Every spring, as the wave of blossoms sweeps up the archipelago from south to north, washing up from the coasts into the higher altitudes, travelers flood into Japan. Rivaled only by the cool autumn months that redden maple leaves across the country, March and April are high season for tourism in Japan.
Overseas and, to an extent, domestically, the travel industry promotes the country with a barrage of images of frothy white blossoms set against Japan's most iconic sights: castles, geisha, Mount Fuji. In glossy brochures and on image-heavy websites, tour companies feature spring trips that begin in Kyoto and terminate in Tokyo, keeping pace with the cherry blossom front.
For the travel industry, the March 11 disaster could hardly have struck at a worse time. The threat of radiation — paired with travel warnings that reached as far south as Tokyo — hit home with prospective holidaymakers. Travelers scrapped their vacation plans; tour companies cancelled many scheduled group tours. Not surprisingly, Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) statistics for March confirm a plunge in visitor numbers to 352,800 arrivals — half the previous year's total of 709,684. Figures that had been steadily climbing over the last decade fell suddenly to record lows.