A strategic overview of Japan's air transport industry can be summed up in a few figures: country population 128 million, 30 million for the single Tokyo agglomeration, and nearly 150 million passengers transported by air each year, of which 96 million were on domestic routes. The dominance of the internal market, concentrated on relatively few routes, linked to a small number of international visitors, just five million per year who are essentially Asian immigrant workers, explains why Japan's air transport industry could be self-sufficient. The strategic priorities accorded to the internal market were already in place before the events of 11 September, the Iraq war and SARS. They are even more so today, particularly as the negative effects of these successive shocks are not yet finished. Worse, they could still ratchet up the problems, for three major reasons: the threat of terrorist attacks made to the Japanese government as a result of its decision to send troops in a support role to Iraq, and fears of a reappearance of the SARS and aviary flu epidemics, which did not spare Japan. As much as fears demonstrated by a part of the population by wearing masks at airports, and postponing trips to the Asian countries affected by the epidemics.
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