Japan: Visitors to undergo facial recognition

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) - Foreign visitors to Japan will have to undergo facial recognition, the country’s immigration authorities announced Tuesday.

Set to come into effect in July, the move comes ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games, to be played in Japan.

Short-term overseas visitors departing the country will have to go through automatic gates using facial recognition systems, the

Automatic gates using facial recognition systems will be implemented for short-term overseas visitors departing the country, the daily Mainichi reported.

Facial recognition technology scans a subject’s features to identify them in photos, video or real-time.

The gates will come into use on July 24 at Tokyo's Haneda airport and later this year at Narita, Kansai, Fukuoka, Chubu and Chitose airports, the report added.

Japan is slated to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games set to attract tens of thousands of spectators to the country.

The country had already introduced facial recognition at Haneda airport for incoming Japanese travelers in 2017.

The identification photo stored in the IC chip of a traveler's passport will be scanned and compared to a photograph taken at the gate, which will then open if the two images match, immigration authorities said.