A Kyoto bottleneck reveals Japan’s wider tourism challenges

Benjamin Boas is a Tokyo-based cultural policy consultant and author of From Cool Japan to Your Japan.

At Kyoto Station recently, I found myself in an odd queue: not waiting to board the Shinkansen, but waiting to leave the Shinkansen area. The line had backed up onto the stairs, where people were leaning against suitcases, trying to work out whether they were in the wrong place or caught in a system that had stopped moving.