Mt Fuji Overtourism: The Lawson Fence and What Comes Next

In April 2024, the Yamanashi-side town of Fujikawaguchiko gave up. Three years of escalating complaints from residents, business owners, and one exhausted dental clinic culminated in a 2.5-metre-high, 20-metre-wide black mesh barrier erected across from a Lawson convenience store. Its single purpose: to block the view of Mount Fuji that had made this specific intersection one of the most photographed spots in Japan. Within a week, tourists had poked ten finger-sized holes through the mesh to take photos through them anyway.

The Fuji Lawson fence is the most-publicised single symptom of a much bigger problem. Mount Fuji has become the flashpoint for Japan’s overtourism debate. This guide walks through what’s actually happening, what’s been tried, and what it means for anyone planning a Mt Fuji visit now.

Quick facts at a glance

• The Lawson fence: 2.5 m tall, 20 m wide black mesh barrier, installed April 2024 in Fujikawaguchiko
• Status: Partially dismantled in 2025 after mesh fencing was added elsewhere; the spot remains managed
• Climbing fee 2024: ¥2,000 on the Yoshida Trail (Yamanashi side); daily cap of 4,000 climbers
• Climbing fee 2025: ¥4,000 on all four trails (both Yamanashi and Shizuoka sides)
• Annual Fuji climbers pre-pandemic: ~300,000. 2024 season: ~170,000 (cap working)
• Record 2024 foreign visitors to Japan: 36.9 million — a new all-time high
• Main drivers of surge: Weak yen, social media, pandemic-era closure making Japan a rebound destination
• Worth visiting now? Yes, with specific plans — spontaneous visits are increasingly compromised

What is the Fuji Lawson fence?

A specific intersection in Fujikawaguchiko town, Yamanashi Prefecture, had an unusually photogenic composition: a ground-level Lawson convenience store with Mount Fuji rising directly behind it, visible from across the road. The juxtaposition — mundane modern Japan in foreground, sacred mountain in background — went viral on Instagram and TikTok around 2022. By 2023, the spot was drawing thousands of photographers per day.

The problems were specific and local:

• Jaywalking: Tourists stood in the middle of the road to get the best angle. Multiple near-misses with vehicles. Residents reported being afraid to drive down their own street.
• Unauthorised parking: Tourists abandoned rental cars in private driveways, ambulance bays, and disabled-access spaces. A dental clinic across the street was repeatedly blocked from operation.
• Climbing private property: To get a higher angle, some tourists climbed onto the rooftop of the dental clinic. The clinic director eventually erected his own private fence.
• Verbal abuse: When residents asked tourists to move their cars, some responded with insults. Lit cigarettes were thrown into private yards.
• Litter: Food wrappers, plastic bottles, empty coffee cups accumulated daily. Local sanitation couldn’t keep up.

Local authorities tried warning signs in multiple languages first. Then security guards. Then a private fence from the clinic. Nothing worked. In April 2024, the municipality installed the black mesh barrier across the entire visible sightline. Photos from that spot were now impossible.

What happened next?

The fence itself became a tourist attraction.

Within a week of installation, small finger-sized holes appeared in the mesh — visitors trying to photograph Fuji through gaps. Local authorities noted with resignation that the holes weren’t actually large enough to take decent photos (the mesh showed in the frame), but the point had been made: some visitors would rather damage public infrastructure than accept they’d missed the shot.

International media picked up the story. The BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Time, AFP, and Kyodo News all ran features on the Fuji Lawson saga through 2024. The fence ironically became more famous than the original Fuji-behind-Lawson composition had been.

In 2025, the municipality partially dismantled the original mesh and replaced it with more-permanent managed-access fencing. The spot is now accessible from a specific vantage point during specific hours, with signage directing photographers away from the previous rooftop-and-middle-of-road positions. The Lawson itself continues to operate, selling the same onigiri and coffee it always did.

Why did this become a global story?

The Lawson fence symbolised a set of tensions playing out across Japan:

1. Record tourist numbers

Japan welcomed 36.9 million foreign visitors in 2024, a new all-time high. The previous record (2019 pre-pandemic) was 31.9 million. The weak yen made Japan significantly cheaper for Western visitors, and pandemic-era pent-up demand produced a rebound surge that has not yet plateaued.

2. Uneven distribution

The tourist volume is concentrated in a specific set of destinations: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Mt Fuji, and a handful of others. Rural Japan remains emptier than ever. But the locations that do get tourists get vastly more than they’re staffed or zoned to handle.

3. Residents versus photographers

Many of the flashpoints involve specific neighbourhoods. Gion in Kyoto banned photography in some streets after geisha reported being chased for photos. Tsukiji outer market has restricted tour-group access. Fujikawaguchiko put up the fence. These are local-governance responses to specific local grievances, not national policy.

4. Social media as amplifier

The specific Fuji Lawson composition existed for decades before anyone noticed it. It became famous in 2022 through a specific cluster of Instagram and TikTok posts, and the virality fed on itself. Every new photo added to the draw. Social-media-driven overtourism is now a documented category of problem with specific planning responses.

What are the climbing changes at Mt Fuji?

Separate from the Lawson fence, the Mt Fuji climbing experience has changed significantly in 2024 and 2025.

The 2024 Yamanashi changes

The Yamanashi side of Mt Fuji (home to the popular Yoshida Trail, the most-used route to the summit) introduced:

• ¥2,000 entry fee: Per climber, charged at the fifth station (trailhead).
• Daily cap of 4,000 climbers: On the Yoshida Trail only. Enforced via an online reservation system.
• Overnight climbing ban: “Bullet climbing” (tsukan tozan, climbing to the summit overnight without sleeping in a mountain hut) was banned between 4pm and 3am. Exceptions only for booked hut guests.

The goals were specific: reduce injuries from exhausted bullet climbers, reduce the trash left by climbers too tired to carry it down, and reduce the volume of unprepared casual climbers who were overwhelming mountain rescue services.

The 2025 Shizuoka changes

The three Shizuoka-side trails (Subashiri, Gotemba, Fujinomiya) matched the Yamanashi pricing in 2025:

• ¥4,000 entry fee: Per climber, on all three Shizuoka trails. The higher price reflected less infrastructure vs Yamanashi.
• No daily cap yet on Shizuoka: Though monitoring is in place to enforce if crowding becomes unmanageable.

Combined effect: the 2024 climbing season saw ~170,000 climbers, down substantially from the pre-pandemic average of ~300,000. The caps are working, the overcrowding is being managed, and the climb itself is a better experience for the people who do make the reservation.

What does this mean for day-trippers?

If you’re not climbing but want to see Fuji from Kawaguchiko or one of the other Five Lakes areas, you are still welcome — but specific viewpoint management is changing.

• Chureito Pagoda (Arakurayama Sengen Park): Now operates timed entry during peak cherry blossom season. Queues can exceed 90 minutes if you arrive mid-morning on a weekend. The sunrise window before 7am is still open but increasingly busy.
• Lake Kawaguchi north shore: No specific restrictions, but informal local preferences are shifting against off-path photography on private land.
• Oshino Hakkai: Parking now ticketed; the village charges an informal entrance expected-fee for visitors.
• Former Lawson fence location: Managed-access fencing in place. Specific photo-opportunity hours; no middle-of-road positioning.

All of this is solvable with planning. Arrive early. Respect private property. Use legitimate parking. Book your climbing permit if climbing. Check current access conditions on the Fujikawaguchiko tourism portal before you travel. The broader Fuji day-trip experience, which we cover in our Mt Fuji day trip guide, is still worth doing — it just requires more preparation than it did in 2019.

What do locals want?

This varies dramatically by specific community, but the clearer themes:

• Predictable tourism. Volume distributed across time and location, rather than concentrated on specific days, specific viewpoints, and specific hours.
• Economic benefit to residents, not just outside operators. Many of the problem destinations generate revenue that leaves the local community (day-trip tourists stay elsewhere, spend little locally). Residents want accommodation taxes and entrance fees to fund local infrastructure.
• Respect for private property. Jaywalking, rooftop climbing, and parking violations are the specific behaviours that triggered the Lawson fence and most similar measures.
• Working environment. The dental clinic case — unable to operate because tourists blocked driveways — is the template for resident complaints across Kyoto, Kamakura, and Nara. Businesses cannot function.

Local authorities have been experimenting with responses: tourist taxes (Kyoto city added a ¥200 per night accommodation tax in 2024 with plans to raise it further), geisha-district private-lane bans (Gion 2023), limited access passes (Biei in Hokkaido), and specific-spot barriers (Fujikawaguchiko 2024). Some work, some don’t, but the direction of policy is consistent.

What’s the broader context?

Japan is experiencing overtourism in a specific way that’s different from other overtourism case studies (Venice, Barcelona, Amsterdam). The Japanese version has three characteristics:

1. Cultural politeness versus capacity limits

Japanese hospitality and rule-following is a cultural strength that also means local businesses and residents are slow to push back. Years of problems accumulated before the Fuji Lawson fence finally went up. The gap between “first complaint” and “structural response” is longer in Japan than in most European overtourism cases.

2. Rural destination specificity

Tourists cluster at specific viewpoints rather than spreading across regions. In Europe, city-level overtourism hits whole neighbourhoods; in Japan, the problems are usually a specific intersection, a specific street, a specific bamboo grove, a specific shrine approach. This makes targeted-fence responses practical in a way they aren’t elsewhere.

3. Genuine size of the surge

Japan’s tourism has roughly doubled from 2012 to 2024 (from ~18 million to 36.9 million annual visitors). Infrastructure that was stressed at 2015 levels is now operating at 2x that volume. The mismatch is structural, not anecdotal.

What do the political debates look like?

The overtourism issue has entered Japanese national politics in ways that would have seemed improbable five years ago. Issues now being debated publicly:

• Dual pricing: Should Japanese residents pay less than foreign tourists at public attractions? Some venues are already doing this quietly; the debate about formalising it is ongoing. (We cover this in detail in our Japan dual-pricing debate piece.)
• Tourism tax: Should the national accommodation tax be increased? Current departure tax is ¥1,000 per person; proposals for ¥3,000–¥5,000 are actively discussed.
• Visa restrictions: Should easy tourist-visa entry be tightened? This overlaps with broader anti-foreigner political movements. (Our anti-tourism politics piece covers this.)
• Regional dispersion: Should tourism be actively redirected to less-visited regions? Government programs exist but have had limited impact so far.

How should you plan a Fuji visit now?

The specific advice for a 2026 visit:

• If viewing from Kawaguchiko: Arrive early (before 8am). Use public transport from Tokyo — parking is tight. Accept that the Lawson fence area is managed access; don’t go there specifically.
• If climbing: Book your Yoshida Trail permit online at least 2–3 weeks ahead. Book a hut stay if you plan to climb overnight. Pack out all your trash. Carry the ¥4,000 fee in cash.
• If photographing: The classic Chureito Pagoda viewpoint still works. Arrive at sunrise (~6am) for minimal crowds. Don’t try for the Lawson shot — the managed access makes it impossible anyway.
• If visiting during peak season: Golden Week (late April / early May), summer school holidays (July-August), and cherry blossom (late March / early April) are when crowds are worst. If you have flexibility, October-November gives you clearer weather and fewer tourists.

Will the overtourism situation improve?

Unclear.

The 2024–2025 policy responses (climbing caps, fences, local access management) have helped in specific locations but haven’t reduced national-level visitor volumes. Japan’s tourism ministry projects 60 million annual visitors by 2030 — nearly double the 2024 record. Infrastructure planning is not keeping up with that trajectory.

Two scenarios are plausible:

• Scenario A (managed): Japan continues implementing targeted caps, fees, and redirection programs. Tourist volumes stabilise or increase slowly. Individual destinations remain busy but manageable.
• Scenario B (political intervention): If anti-tourist political sentiment continues to grow, harder measures — visa caps, significantly higher taxes, mandatory tour-group channeling — could be implemented within 3–5 years.

Most current observers expect Scenario A. Japan’s economic dependence on tourism revenue makes hard restrictions politically difficult, even as the problems accumulate. For individual travellers, the practical upshot is: book ahead, respect the fences, skip the photo spots that are clearly saturated. Avoid acting like a Lawson-fence-poking tourist and you’ll be fine.

What does this mean for responsible travellers?

A few practical points:

• Respect barriers and signage. If there’s a fence, a closed road, a “no photos” sign — respect it. The alternative photo spot is almost always fine.
• Don’t jaywalk or park illegally. Obvious but consistently violated.
• Use licensed accommodation. Hotel and ryokan taxes fund local infrastructure. Unlicensed minpaku (homestays) often don’t.
• Pack out your trash. Especially on Mt Fuji climbing trails where rangers are overwhelmed.
• Spread your trip geographically. Consider replacing a Kyoto day with a Kanazawa day. Replace a Fuji day with a Nikko day. The less-trafficked destinations are often genuinely better experiences.

Final take

Mt Fuji is still worth visiting — but the spontaneous turn-up-and-photograph experience is over, and anyone who thinks the crowd situation will self-correct is wrong. What has changed is that the casual, spontaneous, turn-up-and-photograph model no longer works. Plan ahead, book permits, respect the local response to overtourism, and you’ll have a good trip. Show up expecting 2015-era access conditions and you’ll be frustrated.

The Fuji Lawson fence specifically is now a cultural artefact of a particular moment in Japan’s tourism history. It’s also a reasonable example of how Japanese communities respond to sustained pressure — slowly, then structurally, and with a certain wry acceptance of the absurdity of the whole situation.

For related reading, our Mt Fuji day trip guide covers the core logistics in detail, our weak yen tourism surge piece explains the economic context that drove the 2024 record numbers, and our anti-tourism politics article covers the broader political response.