The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is considering drafting an ordinance aimed at curbing “customer harassment,” in which customers harass front-line workers by making unreasonable requests, Gov. Yuriko Koike said Tuesday.

If the ordinance clears the Tokyo assembly, it will be the first of its kind nationwide.

“(Customer harassment) is becoming an increasing problem for companies in the capital,” Koike said in her policy speech at the Tokyo assembly’s regular session.

An experts panel under the metropolitan government, which has been considering measures to prevent harassment by customers, agreed that an ordinance would be effective in curbing such behavior. But the panel also recommended excluding criminal punishment on offenders.

For ideas on the matter, Tokyo has looked to Australia, which is already implementing a campaign called “No One Deserves A Serve” to create awareness about retail and fast-food workers facing abusive and violent behavior from customers.

The metropolitan government has set aside a budget for the year starting in April to create a website specifically to spotlight customer harassment and to launch a monthlong awareness campaign.

In a 2022 survey by Japan's largest labor organization, Rengo, 67.5% of 1,000 respondents said they had experienced customer harassment in the past three years. Of these, 55.5% said they had been verbally abused while another 46.7% experienced being berated or ordered around by customers.

The survey also showed that 36.9% felt that such behavior had increased in the past five years due to what they presumed to be frustration from growing social inequalities as well as from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In November, a mother of a 26-year-old man who worked at a meat bun shop in Osaka filed a lawsuit against the government after her son committed suicide, claiming he had taken his life due to verbally abusive customers. According to local media, he was told to “drop dead” and that “you’re not good at your work."

Information from Kyodo added.