The 13 Trillion Yen Market Created by the “Two Waves” of Inbound Tourism and Foreign Residents in Japan: Why Overseas Manufacturers Are Rapidly Growing in Japan

あゆみ佐藤
Jan 15
4 min read

Introduction: The New Reality Behind Japan’s ¥8.1 Trillion Inbound Spend in 2024

In 2024, inbound visitor spending in Japan reached ¥8.1 trillion, setting a new record. This is a market of national-scale significance. At the same time, the number of foreign residents in Japan has risen to around 2.67 million, and annual consumption by this group is estimated at roughly ¥5 trillion.

Together, inbound visitor spending and foreign-resident consumption form an approximately ¥13 trillion “foreign consumer market” inside Japan.

Yet many overseas brands still undercapitalize on this opportunity. The reason is straightforward: much of Japan’s e-commerce and retail infrastructure has historically been built for Japanese-only users, and “multilingual support” has often been treated as an afterthought.

That assumption is about to break. 2026 is shaping up to be a turning point.

Inbound Spending Has Evolved: From “Bulk Buying” to “Deep Consumption”

Japan’s inbound spending surge in 2024—up 50%+ year over year—cannot be explained solely by more visitors. It reflects a qualitative shift in how visitors spend.

Higher Spend per Visitor

Average travel spending per inbound visitor in 2024 reached ¥227,000, up roughly 30% versus 2019.This indicates that demand is increasingly driven not just by “low prices,” but by experience, quality, and trust.

Spending is especially strong in Western markets. Annual per-capita spend figures include:

United Kingdom: around ¥409,000
Australia: around ¥400,000
Spain: ¥370,714 (2024 annual)

Different Markets Spend in Different Ways

Inbound spending behavior varies dramatically by country and region.

For example, Chinese visitors show unusually high shopping intensity:per-capita spend is ¥277,747, with shopping alone at ¥119,373 (about 43%).

Meanwhile, Spanish visitors tend to allocate more to experience-led categories:per-capita spend is ¥370,714, including

accommodation: ¥147,304 (40.8%)
food and beverages: ¥83,301

This diversity means a single uniform strategy—“sell the same message to all foreign shoppers”—no longer works.

How Google Lens Is Changing the Purchase Journey: Discovery in Store → Purchase Online

A key behavioral shift is being driven by Google Lens.

Traditionally, an inbound shopper’s purchase journey often looked like this:

Discover a product in a store
Check price/quality
Decide
Buy

Now, the journey increasingly looks like this:

Discover a product in a department store, drugstore, convenience store, etc.
Use Google Lens to search by photographing the product
From Google search results, open multiple sales channels (Rakuten, Amazon, Yahoo! Shopping, brand-owned sites, etc.)
Check price, availability, shipping conditions
Purchase instantly (shipping to a hotel or to the shopper’s home country)

In other words: offline discovery is becoming a direct driver of online revenue.When a traveler scans a product, whether a multilingual product page appears—or a Japanese-only page—can decide who wins the sale.

The Foreign Resident Market: A ¥5 Trillion Engine of Repeat Purchasing

The second wave is the growing market of foreign residents in Japan.With around 2.67 million foreign residents, estimated annual consumption reaches about ¥5 trillion (based on population and estimated average annual spending).

How Foreign Residents Buy Differently

Compared with short-stay inbound visitors, foreign residents show distinct patterns:

Repeat purchasing of everyday goods and services
Longer lifetime value, with stays ranging from months to multiple years
Consumption that often evolves from essentials to higher-value categories over time

Their information sources are also highly digital:

websites: about 45%
social media: about 28%

This makes multilingual web presence a decisive factor in conversion.

Multilingual Support Is Shifting From “Nice-to-Have” to Competitive Advantage

For years, multilingual support in Japan was often framed as corporate social responsibility or “internationalization.”Now it increasingly functions as a direct revenue lever.

Case: Seven Bank’s Multilingual Strategy

Seven Bank has expanded multilingual support across ATMs, web, and mobile apps (in nine languages) to improve accessibility for foreign customers. The bank has maintained strong profitability levels among Japanese financial institutions.

In international remittance services, processes have been significantly streamlined so that funds can be received in as little as a few minutes, directly solving a high-frequency problem for foreign workers and residents.

Seven Bank also built internal multilingual capability and feedback loops to reflect foreign customer needs into service design.

Japan’s Multilingual Gap Is a Growth Opportunity for Overseas Brands

Despite strong demand, many local businesses in areas with growing foreign populations—restaurants, pharmacies, salons, clinics—still do not offer robust multilingual support.

This gap creates a clear opening: overseas brands that build the basics early—multilingual commerce, multilingual support, and region-appropriate payments—can outpace slower incumbents.

Categories With Particularly High Upside

Health supplements and wellness productsClear, multilingual usage guidance can dramatically reduce hesitation.
Beauty and cosmetics“Discover in store → scan → buy online” behavior is already taking hold.
Food and beveragesGift and souvenir purchasing is highly dependent on understandable descriptions and gifting support.

Payment Localization Matters as Much as Language

Alongside multilingual UX, payment options often decide conversion.

China: WeChat Pay, Alipay, UnionPay
South Asia: Google Pay, QR payments
Western markets: credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay
Southeast Asia: country-specific QR schemes (PromptPay, VietQR, etc.)

Large Japanese platforms already support many payment types. But for overseas brands running their own storefronts, payment localization is often behind—creating avoidable conversion loss.

A Practical 5-Step Roadmap: Enter Small, Scale Fast

Step 1: Validate demand via marketplacesUse Rakuten and Amazon to test demand with minimal infrastructure burden.

Step 2: Launch multilingual layers on a brand-owned siteAdopt SaaS-based multilingual solutions starting at a manageable budget range.

Step 3: Optimize product data for Google Lens discoveryUse high-quality images, multilingual product specs, and structured information.

Step 4: Add multilingual customer supportStart with AI chat plus multilingual FAQs; expand gradually.

Step 5: Localize payment options by shopper originImplement region-appropriate payment rails and dynamically surface relevant options.

Conclusion: 2026 Is the Year Japan’s “Foreign Consumer Market” Opens Fully

Japan already contains a foreign consumer market of approximately ¥13 trillion—driven by ¥8.1 trillion in inbound spending and an estimated ¥5 trillion in foreign-resident consumption.

In 2026, the gap between companies that have built basic infrastructure—multilingual commerce, localized payments, and Google Lens-ready product content—and those that have not will widen sharply.

Japan is not simply “a market with a language barrier.”It is a market where multilingual execution can become the access key to a massive growth pool.

Comments

Environmental Impact Strategy Transforms into Competitiveness: Why Green Logistics Will Dominate Japan's E-Commerce Market in 2026

A major regulatory shift awaits: In 2026, readiness for the consumer law revision will determine competitiveness.

Entertainment Merges with Sales: Overseas Manufacturers' Strategy to Dominate Japan's E-Commerce Market Through the Live Commerce Revolution in 2026

“Security is Sales Defense”: Japan's E-Commerce Market Strategy for 2026, Where Fraud Prevention Becomes a Competitive Advantage

Why the “Remedia Tail Empire” is Thriving in Japan: A 2026 Strategy for Overseas Manufacturers

The Era Where “Payment” Determines Competitiveness: Payment Strategies for Overseas Manufacturers to Win in Japan by 2026

The End of Tracking Becomes the Beginning of Trust: Overseas Manufacturers' Strategy to Dominate the Japanese Market with First-Party Data by 2026

Why Japan's E-Commerce Market Will Attract Overseas Manufacturers in 2026: New Business Opportunities in the Era of Adaptive Commerce