Japan changes sides in the War on Alcohol

The Japanese refusal to admit masks don’t work has meant that bars and restaurants (B&Rs) have been the obvious targets for scapegoating by politicians and the media because they’re almost the only public places where people take off their masks. But when the third state of emergency (SoE) was declared in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe in April 2021, the governors of those prefectures requested that B&Rs not only close at 20:00 but also refrain from serving alcohol on the premises. Thus began one of the most dull-witted periods of Japanese covidiocy: the War on Alcohol.

Health Minister Norihisa Tamura: “There’s no mistaking the strong correlation between serving alcohol and the number of new cases.”

Tamura never bothered to offer any evidence that this correlation exists, but no matter. It’s not like other wars haven’t been started based on lies now, is it?

The War on Alcohol lasted from 25 April till the end of the fourth SoE on 30 September 2021. It’s hard to determine the butcher’s bill for these five months, but 45,000 B&Rs (10% of the pre-pandemic number) closed between the start of the pandemic and October 2021.

One of the main theatres of this war was Tokyo. And in the unlikely event that a Covid-era version of the Tokyo Trial is even held, one of the Class A criminals would be Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

After Gov Koike requested businesses to turn out Tokyo’s iconic neon lights at night at the start of the 3rd SoE, Tokyoites got to experience wartime-style blackouts.

Gov Koike did allow a ceasefire, albeit with strict conditions.

But hostilities resumed shortly after.

As a result, young Tokyoites who couldn’t go drinking in their regular bars formed irregular units on the street instead. Street drinking is legal in Japan. But needless to say, Japanese TV was horrified at the shameless audacity of these insurgents.

Drinking while unmasked and making lots of noise

Over 100 young people

Predictably, Gov Koike opened fire on fun.

Gov Koike warns against drinking on the street; “Absolutely cut it out. That’s goes for barbecues and camping too.”

To persuade rebellious revelers to lay down their cans, Gov Koike sent her troops out to march around entertainment districts like Kabukicho to annoy them into surrendering.

And in case any brigades of boozers wanted to retreat to Takadanobaba, fortifications were set up in the public square to keep the rebels out.

As an anti-street drinking measure, a public square is fenced off in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo

No war would be complete without propaganda posters, which the Tokyo metropolitan government put up in convenience stores all over the city to promote sobriety over sedition.

“Please stop street drinking”

Japanese TV also provided its favourite pysop: painfully stupid computer simulations purporting to show how virus is spread when people talk unmasked.

Thankfully, since the War on Alcohol ended at the end of September 2021, Japan’s governors have resisted the temptation to ban booze even during the quasi-emergency period in Jan-March 2022. But the harebrained decision by Japan’s politicians and media to declare that unmasked drinkers were enemies of public health has led to a problem similar to one caused by Imperial Russia’s vodka ban during World War I: a large decrease in revenue from the tax on alcohol. This has caused Japan, like Italy in World War II, to change sides.

The younger generation drinks less alcohol than their parents - a move that has hit taxes from beverages like sake (rice wine).

So the national tax agency has stepped in with a national competition to come up with ideas to reverse the trend.

The group running the competition for the tax authority says new habits - partly formed during the Covid pandemic - and an ageing population have led to a decline in alcohol sales.

Many people have reacted negatively to this campaign, saying that the government is irresponsible for trying to promote unhealthy habits. But personally, I prefer the government telling young people to go to pubs than imploring them to stay home, which is bad for economic productivity and even worse for national reproductivity.

If only someone had thought about the importance of alcohol taxes to the national treasury, both the War on Alcohol and the alcohol promotion campaign could have been avoided. But we can learn a lesson from this: if you pick your wars or your drinks unwisely, you’re generally guaranteed to regret it later.