More people went out during this year's Golden Week holidays compared to last year in Tokyo and the prefectures of Osaka, Kyoto and Hyogo, despite the state of emergency that was in effect, according to data from NTT Docomo, Inc.
The number of people around Tokyo's Shinjuku Station in the evening from May 1 to 5 was 4.21 times that of last year. The central and local governments have been calling for people to refrain from nonurgent or non-essential outings, but the same level of restraint was not seen this year compared to 2020.
The Yomiuri Shimbun bases its analysis on data provided by NTT Docomo's mobile spatial statistics, which estimate the population of an area based on location data from mobile phones.
The number of people around Tokyo's Shinjuku Station in the afternoon this year was 2.81 times that in the Golden Week holiday period from May 2 to 6 last year, when the first state of emergency was in effect. Kyoto Station saw 2.41 times last year's level, while Osaka's Umeda district was at 2.27 times and Hyogo's Sannomiya Station was at 1.78 times last year's figure.
Shinjuku, Kyoto and Umeda saw bigger increases from last year in the evening, with Shinjuku Station's 4.21 times being the highest of the group.
However, compared to the holiday period in January, when the second state of emergency was in effect, the number of people going out fell from 14% to 69%. Requests to close that were made to various industries, including eateries that serve alcoholic beverages, are believed to have affected how many people went out.
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