PARIS, Feb. 23 -- Only around one in six Japanese citizens hold valid passports, fresh data shows, with the number of residents travelling abroad slowly recovering but still below pre-pandemic levels.
The latest rate is far below the half of Americans with passports, a level that has soared from around five per cent in 1990.
And in neighbouring South Korea, the figure is around 60 per cent, Seoul says.
As of December 2024, there were 21.6 million valid Japanese passports in circulation, representing around 17.5 per cent of the overall population, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, about a quarter of Japanese people held valid passports.
The country's travel document is tied with neighbour South Korea's pa...