First-of-its-kind system for Kyoto would raise maintenance funding and fight overtourism, proponents say, but will it really reduce crowd sizes?

Many of Japan’s castles were built by a local samurai lord, but Kyoto’s Nijo Castle is an exception in that it was built specifically for use by out-of-towners. Constructed in 1624, Nijo Castle, and the attached Ninomaru Palace, were the Kyoto residence of Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, and his heirs, a place for them to stay when they rolled into Kyoto on official business from Edo (as Tokyo was called in those days).

However, starting next year out-of-towners are probably going to be paying twice as much to get into the castle, as Kyoto’s mayor Koji Matsui has announced plans for a two-tiered admission system.

Currently, the combined ticket for Nijo Castle and Ninomaru Palace is priced at 1,300 yen (US$8.15). Under the new system, the admission price for residents of Kyoto City would be reduced, down to just 1,000 yen, while non-residents of the city would pay double, 2,000 yen. “By raising the admission price [for non-residents], additional funds can be applied to maintenance,” said Matsui, “and hopefully our city’s residents can more easily come visit the castle.” The new pricing structure would make Nijo Castle the first tourism facility in the city with a two-tier admission system.

It’s no secret that even among Japan’s major tourism attractions, no other city in the country is feeling quite as overtouristed as Kyoto is these days, with a growing sense that the city’s atmosphere and the lifestyles of local residents are being disrupted. To illustrate the amount of visitors Kyoto has been receiving, in 2025 2.07 million people visited Nijo Castle, but only about 2 percent of them were Kyoto City residents.

However, while Kyoto is filled with more international visitors than ever before, Nijo Castle’s two-tier pricing system wouldn’t charge the higher price exclusively to foreign tourists. Domestic Japanese travelers who don’t live in the city would also pay 2,000 yen for admission, even those coming from other cities within Kyoto Prefecture.

All else equal, the reduced ticket price for residents will make it easier, financially speaking, for Kyotoites to visit Nijo Castle. It’s unlikely, though, that charging out-of-towners more is going to significantly improve overcrowding. Again, there are two groups of people who would be paying the 2,000-yen admission, Japanese residents of cities other than Kyoto, and foreign tourists. For foreign tourists, many of whom have been drawn to Japan at least in part by the weak yen, having to pay an extra 700 yen, equivalent to less than US$4.50, probably isn’t going to make anyone cross Nijo Castle off their itinerary. That price increase is going to feel like more of a demotivating factor to Japanese domestic travelers, but for many of them Kyoto has already lost a lot of its allure as a sightseeing destination, what with the prevailing image of Kyoto these days being that it’s packed with foreign tourists and prices for hotels have skyrocketed, so at most it’d be a situation of a dip in numbers from an already deflated demographic.

Matsui says the draft ordinance for Niko Castle’s two-tier ticket system will be formally introduced at a city council meeting next month, and would go into effect in the spring of next year.

Source: MBS, Nitele News
Top image: Wikipedia/Smallpei
Insert images: Wikipedia/ほっきー
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