Quick Answer

Japan's autumn foliage — koyo — sweeps the country from north to south and from high ground to low, the mirror image of the spring cherry blossom wave. Using the Japan Meteorological Agency's climatological normals (1991–2020), maple (momiji) turns around October 28 in Sapporo, November 28 in Tokyo, and December 5 in Kyoto, while ginkgo (ichō) — the yellow half of the season — generally peaks a few days earlier in Honshū and western Japan. Those normals are the stable backbone of the season; each year's precise dates are then issued as a forecast by two non-governmental weather bodies from early September, and a warm autumn shifts the peak by a matter of days — in 2025 Kyoto ran five days late while Tokyo ran five days early. October is Japan's second-busiest month for overseas arrivals — a record 3.9 million visitors in October 2025, within 0.3% of the cherry blossom peak in April. The numbers below break down when the leaves turn, who forecasts them, and where you can still see them in quiet.

Cite this page: Tabilane. "Japan Autumn Foliage Statistics: Peak Dates & Trends." tabilane.com. https://tabilane.com/japan-autumn-foliage-statistics

How koyo is measured — leaf color and leaf fall

Japan does not track autumn color by vibe. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) runs a formal program of seasonal observations (seibutsu kisetsu kansoku) at weather stations nationwide, recording the date each year that designated specimen trees reach a defined stage. For autumn, four events are logged: the leaf color and leaf fall of the Japanese maple (kaede), and the leaf color and leaf fall of the ginkgo (ichō).

"Leaf color" — the date used for peak-viewing statistics — is recorded when a station's reference tree has broadly changed color: red for maple, yellow for ginkgo. Because a single tagged tree at a fixed weather station is measured the same way every year, the resulting series is consistent decade over decade, which is exactly what makes it citable.

One caveat matters for planning. When the JMA overhauled its biological-observation program in 2021, it cut the number of tracked plant species sharply — from 34 down to just six — but maple and ginkgo were among the handful kept, precisely because they are reliable markers of the changing climate. So the koyo record did not vanish in 2021; it is one of the series that survived.

When leaves peak — Japan's north-to-south wave

Cherry blossoms move south to north as spring warms the country. Autumn does the reverse: cold arrives first in Hokkaidō and in the mountains, so koyo begins in the north and at altitude and rolls down and south over roughly two months.

The table below is the durable backbone of the season — the JMA climatological normal (1991–2020) peak-color dates for maple and ginkgo at representative city weather stations. These are averages, not a forecast for any single year, but they are the most stable answer to "when do the leaves turn?"

City Maple (red) — normal peak Ginkgo (yellow) — normal peak
Sapporo Oct 28 Nov 4
Sendai Nov 21 Nov 23
Nagano Nov 12 Nov 10
Kanazawa Nov 24 Nov 10
Nagoya Nov 28 Nov 18
Tokyo Nov 28 Nov 23
Hiroshima Nov 22 Nov 15
Osaka Dec 1 Nov 22
Kyoto Dec 5 Nov 24
Fukuoka Dec 1 Nov 20

Source: JMA seasonal observation normals, 1991–2020.

Two patterns jump out. First, the north-to-south spread is real and wide: Sapporo's maples turn a full five to six weeks before Kyoto's. Second, red and yellow are not the same date. Ginkgo (yellow) generally peaks a few days before maple (red) in Honshū and western Japan — in Tokyo the gap is about five days, in Kyoto closer to two weeks. But the order reverses in the far north: in Sapporo and Sendai the ginkgo turns after the maple. So "the yellow comes first" is a useful rule of thumb for most travelers, not a law of nature.

Avenue of golden ginkgo trees at the Meiji Shrine Outer Garden (Jingu Gaien) in Tokyo at peak autumn color

Photo: Nesnad, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — the ginkgo avenue at Meiji Jingu Gaien, Tokyo, in late November. Ginkgo (yellow) and maple (red) peak on different dates.

For a station like Tokyo, that split is why the city can feel like it has two autumns: the ginkgo avenues — Meiji Jingu Gaien most famously — glow yellow in the third week of November, and the maples in the temple gardens and along the rivers hold their red into early December.

Who forecasts the koyo — and how

The normals above tell you the average. For a given year you want the forecast — and in Japan that does not come from the government. The JMA records what the trees actually do; it does not predict koyo. Two non-governmental bodies issue nationwide forecasts, and their similar English names are easy to confuse. The Japan Meteorological Corporation (Nihon Kishō, n-kishou.com), a private company, opens the season first: its first forecast lands on September 2 in both of the last two years, covering roughly 700 foliage spots and around 3,000 mountains, and it is revised two or three times as autumn sets in (the 2025 season's last revision came on November 4; the second 2026 forecast is scheduled for early October). The Japan Weather Association (Nihon Kishō Kyōkai, tenki.jp), a general incorporated foundation, opens later — September 18 in 2025, with revisions on October 9 and November 6. As of September 8, 2026 the Association had not yet opened its 2026 season, which is on its usual schedule rather than a delay.

One thing to know before you go looking for these in English. The JNTO's "Autumn Leaves Forecast" page on japan.travel credits the Japan Weather Association — but the city dates it lists are not that year's prediction. Checked again on September 8, 2026, all fifteen cities on that page still matched the JMA 1991–2020 normals exactly, and the page was still the one titled for 2025 — a full year after that season ended, and six days after the 2026 forecast had already been published in Japanese. It is a clean English rendering of the backbone, which is genuinely useful; it is simply not the year-specific layer, and it does not track the year. For that you have to read the Japanese forecasters directly.

That timing is worth internalizing. The first forecast lands in the first half of September; the peak itself is October through December; and the news coverage that turns the forecast into travel plans clusters in September and October. If you are planning around the leaves, the useful window to check a current-year forecast is roughly the six weeks from early September.

Keep the two layers separate in your head. The normals (1991–2020) are stable and tell you the typical week. The year-specific forecast adjusts for how warm or cool the particular autumn is running. Use the normal to book, and the forecast to fine-tune.

The 2026 season forecast — what the current year predicts

The Japan Meteorological Corporation opened the 2026 season on September 2, 2026, covering roughly 700 foliage spots, around 3,000 mountains and 48 major cities. Its headline is temperature: autumn is expected to run warmer than average nationwide, pushing peak color later, with northern and eastern Japan shifted most. Its second forecast of the season is scheduled for early October.

City Maple, 2026 forecast Ginkgo, 2026 forecast
Sapporo Nov 7 (10 days later than average) Nov 6 (about average)
Tokyo Nov 29 (about average) Nov 26 (about average)
Osaka Dec 4 (about average) Nov 24 (about average)
Kyoto Dec 11 (about average) Nov 27 (about average)

Source: Japan Meteorological Corporation, first 2026 koyo forecast, published 2 September 2026. Retrieved 8 September 2026.

Read the "about average" labels carefully. They are the forecaster's own comparison against its own reference period, not against the JMA 1991–2020 normals used elsewhere on this page — and the two do not always agree. Kyoto is the clearest case: December 11 is called about average by the forecaster, but it sits six days after the JMA normal of December 5. We have not established which reference period the forecaster uses or how wide its "about average" band is, so we are not converting its labels into differences from the JMA spine. Compare the dates across the two layers if you want to; do not compare the labels.

One thing the current forecast cannot yet tell you is how it will do. For that, the completed season is the better teacher.

The 2025 season forecast — and what actually happened

The most recent full season on the books, 2025, is the most useful worked example there is, because we can set the prediction against the outcome. In its opening forecast of that season, published on September 2, 2025, the Japan Meteorological Corporation put Tokyo's maples at around November 30 and Osaka's at around December 4, and led on the effect of a stubborn late-summer heat. The Japan Weather Association, opening two weeks later, said the same thing in its own words: the lingering warmth was delaying color across northern and eastern Japan.

Then the JMA logged what the trees actually did. Set against the 1991–2020 normals, the observed 2025 season landed like this:

City Maple normal (1991–2020) Maple, 2025 observed Difference
Sapporo Oct 28 Nov 6 9 days later
Sendai Nov 21 Nov 20 1 day earlier
Nagano Nov 12 Nov 19 7 days later
Kanazawa Nov 24 Nov 25 1 day later
Nagoya Nov 28 Nov 25 3 days earlier
Tokyo Nov 28 Nov 23 5 days earlier
Hiroshima Nov 22 Nov 27 5 days later
Osaka Dec 1 Dec 4 3 days later
Kyoto Dec 5 Dec 10 5 days later
Fukuoka Dec 1 Dec 1 on the normal

Source: JMA seasonal observations — 2025 recorded values against the 1991–2020 normals, same series as the table above.

That table says something more useful than the headline did. "A warm autumn runs late" turns out to be a regional statement, not a national one: Hokkaidō, Nagano and the western cities did run late, but Tokyo's maples turned five days early and Nagoya's three days early. And where the delay was real, it was measured in days rather than weeks — Kyoto's five-day slip is about the size of a normal year-to-year correction.

The gap between the two paragraphs above is the point. Tokyo was forecast for around November 30 and turned on November 23 — a week out, and in the opposite direction to the season's own headline. That is not a failure of the forecasters so much as the nature of the thing: koyo depends on how cold the nights run in the final fortnight, which is past the horizon of a September prediction. Book on the normals; use the current-year forecast to fine-tune, and keep a few flexible days. (This article carries 2025 as its worked example; the forecasters reissue their predictions each September.)

Autumn arrivals — the year's second-busiest month

Autumn is not a quiet shoulder season anymore. Rank all twelve months of 2025 by overseas arrivals and October comes second, behind only April. The gap is 12,604 people — three-tenths of one percent. Japan's autumn peak is, in arrivals terms, within a rounding error of its cherry blossom peak, and both of autumn's headline months set records.

Metric Figure
Overseas visitors, October 2025 3,896,524 (up 17.6% year-on-year — a record October)
Overseas visitors, November 2025 3,518,195 (up 10.4% — a record November)
Overseas visitors, full-year 2025 42,683,837 (up 15.8% — first year above 40 million)
Overseas visitors, full-year 2024 (for comparison) 36,870,148
Inbound tourism spending, full-year 2025 ¥9.45 trillion (a record ¥9,454.9 billion, up 16.4%)

Source: Japan National Tourism Organization (arrivals) and Japan Tourism Agency (spending). Arrival counts are JNTO's confirmed figures from its July 2026 revision of the 2003–2026 series, not the provisional counts released in the month after each period — those ran a few hundred lower.

October 2025 was the single busiest October Japan has ever recorded for inbound travel, and the JNTO explicitly attributed part of the surge to autumn foliage demand alongside East Asian holiday travel. Two things follow. First, "off-season Japan" is not what autumn is; the leaf-viewing hotspots are genuinely crowded from late October through November. Second, the money is real — inbound spending hit a record ¥9.45 trillion for the year — but there is a limit to how precisely we can slice it. Japan's tourism bodies do not publish a standalone figure for autumn-foliage spending, so any claim that "koyo is worth ¥X" would be invented. What we can say honestly is that autumn carries two of the year's record monthly arrival counts, and that the leaves are a named driver of them. Put the two record months side by side and the scale is plain: October and November 2025 together drew 7,414,719 overseas visitors — just over one in six of the year's 42.7 million arrivals, concentrated into the eight weeks when the leaves turn.

Are the leaves turning later? — the warming trend

Because the JMA has logged the same maple and ginkgo stages at the same stations for decades, the record doubles as a climate signal. The long-run direction for autumn is the opposite of spring: cherry blossoms have crept earlier as winters warm, while autumn color has drifted later, because the cool nights that trigger the turn arrive later in a warming climate. Warm autumns like 2025 are the visible edge of that trend — Kyoto's maples reached full color on December 10 that year against a normal of December 5. Read the trend at the scale it actually moves, though: a matter of days per decade rather than per year, and not uniformly — Tokyo turned five days early in that same warm autumn. City weather stations also sit inside cities, so some of the drift they record is urban warmth rather than the regional climate a traveler in the mountains would meet.

There is a quality dimension too, not just timing. Vivid red maple depends on a run of cold-but-not-freezing nights; unusually warm, wet autumns can leave the color muted or patchy even when the calendar date arrives on schedule. This is why a forecast gives a window, not a guarantee, and why the smart move is to build a few flexible days around the predicted peak rather than betting on a single afternoon.

Beating the crowds — koyo on the quiet lanes

The same north-to-south wave that makes the season hard to time is also the key to seeing it in peace. Because the leaves turn weeks earlier in the north and at altitude, you can chase color well before — and well away from — the Kyoto crush.

Red and gold maples on the hillsides around Lake Towada in Aomori, with a quiet grassy clearing in the foreground

Photo: 玄史生, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — autumn around Lake Towada in Aomori, where the maples turn weeks before Kyoto.

Kyoto's worst crush runs from late October to mid-November, when the city's marquee temples color at exactly the moment domestic and overseas travelers converge. The dispersal move is to trade the date or the place. In Tōhoku, Oirase Gorge in Aomori and the hills around Lake Towada peak in late October, weeks ahead of the western cities and with a fraction of the crowd. Closer to Kyoto, the mountain hamlet of Ohara sits higher than the city and stays calm on a weekday even at its mid-November peak, and the twin valleys of Kurama and Kibune turn earlier than the downtown temples for the same reason. Our Japan autumn foliage guide maps these quiet alternatives in detail.

Two small stone warabe-Jizō statues nestled in deep green moss and fallen red maple leaves in the garden of Sanzen-in temple in Ohara, north of Kyoto

Photo: Motokoka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — the moss garden at Sanzen-in in Ohara, north of Kyoto, where warabe-Jizō statues sit among fallen maple leaves.

The crowd math is the same story the numbers tell everywhere in peak-season Japan. For the full picture of where visitors concentrate and how Japan is managing it, see our Japan overtourism statistics; and for the season's spring counterpart — the same wave, running the other way — our Japan cherry blossom statistics lay out the bloom dates city by city.

Sources & methodology

The peak-date backbone in this article uses the Japan Meteorological Agency's seasonal observation normals for the 1991–2020 period, for Japanese maple (leaf color) and ginkgo (leaf color) at the listed city weather stations. These are climatological averages, published by the JMA, and are stable from year to year; they are not a forecast for any single autumn. Both the normals and the year-by-year records are public: the JMA publishes them as long-run seasonal observation tables (maple leaf color is table 015, ginkgo leaf color 013), and every figure in this article was read from those tables directly rather than from a secondary summary.

Year-specific dates are of two kinds and this article keeps them apart. Forecast figures come from the first koyo forecast of each season, issued by the Japan Meteorological Corporation (Nihon Kishō): the 2025 opener on September 2, 2025, and the 2026 opener on September 2, 2026 (retrieved 8 September 2026). For 2025 we link the dated press release rather than the company's own koyo page, because the company reuses a single URL for every koyo announcement — which is also why the 2026 link above will carry a later revision once the early-October update lands. Japan's other nationwide forecaster, the Japan Weather Association (tenki.jp), opened its 2025 season on September 18. The two are separate organizations despite the similar English names — one a private company, one a general incorporated foundation — and they publish on different dates, so it matters which one a figure came from. Observed 2025 dates come from the JMA's own seasonal observation series — the same series that supplies the normals — so the comparison above is like for like. Forecasts are reissued each September and shift with each autumn's temperatures. One caution for English-language readers: the JNTO's "Autumn Leaves Forecast" page on japan.travel is not a source of year-specific dates. It credits the Japan Weather Association, but on both of our checks — August 2026 and again on 8 September 2026 — its fifteen city dates matched the JMA 1991–2020 normals exactly, and it was still the page titled for the 2025 season.

Visitor and spending figures come from the Japan National Tourism Organization monthly and annual arrival releases and the Japan Tourism Agency consumption survey, using confirmed 2025 figures. Where a precise breakdown does not exist — such as spending attributable to autumn foliage specifically — we say so rather than estimate.

Frequently Asked Questions

When do autumn leaves peak in Japan?

It depends heavily on where you are. Using JMA normals, maples turn around late October in Sapporo, mid-to-late November in Tokyo and most of the country, and early December in Kyoto and other western cities. The season runs north to south and high to low over roughly two months, so there is no single national date — pick a region first, then a window.

Where can I see the earliest autumn leaves in Japan?

The north and the mountains. Hokkaidō, Tōhoku (such as Oirase Gorge and Lake Towada in Aomori), and the high valleys of the Japan Alps color in October, weeks before the western cities — and with far smaller crowds than Kyoto.

How reliable is the Japan koyo forecast?

Reliable enough to plan a region and a rough week, not a single day. Two organizations issue nationwide forecasts — the Japan Meteorological Corporation in early September and the Japan Weather Association in mid-September — and both revise as autumn sets in. The 2026 opener, published on September 2, 2026, puts Tokyo's maples at around November 29 and warns that a warmer-than-average autumn will push northern and eastern Japan later. 2025 shows the limits of that kind of call honestly: Tokyo was forecast for around November 30 and its maples actually turned on November 23. Because color depends on how cold the final fortnight runs, treat the forecast as a window and stay flexible on the exact date. (Note that the JNTO's English-language "forecast" page carries the JMA normals rather than the year's prediction.)

Do maple and ginkgo peak at the same time?

No. Ginkgo (yellow) generally peaks a few days before maple (red) in Honshū and western Japan — about five days apart in Tokyo, closer to two weeks in Kyoto. In Hokkaidō and northern Tōhoku the order reverses and the ginkgo turns after the maple.

Are autumn leaves getting later in Japan?

The long-term trend is toward later peaks. As nights warm, the cold that triggers the turn arrives later, so autumn color has drifted later on the calendar — the reverse of cherry blossoms, which have crept earlier. 2025 shows both the trend and its scale: Kyoto's maples turned on December 10 against a December 5 normal, while Tokyo's turned five days early in the same autumn. The signal is real but it moves in days, and not every city moves with it.

Is autumn a busy season for tourism in Japan?

Very. October 2025 was the second-busiest month of the whole year for overseas arrivals — a record 3.9 million, just 0.3% behind April's cherry blossom peak — and the JNTO named autumn foliage as one of the drivers. Expect crowds at the famous leaf-viewing sites from late October through November.

A slower autumn, by the numbers

The leaves are the one part of a Japan trip you cannot book in advance, but you can read the odds. The normals tell you the typical week, the forecast fine-tunes it, and the north-to-south wave hands you an escape route: go early and go north, and you can stand under the same red and gold that draws millions to Kyoto — with the path to yourself.

Image Credits

All images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Attribution for each, in order of appearance: