(Bloomberg) -- When the sun rises over Shibuya, the aftermath of a typical night is hard to miss — a few slumbering bodies splayed on the curb while tired revelers crouch next to mountains of discarded cans and bottles, sipping one last drink as they wait for the trains to start running again.
The chaotic scenes are why, beginning Oct. 1, local officials banned drinking in public between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. in the district.
Home to Tokyo’s iconic pedestrian crossing, Shibuya has long been a refuge for those looking to let loose in an otherwise straitlaced city, but it’s been a nightmare for locals forced to deal with the mess they leave behind.
As Japan sees a record influx of foreign tourists, members of Shibuya’s local assembly hope the new rule is effective in reducing raucous behavior and serves as a model for the rest of the city.
“The street has turned into something like a pub,” Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe said Tuesday, at an event marking the new ordinance coming into effect. “That isn’t what our culture is about.”
Still, drinking in public remains legal in Japan, meaning the new rule relies on public persuasion rather than any concrete enforcement. Since violators can’t be fined or punished in any way due to constitutional limitations, officers will patrol the streets and call on people drinking in public to stop, and offer to dispose of their beverage for them.
The Shibuya ban is being watched closely as policymakers and the domestic press fret over the large numbers of tourists lured to Japan by the weak yen. In turn, some of the the more aggressive moves to target over-tourism — like the installation of a fence behind a convenience store to block the view of Mount Fuji, or a tax in one city exclusively for non-residents — have reinforced the perception that Japan is hostile to outsiders.
“This isn’t a problem about foreigners,” said Daisuke Suzuki, managing director of the Shibuya Central Market Promotion Association. “Just because the number of inbound travelers has increased doesn’t mean the trash did, too.”
Suzuki pointed out that, more often than not, those drinking on the street are either Japanese or long-term residents.
On Tuesday, just minutes after the ban took effect, a patrol on the lookout for offenders weaved its way through Shibuya’s packed central market. Nearly everyone they encountered willingly complied. All but one of the groups they approached during the first rounds spoke Japanese.
By the entrance of the street, just across from the station, a group of friends were out for a night together, about half of them drinking from cans. The officers walked up to them, informed them in broken English of the new rules and they didn’t hesitate to hand over their drinks.
“The rule isn’t a bad thing, we just didn’t know about it,” said Ishmael, 32, from Spain.
Halloween Tradition
Street drinking became an issue during the pandemic across Japan, after calls from the government to isolate at home led residents to gather outside, where infecting each other was less of a concern. Then, as worries about contagion faded, hordes of locals piled into densely populated areas to make up for all the fun they had missed.
In Shibuya, it’s become a tradition for massive crowds to descend upon the neighborhood on Halloween and New Years, forcing shops to shutter, transit to stall and police to dispatch dozens more officers for crowd control in what is normally a vibrant entertainment and shopping district.
Shibuya first restricted drinking only on Halloween and New Years after an incident in 2019, when a group of drunken young people overturned a truck and ignited a debate on the merits of public alcohol consumption.
The new restrictions rolled out this week seek to limit drinking in public every evening year-round in a loosely defined area surrounding Shibuya Station. While it’s only the third locality in the country to impose such rules, it is the first in a major city.
Shibuya’s initial countermeasures triggered a noticeable increase in litter and loiterers elsewhere, city official Sachio Higashiura said, particularly in neighboring Shinjuku’s red light district. As a result, Shinjuku voted in June to prohibit public drinking around Halloween and New Years.
“Next is the rest of Tokyo,” Higashiura said. “It’s already illegal in many countries to drink outside.”
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