Photo/Illutration A street in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward is littered with trash after an outdoor drinking session on Oct. 20, 2023. (Takuya Miyano)

Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward plans to extend its ban on drinking on the streets to cover the entire year, while Shinjuku Ward is taking its first measures to deal with crowds of Halloween revelers.

The two popular nightlife districts in the capital say restrictions on public drinking are needed because the crowds of partiers often get so large that safety and normal business operations cannot be ensured.

Officials say Shibuya is the only ward in Tokyo that has an ordinance banning alcohol consumption on the streets, but it applies only during Halloween and New Year’s Eve.

The ward discovered that alcohol-related littering and obstruction of traffic are not seasonal problems.

Officials now plan to revise the ordinance by the end of the current ward assembly session to make the public-drinking ban a year-round policy.

The proposal is expected to be approved on June 17 and take effect on Oct. 1.

The revised ordinance will not impose penalties on violators, but officials believe it will give the ward more power to directly ask people to refrain from drinking on the streets.

The ward enforced the ordinance in 2019 after Halloween street parties around JR Shibuya Station became far too large to control.

Since September 2023, a security company commissioned by the ward has conducted daily patrols.

It found the number of cases of street drinking in March and April was rising.

The daily average of street drinking cases on Fridays, Saturdays and days before holidays increased by about 1.5 times. Around 70 percent of the cases involved foreign visitors, according to the ward.

The revised ordinance will prohibit street drinking from 6 p.m. until 5 a.m., and its target areas include Miyashita Park, the ward office neighborhood, and Maruyamacho, where nightclubs are concentrated.

Shibuya Mayor Ken Hasebe said the ward will increase the number of patrols starting from October.

Some municipalities have ordinances against drinking in public, including Chatan town in Okinawa Prefecture. But Shibuya’s will be the first in Japan to target an urban downtown area.

Shinjuku Ward’s planned action stems in part from Shibuya’s original ordinance.

According to Shinjuku officials, the number of people in the Kabukicho red-light district during Halloween last year increased by thousands compared to a typical year. Tourists, both international and domestic, contributed to the jump.

Many of the drinkers are believed to have avoided neighboring Shibuya Ward after it urged Halloween revelers to stay away.

Shinjuku Mayor Kenichi Yoshizumi on June 4 announced that he will submit a draft ordinance to the ward assembly session that opens on June 12.

The draft ordinance prohibits alcohol consumption on streets in front of JR Shinjuku Station and around the Kabukicho area from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1.

If approved, the ordinance will take effect on June 21.

It also will not impose penalties on violators.

Officials will instruct people who are drinking on the streets to stop and ask retailers to cooperate by restricting sales of alcoholic beverages.

The ward mayor can set the time period for the ban as deemed necessary.

“We hope to prevent various accidents caused by excessive concentration of people and drunkenness,” Yoshizumi said about the aim of the draft ordinance.

(This article was compiled from reports by Soichi Tsuchidate and Takuya Miyano.)

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