Last Thursday, The Japan Times ran an article by Ian Martin about Japan’s current efforts to crack down on…wait for it…late-night dancing. Read it here. Here in Osaka, this has been going on for a while now and has been impacting all sorts of great events in the city…INNIT used to go all night, but now closes before midnight, for just one example. It has been hurting the nightlife here something mighty, but Martin’s article above shines light on the fact it isn’t a one-city epidemic. It is happening all over the nation, just peep the story.
Save, perhaps, for Tokyo, a place so big that these sort of events featuring…gasp, the horror…dancing can sneak by unnoticed by the police. Well, one of the more well-known clubs in Tokyo just got hammered by this very goofy law.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXcqFbycArU”]
Tokyo’s Gaspanic bar…which I’ve heard is pretty sleazy but still!…and Club 99 got busted for illegal dancing this past weekend, which is probably one of the biggest instances of this happening so far (well, I haven’t seen a TV report about it yet so that’s my basis). This isn’t the first time Gaspanic has been hit, but again, a bit more media attention. It truly is a bizarre situation, and one that will be interesting to see unfold in the near future. Ultimately, it seems like there are a ton more urgent issues in modern Japan today than whether people can dance late at night but…well, here we are, huh?