To little surprise, a music festival held with mostly maskless crowds in an outdoor public venue in Aichi Prefecture has long-lasting reverberations, producing a COVID-19 cluster outbreak.

Prefectural health officials on Sept. 13 said 26 festival attendees had contracted the virus so far.

Adding the number of people who traveled to the festival from Tokyo and elsewhere and tested positive for the novel coronavirus afterward, a total of 44 people have contracted COVID-19.

Namimonogatari2021, billed as Japan’s largest hip-hop and R&B outdoor festival, was held on Aug. 29 at the Aichi Sky Expo’s general-purpose area in Tokoname.

Photos and videos of congested crowds, many without wearing masks, singing along and drinking alcohol, quickly flooded social media, drawing a deafening backlash.

Two days before the event, the central government’s state of emergency over COVID-19 took effect in the prefecture, setting the maximum number of event attendees at 5,000.

Prefectural officials said they had requested a Nagoya-based company that has held the festival since 2005 to suspend ticket sales and ban alcohol sales in the venue.

But the organizer did not comply and up to 8,000 tickets were sold and distributed, officials said.

A visibly irritated Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura on Aug. 30 deemed the anti-virus measures for the festival as insufficient.

“This is extremely problematic,” Omura said, suggesting the organizer will not be granted use of any Aichi public facility for the festival in the future.

To minimize the consequences, the prefectural government along with the Nagoya city government have offered a free polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for anyone who attended the festival.

A total of 1,154 people have taken the test, officials said.

LATE REGRET FROM ATTENDEE

“I feel sorry for health care workers,” a 25-year-old Tokyo resident said, expressing late repentance.

He is one of the 8,000 or so people who attended the festival.

Although he has tested negative for the novel coronavirus, the man, a company employee, feels he “should not have gone to a festival that flouted (COVID-19 rules).”

He went to the festival with a friend who lives in Nagasaki Prefecture.

The two had planned to “be careful” by hanging out toward the back of the venue and keeping their distance from other attendees as much as possible.

But it did not take long for them to realize that they had little willpower.

“It was impossible to avoid heavy congestion unless you are considerably strong-willed,” he said.

Inside the venue with the main stage, people were allowed to move freely except through VIP sections set up on both sides of the stage.

Food venders were lined up in the back of the venue and alcoholic beverages were available, he recalled.

He stayed away from the populous front row section near the stage, trying to keep a distance of 1 to 2 meters from the people around him.

But he often found himself in crowds.

Between performances, and in particular after their favorite musician’s session ended, many people streamed over to a rest area set up inside a hall and elsewhere at the same time.

There was only one entryway at the venue to the rest area located outside the main stage area, where people would jostle each other to pass through.

The man wore a mask, but he saw many in the crowd taking theirs off due to the heat.

An emcee on the stage repeatedly urged the crowd to “put on a mask” and “scream in your mind,” the man recalled.

But some performers encouraged the crowd to sing along and "raise the roof."

Videos capturing such scenes started popping up on social media by the end of the day, triggering condemnation from many.

The man became concerned and took a PCR test in Tokyo a week later, which turned out to be negative, much to his relief.

Despite the ordeal, the man still defends his decision to travel the long distance to attend Namimonogatari2021 in the midst of a state of emergency.

“There is nothing wrong with the decision itself,” he said. “There was no way for me to know what the situation at the venue was like until I (arrived there).”

What shocked him the most is the fact that the musicians who performed at the festival have come under fire.

"I feel sorry for the artists," he said. “The organizer should have taken responsibility and implemented rules to prevent this kind of thing from happening.”

At the very least, he said he learned a valuable lesson: the next time he plans to go to a music festival, he will carefully gather information beforehand. 

(This article was written by Kei Kobayashi and Shino Matsuyama.)