The COVID-19 pandemic has helped to fuel a trend among young people to shun alcohol.

For health and other reasons, young drinkers have been decreasing their consumption of alcoholic beverages. And in the last two years, bars and restaurants have been repeatedly asked to refrain from serving alcoholic drinks or to shorten business hours to prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading among customers.

Drinkers now have a richer variety of low- or zero-alcohol products to choose from.

A 25-year-old designer who lives in Machida, western Tokyo, said she started cutting down on booze three years ago and now seldom drinks.

“Instead of getting drunk as a skunk, I would rather be able to work properly the following day,” she said.

As a university student, the woman often drank together with other members of a school club.

“It was so much fun that I drank day after day, even at the cost of sleep,” she said.

Once she graduated, however, she had fewer opportunities to meet up with her drinking friends. The COVID-19 pandemic soon hit, wiping out almost all opportunities for drinking in groups.

The woman noticed that she was in better physical shape and that her skin condition had improved.

“I realized that drinking is not worth the time and money,” she said.

The trend for dry lifestyles appears to have started before the pandemic.

In a health ministry survey for 2019, 17.9 percent of respondents across all age brackets said they either “seldom” drank or had “quit drinking” alcohol. The ratio was higher among younger people, at 22.1 percent for those in their 30s and 26.9 percent for those in their 20s.

“Those who don’t drink are not necessarily averse to drinking parties,” said Yasuhiro Koishikawa, a central figure in the “Shirafer” project, whose aim is to spread nonalcoholic culture.

The project name derives from “shirafu,” the Japanese word for “sobriety.”

Koishikawa, 31, said his body’s constitution cannot handle heavy drinking, but he used to force himself to drink during dinners with business connections to avoid spoiling the atmosphere at the table.

But he was, in fact, fond of drinking sessions because attendees spoke frankly and communications were smoother between people meeting for the first time.

“I thought it would be great if those who drink and those who don’t could happily raise their glasses together in a toast,” he said.

Koishikawa began sending out such messages on social media around 2016 and received messages of sympathy from various people, including pregnant women, professional drivers and people with chronic health problems.

He initiated the Shirafer project with like-minded colleagues in 2020. The project’s activities include having low- or zero-alcohol drinks of its choice offered at a bar operated by students and sharing nonalcoholic recipes on a Web media outlet.

Koishikawa said the project has received more collaboration requests from alcoholic beverage makers in recent months.

“I hope to turn sobriety, which is coming under the spotlight, into a cool form of culture,” he said.

In 2020, Parco Co., which operates a chain of fashion shopping complexes, set up “Si Raf,” an in-house project to increase beverage options for those who don’t drink or choose not to.

The project’s name is another variation on the word “shirafu.”

During the first campaign of the project held in January, the company based in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward offered a lineup of domestic and imported low- or zero-alcohol drinks, including craft beers, wines and syrups, and sold them at its online store and its physical outlets.

Maruku, an e-commerce website that specializes in low- or zero-alcohol beverages, opened a cafe bar in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward last May.

The bar offers about 40 drinks with an alcoholic content of less than 1 percent, including beers and wines, accounting for 70 percent of all beverages available.

“We have fewer options for drinkers,” Suzumo Sakurai, a novelist who operates the bar, said. “That’s the opposite of the typical practice at a bar.”

Sakurai, 53, has himself been practicing the “sober curious” lifestyle, which is about consciously refraining from drinking alcohol, for two years now.

By not drinking alcohol with dinner, he says he can now read or watch a difficult overseas movie before going to bed.

“It feels like I have about three more hours a day,” Sakurai said. “I am continuing with this lifestyle because I am happy to be making good use of the extra time.”

The cafe bar he operates has only about eight seats, and they have been occupied by both drinkers and nondrinkers.

On a recent day at the bar, a party of women congratulated a friend on her pregnancy. Other guests include a couple with an infant and a drinker who gave his liver a break.

“I hope our customers will try out the different nonalcoholic drinks to go with our dishes,” Sakurai said.