Tokyo is preparing to issue an ordinance to try to curb the phenomenon of abrupt and increasingly aggressive behavior by customers towards traders, employees and waiters. A reality which even has a specific name in Japanese, under the abbreviation “kasu-hara” and which, according to the Financial Times, has worsened during the last years of inflation, a brutal change compared to the long years of stagnation or zero. price dynamics.
Tokyo Prefecture's new rules will come into effect next April. They do not provide for specific sanctions but seek to mobilize a sort of moral persuasion to put an end to behavior that may appear unusual to foreign observers.
In stores or restaurants in the Archipelago, most of the time, customers do not thank the staff, but address their requests in a peremptory tone. But since inflation has existed, the situation has gotten worse.
Japanese media have reported a growing number of incidents against sellers and servers, from shouting and threats to outright abuse by consumers who, until recently, were treated with all respect which is due to them in terms of price, now feel “betrayed” by an increase in prices to which they were absolutely not accustomed.
Last June, a union representing various categories involved in these issues, Ua Zensen, reported that almost half of its 33,000 members had suffered episodes of kasu-hara over the past two years.
The phenomenon also affects electricity supply and domestic service companies as well as transport companies. To the point that some of the latter have even introduced emergency buttons for the kasu-hara, with which workers can start recordings by surveillance cameras.
According to the newspaper, it remains to be seen whether Tokyo's initiative, the first of its kind in Japan, will have any effect, given that no specific sanctions or penalties are envisaged. And also because the regulation does not seem to give a precise definition on this subject.
