Insight Wanted! Strange night-club regulations in Japan.
Hi,
I am posting today to get some insight regarding the night club regulations that exist in Japan.
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In Japan, if a venue wants to serve food/drinks, play music, and allow the customers to dance all at the same time, it must obtain an “adult entertainment permit”.
The permit restricts the operation of a venue in several ways. One such restriction is that the venue may not be open between 0 a.m. and sunrise.
This makes it impossible for big obviously-intended-to-be-a-nightclub venues to legally stay open after midnight, and for smaller bars and cafes (usually running without the permit) to stay legal, the manager would have to go around telling the customers to stop dancing - if they start moving their bodies to the music.
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What are your thoughts? Do you think this is a good idea? On the contrary?
Do you have similar regulations in your country? What are those like? Where is this?
Seriously Insane rules, and yet on reading some forums some (even youngsters) seem to think that its a good idea in order to curb the illegalities that DO go hand in hand with the nightclub industry
Its a jab at trying to curb other illegal activities (drugs/prostitution) rather than a jab at Underground clubs from what I see. However its a really long shot in the dark, certainly its not a solution. All it does is simply move the problems to harder to reach locations and makes them yet more difficult to deal with in the future.
As the saying goes “better the devil you know” .. well its being ignored this time.
For now perhaps the simple solution is “Dj Boxes” instead of Karaoke Boxes.
And yes for many many years Ireland had many weird and wonderful laws regarding clubs/bars/dancing etc … at one point the closing time was changed from 3am to 1am! (bear in mind opening time was 11pm!)
This peaked my curiosity and made me look into the laws here. According to our laws in Clark County, NV operating a theater license you must shut down at 2am if serving alcohol but can run 24 hours without a bar. If you are serving food you must shut down at midnight. If serving food and alcohol you must shut down at 11pm. With a special event permit you cannot serve food and run past 11pm unless using a catering service. strange
hellnagative
Yeah, I figured restricting the serving of alcohol is pretty common in american states. The weirdness in Japan is that the law actually restricts dancing. (Or, the venue allowing the customers to dance
Xonetacular
Same here in Japan. So all the headliners are DJing past the legal business hours.
When i was DJing around in NYC in the late 90’s there were restrictions that required any institution that had people dancing require a “cabaret license”. It wasn’t so much a problem with the big clubs, they would just pay, but the little bars never did and it was pretty absurd. There were NO DANCING signs in a lot of the bars. Looking back, I’m sad I never picked one up from one of the restaurant supply stores.
Basically once the body movement got past foot tappin and head noddin, they would get the bouncer to go around and literally tell people to stop. I even had one joint tell me to stop playing so funky. Thing was, there were cops that would go to these joints and fine them 5 bills a dancer or something absurd like that, so I can understand why they didn’t want to get hit with that. It just made for some really awkward nights. Especially cause dance music was huge at that point in NYC with tons of active record shops, clubs, DJs, etc..
The effect though was that it pushed the culture into illegal venues. For a while we ran a roof top party which got pretty hot because it was one of the few places you could actually dance without paying mega club prices.
@DJ MiCL … here’s an interesting report on the the proposed Nightclub Reform for Ireland which might be worth a look .. lots of pretty graphics so even I could read it
It also outlines the Nightclub laws in other EU countries as well.
I really hated that sometimes in Chicago and NY. Headliner wouldn’t get on until like 2am or something. Its makes it so the night get so freaking late its insane, and really annoying. BUT now in SF places close at 2am, so that sucks because the night ends at like 1:30.
