Japan's View of Customers as 'Gods' Is Backfiring

A first-of-its-kind ordinance in Japan, a country known for high levels of customer service, seeks to block customer harassment, or "kasuhara." The local ordinance, to go in effect in April in Tokyo, states "no person shall engage in customer harassment anywhere" and though it includes no penalties, it notes "society as a whole should try to prevent abuse," per the Guardian. About 75% of Japanese workers are employed in the service industry and nearly half have experienced customer harassment, ranging from verbal abuse to violence to doxing, according to a recent survey. "In some cases, customers berate staff and demand that they get on their knees to apologize for minor mistakes," per Japan Times.

An assistant manager at a Tokyo supermarket said he'd responded to a shopper's complaint of spoiled tofu only to find that the product, which generally only keeps for up to five days in a refrigerator when opened, had been purchased two weeks earlier. Regardless, the customer told him to prostrate himself and apologize, Asahi Shimbun reported, per the Guardian. Meanwhile, an employee at a Tokyo ward office said an elderly resident told her to drop dead. "It seems that people feel they can say whatever they want when dealing with public servants because they are paying tax," an official said. "I wish they could understand that employees are human beings, too."

Hiromi Ikeuchi, a professor of sociology at Kansai University, argues the problem has a lot to do with Japan's general view of 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 writes at Nippon.com. The Tokyo metropolitan assembly approved the measure against customer harassment last week. Gov. Yuriko Koike says "the specific contents of the guidelines" will be worked out later, per Japan Times. At least three other prefectures are considering similar moves. (More Japan stories.)