Foreign visitors to Japan rose 33 percent last month to their highest on record for a February as a weakening yen boosted travelers' buying power, the Japan National Tourism Organization said in a report Friday.
Arrivals increased to 729,500 in February, from 547,948 a year earlier, it said. That's the highest for a February, according to tourism agency statistics going back to 1964.
Tourists are taking advantage of the Japanese government's efforts to curb the yen as a way to boost the economy by helping exporters, said Masahiro Yabuta, an economics professor at Tokyo's Chuo University. The government has pledged stimulus measures, dubbed "Abenomics" after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, causing the yen to depreciate about 20 percent since mid-November following a postwar high of 75.35 reached in October 2011.