{"id":21151,"date":"2026-05-12T15:59:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/21151\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T15:59:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T15:59:18","slug":"police-cracking-down-on-outdoor-seating-in-tokyos-liveliest-street-market-neighborhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/21151\/","title":{"rendered":"Police cracking down on outdoor seating in Tokyo\u2019s liveliest street market neighborhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are two sides to\u00a0Tokyo\u2019s Ueno\u00a0neighborhood, both literally and figuratively. Head out one side of the station, and you\u2019ll find yourself in Ueno Park, a sprawling park that\u2019s home to many of the finest museums in Japan. Exit the station on the opposite side, though, and you\u2019ll soon be in\u00a0Ameya Yokocho, aka\u00a0Ameyoko, a lively web of shopping streets with discount stores and pubs, where staff boisterously call out to passersby to stop and see what they have on offer.<\/p>\n

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Ameyoko rose to prominence in the postwar period as a black market, but here in the modern era it\u2019s largely a legitimate, law-abiding place.\u00a0However, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police swooped into Ameyoko on May 5 to tell proprietors to clean up their act regarding outdoor seating.<\/p>\n

The primary targets of the crackdown were izakaya (Japanese-style pubs) that have set up tables and chairs in the street outside their storefronts. While this style of operation has been fairly common in the neighborhood for quite some time, Hirohisa Mizutani, the head of a local residents group, said that\u00a0more and more izakaya owners began spreading their seating into the street during the coronavirus pandemic, in order to maintain wider distances between customers. However, even with there no longer being a need for such spacious social distancing buffers, street seating hasn\u2019t receded to its previous levels, and with Ameyoko not having the widest streets to begin with,\u00a0complaints have been coming in about the congestion, which also poses safety issues by potentially impeding emergency vehicles such as ambulances or fire trucks to access the neighborhood if needed.<\/p>\n

Citing clauses within the Road Traffic Act that prohibit the placement of objects on roads or sidewalks that obstruct the flow of traffic,\u00a0approximately two dozen officers from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police\u2019s Ueno Precinct patrolled Ameyoko on Tuesday, handing out awareness fliers and informing violators that they would have to remove tables and chairs deemed to be impeding traffic. No arrests were made, but when one izakaya owner refused to comply with the directions, the police\u00a0confiscated roughly 30 pieces of offending furniture.<\/p>\n

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Curious to see how much of an effect all this has had, we stopped by Ameyoko to take a look for ourselves.\u00a0First off, despite the police warnings to pull outdoor seating back, it doesn\u2019t necessarily seem to be the case that it\u2019s been banned outright.<\/p>\n

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That said, it did seem like the restaurants on the main streets of the neighborhood were at least keeping their seating underneath their buildings\u2019 awnings\/eaves. Depending on how exactly the property lines are drawn, it could be that these seats aren\u2019t \u201cin the street\u201d on account of technically being within the boundaries of the business, and so not in actual violation of the Road Traffic Act.<\/p>\n

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However, when we wandered down some of the smaller, secondary streets of Ameyoko, we came across setups like this, which look like they\u2019d pretty clearly obstruct the flow of people and vehicles.<\/p>\n

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The timings of the police sweep and our visit add a few more wrinkles to the evaluation of how much things may or may not be changing in Ameyoko. The police sweep took place on May 5, a national holiday in the middle of Japan\u2019s Golden Week vacation period. As such, the crowds were larger than usual in Ameyoko, which probably made for a stricter eye test as to whether or not tables and chairs protruding into the street were hindering traffic. <\/p>\n

In contrast, we visited the neighborhood (and took the photos seen in this article) on May 7. This was the first day after Golden Week finished, and a weekday to boot, meaning a much smaller than normal number of shoppers and tourists were out and about, and fewer bottlenecks in the streets most likely made violations easier to overlook.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s also generally the case in Japan that when new rules come into effect, the authorities don\u2019t start off with iron fist-style enforcement. With Japan being a largely considerate, rule-abiding society, efforts to gradually build understanding and awareness of rules often results in widespread compliance. Whether such a patient approach will result in Ameyoko\u2019s restaurant owners voluntarily pulling seating back towards their buildings, or if the Tokyo Metropolitan Police will feel the need to make follow-up sweeps of the neighborhood, is something we\u2019ll have to wait a little longer to know for sure.<\/p>\n

Reference:\u00a0Yomiuri Shimbun<\/a><\/p>\n

Photos \u00a9SoraNews24<\/p>\n

Read more stories from SoraNews24.<\/p>\n

— Hungry in Tokyo\u2019s Ueno? This restaurant\u2019s all-you-can-eat sushi bowl deal is all you need<\/a><\/p>\n

— Hidden in plain sight, low-key sweets shop surviving in Tokyo\u2019s street market is a tasty treasure<\/a><\/p>\n

— Believe it or not, this isn\u2019t a Tokyo vending machine \u2013 It\u2019s a secret door to deliciousness<\/a><\/p>\n

External Link
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Police cracking down on outdoor seating in Tokyo\u2019s liveliest street market neighborhood[Video]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n