Fueiho: Footloose-era War On Dance In Modern Japan

Think back to some of the more amazing club nights you’ve had. Take a moment to close your eyes and really bring yourself back there. The music is thumping, the lasers are beautiful, and the whole crowd is dancing in a swarming sea of bodies. Now imagine that same night, but the music is a little quieter, the lights are turned up to a dim glow, and security tells you to stop when you start moving to the beat. Sound crazy? For some partiers in Japan it’s a fact of life.

Fueiho, the shorter name given to the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law, was created in 1948 in Japan. The law is intended to cut down on what were deemed to be vices in Japan, among one of the biggest “offenders” was dancing. Under Fueiho laws, late night dancing has been illegal since its inception. For many years, Fueiho laws were largely ignored. However, starting in 2010, local officials began to crack down harder on nightclubs that had previously operated in the gray area. This means that many clubs, promoters and DJs left the scene, leaving a smaller, more fractured scene.

“The vast majority of clubs here… are operating in a gray zone legally. So as long as this club scene has existed, it has existed under the umbrella of this legislation.” – Mike Sunda, writer for Japan Times

Since Fueiho was not evenly enforced, some clubgoers have enjoyed nights on end of dancing and drinking into the late hours, while some have had to scatter quickly or even worse, face arrest, when inspectors or police shut the party down. Can you imagine going to Foundation expecting to dance the night away, only to have it shut down an hour later? For some in Japan this is a very real reality. However, there is hope. Thanks to a reform leader named Watusi and a few other trailblazers like Mike Sunda of Japan Times, C4, the Club and Club Culture Conference has been formed. Club owners are afraid of speaking out publicly for fear of being targeted by politicians, so DJs and a few others have banded together to carry the banner of Fueiho reform. C4 is a lobby group formed with the goal of legalizing dancing so revelers can enjoy a night without fear of it getting shut down.

“So instead of them [club owners], we DJs represent the clubs by forming a group. We are in connection with the club owners so that, instead of the owners, we wanted to appeal how we need to change the new dance club in terms of culture and as a way of social and economic disparity to save this country’s dance music and its culture” – Watusi, DJ/Producer and Deputy Chairman of C4.

Thanks to the hard work of C4 and a few politician allies the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of Japan agreed to lift the Fueiho law on October 24, 2014. Japanese clubbers aren’t in the clear yet however, as Parliament will still need to ratify the decision for the law to truly be gone. Our best wishes go to the dance music community in Japan and we are hopeful that they too can experience the joyous and carefree nights we tend to take for granted out here. Being freed from the shackles of fueiho will pave the way for EDM to explode in Japan and could lead to some insane festivals when the doors are thrown open. EDC Japan anyone? Check out the video our friends at thump put together below. It’s a little under 12 minutes and incredibly mind-blowing to watch. For a country as modern as Japan, some of the laws are downright medieval and it’s time for a change.