However optimistic you feel about the future of live music in Japan, especially with the lifting of the state of emergency across the country, one thing is for certain: Nobody will be crowd-surfing anytime soon.
The typical concert venue here is exactly the kind of environment epidemiologists have been warning us to avoid: cramped, stuffy and full of people jostling and shouting to make themselves heard (and that’s just the band).
It’s hard to imagine a way of making such places coronavirus-proof without making them go out of business in the process. Enforcing proper social distancing would mean drastically limiting audience numbers, leaving organizers with the choice of either jacking up ticket prices to eye-watering levels or losing even more money than they were already.