Japan: Tokyo’s new customer harassment law
Introduction
Japan is known as a country of hospitality, or "Omotenashi," and in recent years, it has led customers in Japan to take such hospitality for granted.
Customers have been harassing a company’s staff by speaking rudely at them, throwing things at them, asking them to get on their hands and knees to apologize, etc. This problem of customer harassment has become increasingly serious at businesses, which led to calls for legal measures to protect the safety and comfort of employees. In response to this trend, in October 2024, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government passed the "Tokyo Customer Harassment Prevention Ordinance" (Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance No. 140 of 2024, hereinafter, "Tokyo Ordinance”), the first of its kind in Japan, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. In December 2024, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government established the "Guidelines for the Prevention of Customer Harassment" ("Tokyo Guidelines”) based on the Tokyo Ordinance. The Tokyo Ordinance is scheduled to go into effect in April 2025.
In this update, we provide a Q&A session on recent developments related to customer harassment, focusing on the contents of the Tokyo Ordinance and Tokyo Guidelines.