I noticed a report in the Cairns Post this morning regarding an initiative aimed at reviving Japanese tourism to Far North Queensland:
THE tourism industry is pinning its hopes on a new joint Australia and Japan tourism campaign to return Japanese numbers to 200,000 or more by the year 2015.
The Australia-Japan Tourism Exchange Year 2013 also is intended to encourage Far North Queenslanders to travel to the Land of the Rising Sun on the direct flights operated by Jetstar between Cairns, Osaka and Tokyo.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive officer Rob Giason said the region was continuing to rebuild the market with an Australian holiday market share of 39 per cent of Japanese visitors to Australia….
…To the year ended September 2012, 91,000 Japanese tourists had visited the region, the same as the previous year.
I think it’s unlikely we’ll ever see Japanese tourism numbers back to where they once were, given population ageing and the projected decline in the Japanese population over coming decades, as highlighted in the UN population projections below (available at this link):
Luckily for our tourism industry, however, Chinese tourism is growing strongly. For example, see this post of mine from October:
Positive outlook for Far North tourism with direct flights from China about to commence
Queensland Economy Watch 
I think it’s unlikely too, though not impossible. Older Japanese people love to travel, trouble is many of them have already been to Australia (especially Cairns and the Gold Coast), while less younger people seem to have any interest in even owning a passport.
Thanks. That’s interesting about younger Japanese people having less interest in travel.
This was mainly from anecdotal statements – though I’ve had a lot of people saying to me over the past year how little interest they have in overseas travel. I checked some stats though, and there is a reducing trend in passport ownership – about 16% less per year from 2007. There seems to be about 26% of the population with a passport atm