The bedbug scourge hitting the United States and Europe has spread to Japan, and the tiny bloodsucking insects are more resilient than during previous infestations.

The Japan Pest Control Association received 706 inquiries about bedbugs in fiscal 2019, up from 130 in fiscal 2009.

The association, comprising extermination companies, said the increase in travelers to Japan played a role in the rising bedbug population.

But visitors cannot be entirely blamed for problem. The number of inquiries about bedbugs remained almost the same when Japan closed its borders to tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bedbugs live in cracks and gaps of mattresses, tatami mats, curtain rails and other objects. They crawl out of the crevices at night to feed on the blood of humans and pets.

Adult bedbugs are about 5 to 8 millimeters long, making them difficult to locate.

10-DAY ITCH

A company worker in his 40s said he found four or five red spots on his chest and arms that looked like mosquito bites when he was working in Sendai a couple of years ago.

He suspected the bites were from ticks or bedbugs, but he found no evidence of them in his futon.

Anti-itch cream did not provide relief.

“It was so itchy that I was struggling hard not to scratch my arms while at work,” he said.

He called a budget hotel in Osaka Prefecture where he had stayed for two nights during a business trip. The hotel told him it had found traces of bedbugs.

The itchiness continued for about 10 days.

According to Osamu Komagata, who studies pest control at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, bedbugs live for three to four months in environments with temperatures of 27 degrees and up to a year in 20 degrees.

Females lay as many as 500 eggs in their lifetime.

The insects are active during warm periods and can survive several months without feeding. They spread via people and their belongings.

“They are well-adapted to human habitats,” Komagata said.

DRASTIC DECREASE IN 1970s

In Japan, the bedbug population plummeted in the 1970s thanks to pesticides.

But in the United States and Europe, reports of bedbug infestations started increasing in the 1990s.

A study conducted in the United States in 2007 showed that bedbugs resistant to pyrethroid insecticides were rampant.

Around that time, the number of consultations about bedbugs began to rise in Japan.

Insecticide-resistant bedbugs with the same genetic sequence as those found in the United States were also detected in Japan.

After Japan declared a COVID-19 state of emergency, the number of inbound tourists in April 2020 decreased by 99.9 percent from a year earlier.

But the Japan Pest Control Association received 22 inquiries about bedbugs that month, compared with 27 in the same month a year earlier. That means the rate of decline was not as steep as the drop in foreign tourist numbers.

The association received 598 bedbug inquiries in fiscal 2021, on par with the pre-pandemic level in fiscal 2018.

“While inbound tourists disappeared, we kept receiving inquiries,” said Noriyuki Komatsu, a researcher at the association. “It is possible that bedbugs are not only brought into Japan but are also spreading in the country, infesting homes and other places.”

Pandemic-related border restrictions have been lifted.

SOURCES UNKNOWN

The number of pest control services carried out by Tokyo-based Civil International Corp. in the period from January to July this year doubled from the same period of last year.

“We no longer know where we will get (bedbugs) because they could come from clean hotel rooms, friends’ places and trains,” a company representative said.

Duskin Co., an Osaka-based renter of cleaning equipment that also exterminates insects and vermin, said the number of bedbug inquiries almost doubled year-on-year in 2022 and again in 2023.

Since 2020, bedbug inquiries from households have surpassed those from hotels and other business operators.

“There are many cases in which (bedbug infestations) spread in public housing complexes and apartment buildings, as well as corporate dormitories with thin walls," said Seiji Kobayashi, who works at the company's Terminix Division.

SPREADING PROBLEM

U.S. media outlets reported that three gates at an airport in Hawaii were temporarily closed after bedbugs were found in late May.

France has declared a war on bedbugs ahead of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

The country’s National Agency for Food, Environment and Occupational Health Safety said 11 percent of households experienced a bedbug infestation between 2017 and 2022.

It is difficult to eliminate bedbugs from homes without professional help. The insects crawl into any crack as wide as 1 millimeter.

Duskin workers use vacuum cleaners to suck up bedbugs, freeze them with liquefied carbon dioxide, spray a chemical agent, and take other measures to eliminate the pests.

They check for survivors 10 days after the treatments.