beyondbrics

Japan is getting older. The older it gets, the more it relies on demand from emerging market consumers.

That’s why Japan has decided to make a shopping holiday a little bit easier.

The Japanese foreign ministry on Tuesday announced it will in July ease its requirements for tourist visas for individual Chinese, a step that national broadcaster NHK reckons could help raise the number of visitors from Asia’s fastest rising economic power roughly sixfold to 6m by 2016.

With Japan still digging itself out of its sharpest post war slump, the motive for a more liberal visa programme is clear: NHK showed footage of Chinese tourists “going on a buying spree” at a Tokyo electronics store and saying they were much bigger spenders than visitors from the US or South Korea.

Japan started issuing individual tourist visas to Chinese only a year ago, amid gradual acceptance that their value as a source of economic growth outweighed worries about fuelling illegal immigration.

Chinese individual tourists have been required to demonstrate an annual income of at least Rmb250,000, a demand that Japanese media say will be changed to merely posession of a “gold” credit card, usually held by people with income of Rmb60,000 or more.

The foreign ministry did not give details of its new lower income requirement, but said that the number of consulates able to issue individual tourist visas would be increased from three to seven and the number of tour agencies approved to handle them increased from 48 to 290.

The message is clear: Japan wants Mrs Wang to come over, and it wants her to bring her credit cards.