Shibuya Ward administration continues to attempt to distance the neighborhood from its Halloween occasion place picture.
With October right here, it’s time for Halloween followers to start out getting their decorations, costumes, and occasion schedules prepared. Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, although, would like that you just don’t embody it in your plans.
On Monday, Shibuya Ward Head Ken Hasebe appeared at a press convention through which he declared “Shibuya wa Halloween wo oyasumi shimasu,” or “Shibuya is closed for Halloween.”
▼ Hasebe’s press convention
Impromptu road events held on the evening of October 31 and/or the previous weekend performed a big half in popularizing Halloween in Tokyo, and by extension a lot of Japan, with a surge in consciousness and crowd sizes starting within the early 2010s. Nonetheless, as increasingly more individuals started to pack the world round Shibuya Station and the Heart-gai buying road, the variety of high-profile incidents of drunken and disorderly conduct, vandalism, littering, and violence elevated. Final yr, Shibuya Ward put up indicators stating “No occasions for Halloween on Shibuya streets” in English and “Shibuya just isn’t a Halloween occasion venue” in Japanese, and this yr’s posters will bear the identical English message, with “Shibuya is closed for Halloween” in Japanese.
A number of countermeasures might be put in place to kill the Halloween buzz, the primary of which has already gone into impact. As of October 1, consumption of alcohol on public streets within the a part of the neighborhood round Shibuya Station is banned, year-round, between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m., the primary year-round public consuming ban to be enacted in Tokyo. As well as, the Shibuya Ward administration is asking that comfort shops, malls, and liquor outlets within the space chorus from promoting alcoholic drinks between 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. from the night of October 26 via the morning of November 1.
On October 25, 26, 30, and 31 a complete of 130 ward staff might be patrolling the neighborhood, they usually’ll be joined by a drive of 185 law enforcement officials on October 30 and 31, who can even be establishing 10 crowd monitoring towers, together with at the least one within the plaza in entrance of Shibuya Station the place the well-known statue of loyal canine Hachiko is situated. Talking of Hachiko, the statue might be fenced in and coated (i.e. not seen) on October 30 and 31, and on these nights fences can even be put in within the plaza creating one-way passages into and out of the station, which can be scheduled to have a portion of its Hachiko Ticket Gate closed right down to gradual the circulate of individuals into the world.
▼ The year-round consuming ban space, marked in yellow within the video on the level cued right here, might be expanded to incorporate the purple areas as nicely for the Halloween interval.
All of this speaks to a tough wrinkle to the state of affairs, which is that the Shibuya Ward authorities can’t straight ban celebrating Halloween on the streets of Shibuya, within the sense that they will’t make it unlawful to decorate up in costumes and stroll across the neighborhood. As an alternative, the plan appears to be making Shibuya an inconvenient place to occasion, with the hope that it’ll be sufficient of a problem that individuals merely resolve to avoid the neighborhood on the affected nights.
Supply: Shibuya Keizai Shimbun
High picture ©SoraNews24
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