An estimated 5,457,000 people from abroad visited national parks in Japan in 2016, up 11 percent from the previous year, the Environment Ministry said Tuesday.
The government hopes to increase the number of visitors from abroad to the 33 national parks to 10 million by 2020, when the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will be held.
The government plans to beef up measures to increase international visitors to the parks, particularly to those in rural areas, to help meet the target.
Among the visitors, some 2 million were from China, followed by about 1 million from Taiwan and 800,000 from South Korea.
The park that attracted the most foreign visitors was the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park straddling Tokyo, Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures with nearly 2.6 million foreign visitors.
Also among popular parks were the Shikotsu-Toya National Park in Hokkaido, at 827,000 foreign visitors, and the Aso-Kuju National Park in the Kyushu area, at 675,000.