Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002 wave to other diners at a Gonpachi “izakaya” pub operated by Global-Dining Inc. in Tokyo’s Nishi-Azabu district. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A restaurant chain operator has sued the Tokyo metropolitan government, saying its order to close early under the COVID-19 state of emergency unfairly targeted the company’s outlets.

In what is apparently the first lawsuit filed over such a directive, Global-Dining Inc. said the metropolitan government violated freedom of business guaranteed under the Constitution.

The lawsuit filed on March 22 with the Tokyo District Court seeks 104 yen (96 cents) in damages. The company said winning compensation is not the goal of the lawsuit.

The metropolitan government on March 18 ordered 27 bars and restaurants in the capital to shorten their operating hours after they defied its requests to close by 8 p.m. during the state of emergency.

Twenty-six of them, including Monsoon Cafe, Cafe La Boheme and Gonpachi, are operated by Global-Dining.

The order, the first in Japan, was issued based on the revised special measures law that took effect in February to deal with the novel coronavirus pandemic. The law contains penalties against business operators that repeatedly do not comply with requests to close early during a state of emergency.

Global-Dining followed the order and closed the 26 restaurants by 8 p.m. for four days until March 21, when the state of emergency for Tokyo and neighboring Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures was lifted.

The damages sought in the lawsuit equal 1 yen per outlet for each day they were closed early after the order.

Global-Dining argued that the metropolitan government violated freedom of expression by specifically punishing the operator as a warning to other businesses.

Kozo Hasegawa, 71, president of Global-Dining, said the 26 outlets were targeted because he had expressed negative views about the early closure requests on the company’s website.

“Is it right to punish someone for freely expressing their opinion?” he said at a news conference after filing the suit.

According to the lawsuit, complying with early closure requests without receiving proper compensation for losses makes it difficult to continue operating a business. It also described government’s early closure requests to all outlets, including those taking thorough infection prevention measures, as “an excessive restriction on freedom of business.”

Global-Dining also revealed that the metropolitan government said in its written early closure order that the operator widely publicized its intention not to comply with measures taken under the state of emergency.

Global-Dining operates 38 restaurants in Tokyo and Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures. It reported a net loss of 1.5 billion yen for the year ending in December 2020, far worse than its net loss of 300 million yen for the previous year.

The company had to post an extraordinary loss of 500 million yen for costs to close its restaurants after group sales plummeted by 34.8 percent year on year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, when the state of emergency was in place for Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures, the sales figure rose by 22.8 percent in February from a year earlier, the operator’s first year-on-year increase since January 2020.

Global-Dining kept operating most of its restaurants as usual during the state of emergency despite the metropolitan government’s early closure requests, apparently drawing more customers to its outlets.

The metropolitan government on March 19 also ordered five other establishments to shorten their operating hours.

“We wanted to avoid giving business operators the impression that they can keep operating longer than requested,” a metropolitan government official said of the early closure orders.

A Tokyo official declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the metropolitan government has yet to receive the complaint.

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