant curiosity. The next wave of tourists saw the photo. They are now coming specifically to replicate that photo. They arrive faster, and in greater numbers, than any analog system can handle. The domestic rules cannot keep up. The single security guard is overwhelmed. It snowballs. This is how the bad tourist behavior metastasizes.
A Failure of System Design
This is not an excuse. It is a diagnosis. The tourist behavior is a symptom of a deeper design flaw. The system is broken. We are witnessing a 21st-century digital phenomenon colliding with a 20th-century analog bureaucracy. The tourists are a distributed, high-speed network. Japan Inc. is a centralized, mainframe computer. The result is a system crash. We see the sparks and smoke of this crash in places like Kyoto.
Japan's Analogue Heart
This brings me to the host. I love this country. I have built my life here. But I must be direct. Japan is the host country that has not bothered to modernize past the year 2000. It has not learned other languages in any meaningful, widespread way. It has not proactively introduced protocols to manage population surges. It has not bothered promoting more than a handful of regions to international tourists. The entire engine of Japan travel is pointed at Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. The rest of this beautiful country remains largely invisible.
So when the surge comes, the system cracks. And Japan Inc.’s reaction is predictable. It complains. It shuts things down. This is pretty much all it can do. Its entire operational logic is analog. It is not built for speed. It is not built for scale. When the town of Fujikawaguchiko decides to block the view of Mount Fuji, it is a perfect metaphor. They are not solving the digital problem (the viral photo). They are applying a slow, analog solution (a physical barrier). They are treating the symptom, not the disease. This is a stopgap. It is not a strategy.
This analog heart beats slowly. It runs on paper. It runs on fax machines. Yes, fax machines. It runs on the hanko stamp. It runs on endless meetings to build consensus. This system is perfect for maintaining stability. It is catastrophic for managing dynamic change. And modern Japan travel is nothing if not dynamic change. The tourist hordes are a high-speed, chaotic force. Japan Inc. is a slow-moving, rigid object. The collision is inevitable.
The Problem With Kyoto
And Kyoto is the epicenter. It is Ground Zero for this cultural collision. Why? Because Kyoto is a fragile museum. It is not a theme park, despite what the Instagram kimono photos suggest. The city’s 1.5 million residents are being crushed. The source article notes they are annoyed by clogged streets. They cannot use their own public buses. They are commuters, not exhibits. The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper found 90% of residents complained about overtourism. They are living inside the broken theme park. The “loss of balance” is palpable. This is not sustainable.
The ban on tourists in Gion’s private lanes is another example. It is a necessary, reactive, analog fix. It is a piece of tape on a bursting pipe. It treats the bad tourist behavior without ever asking why it is happening. It punishes the many for the sins of the few. But what other tool does the city have? It cannot, or will not, engage in a modern, digital, linguistic solution. It just puts up a sign. A sign, by the way, that many tourists cannot read or will simply ignore.
Why Tourist Behavior Crumbles
So let’s connect the wires. You have a tourist from a low-context culture. They are conditioned to look for explicit rules. They see none. They are also conditioned to test boundaries. They push. The high-context culture of Japan is conditioned to never push back directly. It is seen as rude, aggressive, and disruptive to social harmony (wa). The tourist pushes. The local recoils, smiles, and says nothing. The tourist, receiving no hard “no,” perceives a soft “yes.”
This is the fatal interaction. The tourist is not trying to be malicious. They are operating on their own cultural software. They are seeking a hard barrier. Japan refuses to provide one. Instead, it relies on implicit understanding. It relies on ambient social pressure. This pressure is invisible to someone who is not from here. The tourist is blind to the very signals the culture sends. Consequently, the bad tourist behavior is not corrected. It is, in fact, silently encouraged by a lack of negative reinforcement.
Think about it. In New York, if you stand in the wrong place, someone will yell at you. In Paris, you will get a dismissive sigh and an eye-roll. In London, you will be passive-aggressively tutted. These are all forms of direct, low-context feedback. You learn. You adjust. In Kyoto, you get a pained smile. You learn nothing. You just keep doing the wrong thing, completely unaware of the chaos you are causing.
The Great Cultural Disconnect
This disconnect is the entire story. Japan’s tourism policies, as Professor Yusuke Ishiguro points out, focused only on numbers. They wanted more visitors. They got them. They just never built the social or physical infrastructure to handle them. They never created a “user manual” for the tourists they invited. They just opened the doors to the museum and seemed shocked when people started touching the exhibits. They forgot to tell them not to.
Now, they are in the “considering” phase. This is a classic Japanese bureaucratic response. It means “doing nothing.” It means more meetings. It means more faxes. Meanwhile, the viral loop continues to spin. The hordes keep coming. The tourist behavior gets worse. And the locals in Kyoto suffer.
The Japan Travel Paradox
Here is the savage paradox. Japan wants the money. It needs the money. As Gary Bowerman says, tourism is a pillar of economic growth. It is national branding. It creates jobs. Japan is desperate for this international wealth. It is playing the global tourism game. But it is playing with a 1980s rulebook.
It demands the dollars of the modern world. But it forces that world into a compact, rigid, analog box. A box that cannot accommodate the very people holding the wealth. And when the box inevitably breaks, when Kyoto groans and the Fuji view is blocked, Japan Inc. cries about it. It laments the bad tourist behavior. It wrings its hands. It blames the foreigners. It never, ever blames its own profound, systemic, analog failure.
This is the shitty game Japan Inc. is playing. It is demanding 21st-century profits while offering a 20th-century user experience. It refuses to adapt. It refuses to learn languages. It refuses to decentralize. It refuses to put up clear, unambiguous, low-context rules in places like Kyoto. It wants the world’s money, but it refuses to meet the world halfway. This strategy is doomed. It is failing right now, in real-time.
More Than Just Kyoto and Tokyo
The failure to promote other regions is a critical error. Japan travel should not just be the Golden Route. This country has 47 prefectures. It has staggering natural beauty. It has unique sub-cultures, incredible food, and amazing history far beyond the gates of Kyoto. But Japan’s tourism bodies are lazy. They push the same five things. They funnel millions of people into the same few square kilometers. This is not a tourism strategy. It is a recipe for disaster. It is a self-inflicted wound.
Look at this list. These are the failures of Japan Inc.:
Failure to Decentralize: Over-promoting Kyoto and Tokyo.
Failure to Communicate: Refusing to adopt low-context, multilingual signage and rules.
Failure to Modernize: Relying on analog systems to manage digital-speed problems.
Failure to Engage: Using passive-aggression instead of direct, helpful correction.
A System Built to Break
So, no, I do not blame the average tourist entirely. I blame the broken system they are walking into. A system that invites them in. A system that takes their money. And a system that simultaneously fails to manage them, guide them, or communicate with them. It is a system built to break. And it is breaking.
The authorities are struggling. They cannot enforce the rules. As Bowerman notes, “No country wants to be seen to be locking up tourists. It’s just bad PR.” This is the ultimate checkmate. Japan’s system is paralyzed. It cannot use direct correction (cultural taboo). And it cannot use punitive enforcement (bad PR). It is trapped. The only lever it has left is to shut things down. To build barriers. To close roads. This is an admission of defeat. It is the end of a sustainable Japan travel model.
The “struggle for balance” is a myth. There is no struggle. There is just a slow, grinding system failure. The old Japan is dying. The new, globalized Japan is struggling to be born. The overtourism crisis is just the sound of these two worlds tearing each other apart.
Where Do We Go From Here?
This is a quantum problem. It requires a quantum leap. Japan must change. It must modernize its thinking. It must learn to be direct. It must learn to set hard, clear, low-context boundaries. It must use digital tools to manage digital problems. It must, for the love of God, start promoting Tohoku, and Shikoku, and San’in. It must spread the load. This is the only way Japan travel survives. This is the only way Kyoto is saved.
And for the traveler? You have a responsibility, too. This is my advice:
Be a Good Human: This is the baseline. Do not be an idiot. Be respectful.
Recognize the System: Understand you are in a high-context culture. Look for the subtle cues.
Assume You Are "Wrong": The lack of a "no" is not a "yes." Assume the quiet garden is off-limits. Assume the narrow lane is private.
Get Off the Beaten Path: Do not just go to Kyoto. Explore. Find the real Japan. It is waiting for you. And it is empty. My guide to exploring Tohoku
The future of Japan travel is not in ruins. Not yet. But the warning lights are flashing bright red. The system is overloaded. The current tourist behavior is just the frantic sound of the alarm bell.
Beyond the Hordes
I still believe in this place. I believe in the transformative power of Japan travel. It is a journey into a different mode of thinking. A different way of being. It is a cosmic shift in perspective. But that journey is currently being smothered under the weight of its own success. It is being choked by an analog mindset. Why I still believe in Japan
We are at a junction. Japan can choose to modernize. It can make the leap. It can build a sustainable, smart, and distributed tourism model for the 21st century. Or it can continue to build walls. It can continue to complain. It can continue to slowly curdle under the pressure. The future of Kyoto, and of Japan travel itself, depends entirely on what it does next. The hordes are not the problem. They are just the catalyst. The real crisis is one of identity. It is time for Japan to decide what it wants to be.
Get the Real Japan Strategy
This is a complex navigation. You cannot just show up and hope for the best. You need a strategy. You need to understand the cultural operating system. I have spent years decoding this place. If you want to experience the real Japan, beyond the crowds and the chaos, you need to know the rules. Sign up for my newsletter for the unfiltered truth.