Tokyo - Foreign visitors to Japan rose 33 percent last month to their highest on record for a February as a weakening yen boosted travelers' buying power.

Arrivals increased to 729,500 in February, from 547,948 a year earlier, the Japan National Tourism Organization said in a report Friday. That's the highest for a February, according to tourism agency statistics going back to 1964.

Tourists are taking advantage of the Japanese government's efforts to curb the yen as a way to boost the economy by helping exporters, Masahiro Yabuta, an economics professor at Tokyo's Chuo University, said in a phone interview. The government has pledged stimulus measures, dubbed "Abenomics" after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, causing the yen to depreciate about 20 percent since mid-November following a postwar high of 75.35 reached in October 2011.

"After Abenomics, thanks to the depreciating yen, many inbound tourists gain a benefit," Yabuta said. "Prices actually decrease if I spend a dollar in Japan instead of America."

The Japanese currency weakened to 96.71 yen against the dollar on March 12, the lowest since August 2009. The yen averaged averaged 93.13 versus the dollar in February, 19 percent weaker than 78.48 ia year ago.

Visitors from Hong Kong posted the biggest increase, rising 97 percent to 56,500, while the number of travelers from Taiwan climbed 74 percent to 150,300, according to the tourism agency.

Travelers from China, with which Japan has a territorial dispute over uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, recorded the only decrease in February, falling 2 percent to 80,900.

The increase is also being fueled by the dissipating effect on tourism of the March 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.