Japan is smoking less. So why are tobacco imports at a 25-year high?

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Kim Pedersen
May 20
13 min read

Updated: May 21

Written by: Kim Pedersen

2026/05/20

A data-driven analysis of Japan's tobacco trade, 2000–2025

Japan has one of the most closely watched tobacco markets in the world. Industry analysts track it carefully. Public health researchers cite it as a case study. Investors in Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, and Japan Tobacco International scrutinize its every shift. And the story everyone knows goes something like this: Japan, once a nation of heavy smokers, is gradually kicking the habit. Smoking rates are falling. Cigarette volumes have collapsed. The market is shrinking.

That story is true, as far as it goes.

Between 2011 and 2023, per capita cigarette sales in Japan fell by more than 52%. Office smoking rooms, once a fixture of Japanese corporate culture, have been disappearing for a

decade. In 2018, Japan passed its first national smoking restrictions inside public facilities. The trend is real, well-documented, and continuing.

Japan's tobacco import value in 2025 reached its highest point in 25 years of recorded customs data.

If that surprises you, you are not alone. It surprised me too, until we looked at the data properly. Not the summary statistics. Not the retail sales figures. The actual Ministry of Finance customs data, covering every product, every supplier country, and every year from 2000 through the full year 2025.

That data tells a very different story.

What the Data Actually Shows

Japan's Ministry of Finance publishes detailed customs statistics for every product imported into and exported from Japan, classified by Harmonized System (HS) codes down to 9-digit granularity. This data exists for every month going back to the year 1988. It records both volume in kilograms and value in Japanese Yen, broken down by country of origin and product subcategory.

Most analysts working with Japan tobacco data focus on three HS4 codes:

• HS2401 - Unmanufactured tobacco; tobacco refuse (raw leaf)

• HS2402 - Cigars, cigarillos and cigarettes

• HS2403 - Other manufactured tobacco and tobacco substitutes

Using these three codes alone, you can build a coherent, but critically incomplete, picture of Japan's tobacco trade over the past 25 years. The picture becomes complete only when a fourth code, introduced in 2022, is included. We will come to that shortly.

JapanTradeStatistics.com holds the complete Ministry of Finance dataset for all four codes, covering every year from 2000 through the full year 2025, filterable by HS code, country of origin, year, and month. Switching between volume and value views, or isolating a single supplier country, takes a single click. What would take a researcher weeks and months of manual data compilation can be explored interactively in minutes.

Act one: The world the data confirms

[ 100% Stacked Column - Volume - HS2401, 2402, 2403 - All Countries - 2000–2025 ] Chart: JapanTradeStatistics.com

The first chart most analysts reach for is the 100% stacked column by volume, showing how the composition of Japan's tobacco imports has shifted across 25 years. What you see confirms the conventional narrative.

HS2401, the raw unmanufactured tobacco leaf that feeds Japan's domestic cigarette manufacturing, shown in gold, has consistently represented around 30–50% of total import volume throughout the entire period. HS2402, covering finished cigarettes, held a similar share through the early 2000s. Together, these two categories tell the story of a traditional tobacco market operating along conventional lines for the first fifteen years of the dataset.

Then, around 2015, a third colour begins to appear, the navy blue of HS2403. Small at first. Then growing. By 2025, it is unmistakably present and visibly larger than at any previous point. The year 2015 is not a coincidence. That is the year Philip Morris International launched IQOS commercially in Japan. IQOS uses consumable tobacco sticks, classified under HS2403, rather than conventional cigarettes. The import data captures the product launch with precision.

Now switch the same chart from volume to value. One click on JapanTradeStatistics.com. The story changes completely.

[ 100% Stacked Column - Value (JPY) - HS2401, 2402, 2403 - All Countries - 2000–2025 ] Chart: JapanTradeStatistics.com

In value terms, HS2402, finished cigarettes, dominates far more than its volume share would suggest, accounting for roughly 75–80% of total import value through most of the 2000s and 2010s. Raw leaf (HS2401), despite representing nearly half of import volume by weight, accounts for only around 10–15% of value. Tobacco leaf is a bulk commodity. Finished cigarettes are a manufactured product. The value gap between them reflects exactly that.

But the transformation visible in HS2403 from 2016 onwards is extraordinary. A category that barely registered in value terms suddenly surges to account for approximately 30–40% of total tobacco import value by 2019–2021. Heated tobacco consumable sticks are premium-priced products, lightweight, high value, commanding many times the price per kilogram of either raw leaf or conventional cigarettes.

Less weight. Far more value. One click in JapanTradeStatitsics reveals the difference.

This single comparison, volume chart versus value chart, accessible with one click in JapanTradeStatistics.com, tells analysts something no summary statistic can convey: Japan was not just importing different products after 2015. It was importing far more valuable ones.

Act Two: The Rotterdam mystery

Behind the aggregate numbers, individual country stories emerge that are impossible to see without granular data. The all-country stacked volume chart reveals one of the most striking episodes in Japan's 25-year tobacco trade history.

[ Stacked Column - Volume (kg) - All HS Codes - All Countries - 2000–2025 - 2013) ]

One colour stands out immediately, a vivid lime green that appears from nowhere around 2008, surges to dominance by 2013, then vanishes almost as quickly as it arrived. Hover over it in the JapanTradeStatistics.com platform, and the tooltip reads: Netherlands, 2013, 33,104,217 kg.

The Netherlands. A country that grows virtually no tobacco of its own. Suddenly Japan's single largest tobacco supplier.

Filter down to the Netherlands alone, one selection in the country dropdown, and the trajectory becomes even sharper.

[ Single Country Bar Chart - Netherlands Only - Volume (kg) - 2000–2025 ]

[ Single Country Bar Chart - Netherlands Only - Value (JPY) - 2000–2025 ]

Zero from 2000 to 2007. A sudden entry in 2008. A steep rise through approximately 25 million kg by 2010–2012, peaking at over 33 million kg in 2013. Then a sharp decline, returning to near zero by 2016. At its peak, the Netherlands accounted for roughly 20% of Japan's entire tobacco import volume.

The value chart tracks the volume chart almost exactly, with consistent commodity-level pricing of approximately 5000 JPY per kilogram throughout, unambiguously raw unmanufactured tobacco leaf, HS2401, transiting through Rotterdam's vast commodity trading infrastructure before shipment to Japan.

Rotterdam is the largest tobacco trading hub in Europe. What the data appears to show is a major procurement restructuring by Japan Tobacco during this period, bulk leaf purchases routed through Dutch trading intermediaries, consolidating supplies from Brazil, Zimbabwe, and eastern European growing regions before onward shipment to Japan for domestic cigarette manufacturing.

The timing of the exit is equally significant. The Netherlands supply collapses precisely as IQOS launches in Japan in 2015, the same year Japan Tobacco began accelerating its own shift away from traditional cigarette production. Demand for bulk raw leaf fell. The Rotterdam route became redundant. By 2016, it was effectively closed.

This entire episode, entry, seven-year dominance, and exit, is invisible in any summary database.

It becomes visible only when Japan's Ministry of Finance customs data is filtered by country. On JapanTradeStatistics.com, that requires selecting one item from a dropdown. The dataset covers every supplying country without exception, for every year from 1999 (partly from 1988) to today.

Act three: The IQOS effect in customs data

The competitive battle for Japan's heated tobacco market is one of the most closely watched stories in the global tobacco industry. Japan is by a significant margin the world's largest heated tobacco market, with retail sales reaching $11.6 billion in 2024, ahead of Italy ($4.9 billion) and Russia ($2.5 billion) in second and third place. By late 2025, heated tobacco products held nearly 48.5% of Japan's total tobacco market share by sales volume across major convenience store chains.

What analysts rarely see is how this battle plays out in the import data, specifically which countries supply the consumable sticks that power IQOS, Ploom, and glo devices. The line chart of Japan's top 10 tobacco suppliers by volume answers that question across 25 years.

[ Top 10 Countries Line Chart - Volume (kg) - All HS Codes - 2000–2025 ]

This chart contains perhaps the single most dramatic line in the entire dataset. The United States in 2000 supplied Japan with approximately 120–125.000 Mt of tobacco, accounting for nearly 44% of all Japan's leaf imports at the turn of the millennium, a dominance built on decades of American Burley and Virginia leaf forming the backbone of Japan Tobacco's domestic cigarette blends.

The US line then falls, steeply, consistently, and relentlessly, crossing below the cluster of other nations around 2012–2013 and converging toward insignificance by 2015. From dominant supplier to marginal presence in fifteen years. A USDA report from 1999 recorded the USA at exactly 43.6% of Japan's leaf import volume, a figure that would prove to be the historical peak before the long decline began.

Chart: Same chart as above, just without the US.

Below the American collapse, the other lines tell their own stories. Brazil holds steady as a consistent mid-tier supplier throughout. Italy and Greece supply European-origin leaf reliably across the full 25-year period. South Korea, barely visible in the early 2000s, trends clearly upward in recent years, reflecting its emergence as a key manufacturing hub for both conventional cigarettes and HTP consumable sticks.

Switzerland, almost invisible in volume terms, supplies some of the highest-value product in the entire dataset. Philip Morris International's European operations, headquartered in Lausanne, supply Japan with IQOS consumables at price points that generate outsized value from relatively modest shipment weight. Volume tells one story. Value tells another. Both are accessible instantly on JapanTradeStatistics.com.

Japan's 60,000-plus convenience stores, the highest density retail network outside China, are the primary distribution channel for all tobacco products in Japan. The import flow data is, in effect, a leading indicator of what flows through those counters. Understanding import trends at country and HS code level gives retail analysts, procurement teams, and competitive intelligence functions a view of the market that no retail survey can replicate.

Act four: The reclassification that changes everything

Here is where conventional analysis breaks down entirely, and where having the complete dataset matters most.

Anyone working with Japan's tobacco import data using only HS2401, HS2402, and HS2403 will observe an apparent cliff in the data after 2021. Total import values appear to collapse sharply. A researcher drawing conclusions from three HS codes alone would likely conclude that Japan's tobacco import market was contracting rapidly from 2022 onwards.

That conclusion would be wrong.

In 2022, the World Customs Organization introduced HS2404, a new four-digit classification created specifically for tobacco and nicotine products intended for inhalation without combustion: heated tobacco sticks, nicotine pouches, and related next-generation products.

The category had grown so large, and so distinct from traditional tobacco, that the global trade classification system itself had to be updated to accommodate it. Japan adopted this reclassification in its customs reporting from 2022. Products previously recorded under HS2403 began migrating to HS2404.

The apparent collapse in HS2401–2403 data after 2021 is not a market contraction. It is a data re-classification. And without HS2404, the analysis is incomplete.

[ Stacked Column - Value (JPY) - Three HS Codes (2401+2402+2403) - All Countries - 2000–2025 ]

Same chart as above, but with 4 HS codes, namely HS2401 + HS2402 + HS2403 + HS2404

With all four HS codes visible, the full 25-year story becomes clear. Total tobacco import value in Japan, which appeared to be collapsing when viewed through three codes alone, is in fact surging to record levels. The 2025 bar is the tallest in the entire chart. This is confirmed, complete full-year 2025 data from the Japan Ministry of Finance. Japan's tobacco import value is at a 25-year high.

[ Stacked Column - Value (JPY) - Four HS Codes (2401+2402+2403+2404) - All Countries - 2000–2025 ]

Selecting to stack HS4s rather than countries make the change obvious for everyone, what happened as shown in the stacked column chart above. This is one of the features making JapanTradeStatistics.com so powerful a tool for analyzing markets.

Change the view again from volume to value (JPY) and the trend is unmistakably clear. There it is... Japanese spend much more money on importing HTPs than ever before. Change between volume and JPY is done by one click on the icon at the bottom right corner of the chart.

The statistical killer option will of course be to show all in one chart. Here it is...

The combination of stacked HS4s for showing import volumen and the line to show the develpment in import value (JPY). This one chart tells all...

Below the chart showing import of HS2404 only, from 2000 to 2025. There were no import until 2022. Main exporters are Italy, Greece, Korea and Romania.

[ Stacked Column - HS2404 Only - Value - By Country 2022–2025 ]

[ Stacked Column - HS2404 Only - Volume - By Country - 2022–2025 ]

Isolating HS2404 reveals the next-generation tobacco supply chain in Japan in striking details. The category, which did not exist in customs records before 2022, shows four dominant supplying countries, with total import value growing from approximately 0.4 billion JPY in 2022 to nearly 0.6 billion JPY by 2025. In just four years, HS2404 has become one of the largest single tobacco import categories by value.

The country composition within HS2404 is concentrated - three to four nations supply the vast majority of Japan's next-generation tobacco imports - and competitive dynamics between them are shifting visibly year by year. A supplier power transition is underway between 2024 and 2025, with one country's value share surging to overtake previously dominant suppliers. This is the global tobacco industry's competitive battle for Japan's future, rendered visible through customs data.

Filtering to individual countries within HS2404, one click on the country dropdown, allows analysts to track each multinational's supply chain positioning in near-real time. This is the kind of granular, continuously updated competitive intelligence that industry reports typically charge thousands of dollars to provide.

What this means for market analysis

Japan's tobacco market in 2025 looks nothing like it did in 2000, and nothing like the simplified narrative of decline that dominates most coverage.

Volume of tobacco imported has fallen significantly from its 2000 peak, confirming that Japan is consuming less tobacco by weight. But value has surged to record highs, reflecting a fundamental shift toward premium, high-margin, low-volume products. Japan is importing less tobacco. But it is paying more for it than at any point in the past 25 years.

The supply chain has been completely restructured. The United States, which supplied nearly half of Japan's tobacco leaf at the turn of the millennium, has been replaced by a complex multi-origin network spanning South Korea, Switzerland, Italy, Romania, Greece, and others. The Netherlands briefly dominated and then vanished. New entrants continue to emerge in the HS2404 data.

The regulatory framework is evolving in real time. The introduction of HS2404 in 2022 was formal recognition by the world's customs authorities that the tobacco industry had transformed sufficiently to require new classification architecture. Any analysis that does not account for this reclassification will reach incorrect conclusions about the direction of Japan's tobacco market.

Japan's heated tobacco market is also entering a new competitive phase. Having long been dominated by Philip Morris's IQOS, the category is seeing meaningful share gains by Japan Tobacco's Ploom, reaching 18.7% category share by early 2026 and British American Tobacco's glo Hilo capturing 4.7% market share within four months of its September 2025 launch. The import data for HS2403 and HS2404, broken down by country of origin at monthly granularity, reflects these competitive shifts as they happen.

The Data Behind the Analysis

Every insight in this article is derived entirely from Japan's Ministry of Finance customs data. This data is, in principle, publicly available. In practice, accessing and analysing it in raw form, navigating 25 years of monthly records across four HS codes, dozens of supplier countries, and two measurement dimensions, requires either significant manual effort or a platform built specifically for this purpose.

JapanTradeStatistics.com holds the complete dataset: all four relevant tobacco HS codes, all countries of origin, monthly granularity from January 2000 through December 2025 (full year confirmed), with instant filtering across every dimension. Switching from the three-code to the four-code view, the comparison that reveals the 25-year value record, takes one click. Isolating the Netherlands' trajectory takes one country selection. Moving between volume and value is a single toggle as well.

The platform also supports analysis at HS6 and HS9 level, the most granular classifications available in Japanese customs data, allowing analysts to distinguish between specific tobacco leaf varieties within HS2401, cigarette subtypes within HS2402, pipe tobacco versus HTP sticks within HS2403, and individual next-generation product categories within HS2404. This granularity, continuously available from 2000 to present, is what makes analyses like the Netherlands story and the HS2404 supplier transition possible at all.

For tobacco industry professionals, working in procurement, competitive intelligence, market entry strategy, regulatory affairs, or investment analysis, Japan's Ministry of Finance customs data contains answers to questions most analysts have not yet thought to ask. The data is there. The question is whether your tools let you see it.

The short version

Japan is smoking less. That part is true.

Japan's tobacco import value in 2025 is at a 25-year high. That part is also true.

Both things are simultaneously true because the market has not shrunk - it has transformed. Lower volume, higher value, different products, different suppliers, and a classification system that changed in 2022 and that most analyses have not yet fully accounted for.

The full story is in the data. It always was. You can access the completely free data set from our webpages main page.

Data sources & notes

All trade statistics sourced from Japan Ministry of Finance customs database, accessed via JapanTradeStatistics.com. Data covers import flows for HS2401, HS2402, HS2403, and HS2404, January 2000 through December 2025 (full year confirmed). Market context statistics sourced from Tobacco Insider, Tobacco Asia, published industry research, USDA GAIN reports, and company financial disclosures. JapanTradeStatistics.com is operated independently and has no commercial relationship with any tobacco company or industry body.

Go deeper than headlines. Work with the data yourself

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