The beleaguered Tokyo Motor Show exceeded its ambitious attendance target of 1 million visitors, reversing a steep slide. Officials said the 12-day event that wrapped up last week drew more than 1.3 million people, though some didn't actually go inside.
It's a 70 percent surge over the 771,200 who attended in 2017, the last time the show was held, but still well short of the record 2.02 million who attended in 1991.
The show relied on a full menu of freebie activities to bring people downtown, in the hopes they would then buy tickets into the exhibition halls. The official tally included people perusing free-admission areas in addition to the paid-entry automotive halls and relied partially on officials with click-counters to add up the number of people in those areas.
