The area around the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward is bustling with foreign tourists on Oct. 23, 2025. (Mainichi/Kenjiro Sato)
HIROSHIMA — A total of 64.74 million tourists including 4.22 million from overseas visited Hiroshima Prefecture in 2024, according to a local tourism association, which is encouraging travelers to see more than just its popular attractions.
With the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward and Itsukushima Shrine in the city of Hatsukaichi, the prefecture is internationally known as a “Peace Capital” and appears to be blessed with rich tourism resources.
However, a representative from the Hiroshima Tourism Association told the Mainichi Shimbun, “We’re aware of the problem about whether visitors are truly enjoying what Hiroshima has to offer.” According to them, these two World Heritage Sites are so well known that tourists tend to concentrate in these spots and rarely explore any other parts of the prefecture.
The official emphasized, “We need to encourage them (visitors) to repeatedly come back, instead of ending the tour of Hiroshima once they’ve seen the two World Heritage Sites.”
According to research by the tourism association, the municipalities in Hiroshima Prefecture that attracted the most visitors in 2024 were Hiroshima with 15.41 million people, followed by Hatsukaichi with 8.31 million, Onomichi with 6.67 million, and Fukuyama with 5.56 million.
Many students on school trips and foreign tourists gather in the area around the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward on Oct. 23, 2025. (Mainichi/Kenjiro Sato)
At the end of October, a Mainichi reporter spoke with visitors in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was bustling with tourists and students on school trips. Yasuhiro Suzuki, 64, from the Osaka Prefecture city of Ibaraki, who was visiting with his wife, said they were staying one night before returning home after touring the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. He said, “Hiroshima is more a place to learn about peace than a sightseeing destination.”
A 78-year-old woman from the city of Nagoya, visiting with seven high school classmates, said it was her first trip to Hiroshima in 60 years since her school excursion. She explained, “The Atomic Bomb Dome, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Miyajima, and Itsukushima Shrine … other than those, I can’t immediately think of any other places in Hiroshima.”
Several initiatives have been introduced to encourage visitors to travel beyond the two major sites. The prefectural government is making efforts to promote a “hands-on school excursion” program that started in the 2000s, in which participants stay with families of farmers or fishermen in the hope that interacting with locals would lead to repeat visits. Efforts are also being made to promote the “Yokagura” traditional Japanese theatrical dance by local groups held on Wednesday evenings from April to December at the Hiroshima Prefectural Citizen’s Cultural Center in central Hiroshima.
The prefectural government regards tourism as one of its key policy pillars and is working with advertising agencies and filmmakers to run proactive campaigns such as the 2012 self-deprecating promotion campaign “Oshii! Hiroshima” (“So close! Hiroshima.”)
The number of tourists to Hiroshima surpassed 60 million for the first time in 2013 and continued to hit record highs for six consecutive years until 2017. Although the figures temporarily declined due to the 2018 torrential rains and the COVID-19 pandemic, they have now recovered to pre-pandemic levels following the Group of Seven (G7) summit held in Hiroshima in 2023.
The prefecture aims to attract 100 million visitors by 2030. However, amid the number of Japanese visitors stagnating and international conditions making inbound tourism unreliable, Hiroshima’s tourist industry is still searching for ways to achieve this goal.
(Japanese original by Satoshi Kawahara, Hiroshima Bureau)
AloJapan.com