The lacklustre growth in outbound travel amongst Japanese people is sparking concerns that its younger generation will grow up with little overseas experience, which could affect the future strength and competitiveness of the country.

In 2023, the number of people traveling overseas remained at around 60% of pre-COVID levels and domestic overnight trips continued to fall below the previous year's level. The number of overseas travellers exceeded 20 million for the first time in 2019 due to the launch of low-cost airline services, but the passport ownership rate has since fallen to 17.0% in 2023 from 23.8% in 2019.

Hiroyuki Takahashi, Chairman of the Japan Association of Travel Agents, is concerned about the decline in overseas experiences among young people. In a 2018 Cabinet Office survey, 53% of young people (aged 13-29) answered that they "do not want to study abroad". In South Korea, Europe, and the US, the figure is said to be in the 20-30% range.

Japan wants its young people to travel. There are measures to have local governments cover the cost of passport issuances and for the upper limit on school trip expenses for public schools to be reviewed, allowing students to travel abroad. According to a survey by SHIBUYA109lab (ages 15-24, 2023) the top three reasons fuelling this reluctance to travel amongst the Japanese are concerns over economic conditions, public safety, and language skills.

Source: https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOCD102L70Q4A910C2000000/

What this means for the UK

The internationalisation of the higher education system has been pursued in Japan for some time, with Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT) providing various measures, including financial assistance, to both students and Japanese universities. Amid the current economic sluggishness however, both universities and MEXT have pointed out that they are in need of a significantly increased budget to support outward student mobility. Raising the number of international university partnerships at which the fees for Japanese students on student exchange programmes can be waived has been identified as one possible solution to encourage mobility.

Many universities in Japan also believe the UK’s higher English language requirement is a deterrent to Japanese students looking to enrol in a student exchange programme. As exchange students are typically strong advocates of UK higher education after returning to Japan, and who themselves form an important pool of potential students who will progress on to higher levels of study in the UK, an option might be to include pre-sessional English for students with lower English-language competency as part of the exchange programme.