Japan is celebrated for its exceptional levels of customer service. But the behavior of a growing number of customers and clients leaves a lot to be desired.
The rise of the abusive consumer has prompted authorities in Tokyo to introduce the country’s first ordinance — a locally approved regulation — to protect service industry staff from kasuhara — the Japanese abbreviated form of “customer harassment.”
While the Tokyo ordinance, which will go into effect in April, does not carry penalties, experts hope the move will highlight a growing social problem and, perhaps, encourage people to think twice before taking out their frustrations on staff.
Photo: Bloomberg
A union survey this year found that almost one in two workers in the service sector — which accounts for 75 percent of employees in Japan — had been subjected to customer meltdowns, ranging from verbal abuse and excessive demands to violence and doxing on social media.
In one instance, an assistant manager at a supermarket in Tokyo received a call from a shopper claiming that the tofu he had bought at the store had gone off, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. When the employee visited the shopper’s home to check, he found that the tofu — a product with a short shelf life — had been bought a fortnight earlier.
Not wanting to alienate the shopper, the employee tried to remain diplomatic but was then ordered by the customer to prostrate himself and apologize.
Outbreaks of rage have crept into local government offices, with one female employee at a Tokyo ward office recounting how an elderly resident accused her of wishing she would die and invited her to drop dead instead.
“It seems that people feel they can say whatever they want when dealing with public servants because they are paying tax,” the official told the Asahi Shimbun. “ I wish they could understand that employees are human beings too.”
The labor ministry is reportedly considering tightening the law further to address kasuhara across a wide range of sectors, including public transport, restaurants and call centers.
The Tokyo metropolitan assembly approved the ordinance last week under pressure from unions and industry representatives, which warned that the scourge of the disgruntled customer was spreading to other parts of the country.
Three other prefectures are considering similar measures, while some municipalities and firms now give employees the option of displaying only their given names on their ID badges. A Tokyo department store this year said it would ban troublesome customers and call the police in serious cases, while other firms, including Nintendo, have said they will not engage with abusive people.
The ordinance states that “no person shall engage in customer harassment anywhere” and that “society as a whole should try to prevent abuse,” but it recognizes the value to businesses of legitimate feedback.
Writing on the Nippon.com Web site, Hiromi Ikeuchi, a professor of sociology at Kansai University, attributed the rise of kasuhara to several factors, including the tendency to regard customers as “gods” in the battle to stay profitable in an increasingly tough business environment — an approach that has shifted the power balance from firms to their customers.
“As Japanese society as a whole became more consumer-oriented, the tables were turned, giving some consumers an unconscious bias that has caused them to expect to be treated like gods, as well as having certain expectations of staff,” Ikeuchi wrote.
Kasuhara is one of several forms of harassment Japan has been forced to confront in recent years, along with matahara (maternity harassment), pawahara (power harassment) and jenhara (gender harassment).
By global standards, the traffic congestion that afflicts Taiwan’s urban areas isn’t horrific. But nor is it something the country can be proud of. According to TomTom, a Dutch developer of location and navigation technologies, last year Taiwan was the sixth most congested country in Asia. Of the 492 towns and cities included in its rankings last year, Taipei was the 74th most congested. Taoyuan ranked 105th, while Hsinchu County (121st), Taichung (142nd), Tainan (173rd), New Taipei City (227th), Kaohsiung (241st) and Keelung (302nd) also featured on the list. Four Japanese cities have slower traffic than Taipei. (Seoul, which has some
In our discussions of tourism in Taiwan we often criticize the government’s addiction to promoting food and shopping, while ignoring Taiwan’s underdeveloped trekking and adventure travel opportunities. This discussion, however, is decidedly land-focused. When was the last time a port entered into it? Last week I encountered journalist and travel writer Cameron Dueck, who had sailed to Taiwan in 2023-24, and was full of tales. Like everyone who visits, he and his partner Fiona Ching loved our island nation and had nothing but wonderful experiences on land. But he had little positive to say about the way Taiwan has organized its
Michael slides a sequin glove over the pop star’s tarnished legacy, shrouding Michael Jackson’s complications with a conventional biopic that, if you cover your ears, sounds great. Antoine Fuqua’s movie is sanctioned by Jackson’s estate and its producers include the estate’s executors. So it is, by its nature, a narrow, authorized perspective on Jackson. The film ends before the flood of allegations of sexual abuse of children, or Jackson’s own acknowledgment of sleeping alongside kids. Jackson and his estate have long maintained his innocence. In his only criminal trial, in 2005, Jackson was acquitted. Michael doesn’t even subtly nod to these facts.
Writing of the finds at the ancient iron-working site of Shihsanhang (十 三行) in New Taipei City’s Bali District (八里), archaeologist Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華) of the Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology observes: “One bronze bowl gilded with gold, together with copper coins and fragments of Tang and Song ceramics, were also found. These provide evidence for early contact between Taiwan aborigines and Chinese.” The Shihsanhang Web site from the Ministry of Culture says of the finds: “They were evidence that the residents of the area had a close trading relation with Chinese civilians, as the coins can be
RSS