Japan went smoke-free indoors on 1 April 2020, and plenty of small Tokyo bars are still full of smoke. Both of those statements are correct. The gap between them is a transitional exemption, and Tokyo narrowed it in a way that turns out to be a useful signal about the bar you are standing outside.
The rule, and the exemption
Restaurants and bars are in principle smoke-free indoors under the amended Health Promotion Act. Where a venue wants to permit smoking, it must confine it to a properly separated room.
The exemption is for venues that were already trading when the law came in, on the reasoning that forcing an immediate rebuild would put small operators out of business. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s own handbook lists the conditions, and a bar must satisfy all of them:
| Condition | |
|---|---|
| ㋐ | Already operating as of 1 April 2020 |
| ㋑ | Customer floor area of 100 m² or less |
| ㋒ | Individually owned, or an SME with capital of ¥50 million or less |
| ㋓ | No employees |
The handbook marks that fourth condition as Tokyo’s own rule, added on top of the national law. It is the one that changes the picture.
“Employee” is not loosely meant. It follows the definition of worker in Article 9 of the Labour Standards Act, and the handbook spells out that it includes full-time staff, contract staff, and part-timers of any kind. A venue claiming the exemption must notify its local public health centre, declare that it has no employees, and keep documents on file — including evidence that no wages are paid to anyone.
So in Tokyo, the practical translation is short. A bar where anybody works for wages must be smoke-free indoors, whatever its size. A bar that may lawfully let you smoke at the counter is, almost by definition, one where the person pouring your drink is the person who owns the place.
There is no announced end date for the exemption. The handbook records its expiry as undetermined.
You can check before you go in
This is the part that makes the rule usable rather than trivia.
A venue with any smoking area is required to display a sign saying so. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare publishes standard signs for this, so they are broadly consistent from door to door rather than left to each venue’s design sense. Look at the entrance before you commit: a bar that permits smoking has to tell you there, and a bar with no such sign is not permitting it.
The trap: no entry for under-20s
Where a bar takes the simplest route and designates its entire interior as a smoking-permitted room, one consequence follows that catches people out.
Nobody under the age of 20 may be allowed inside. Not to drink, not to eat, not to wait for someone. The prohibition is on entering the room at all, and it applies to the whole venue when the whole venue is the smoking room.
If you are travelling with someone who is 18 or 19 — legal to drink in much of the world, and legal to enter a bar in much of the world — this is the rule that will turn you away at the door of an otherwise unremarkable counter bar. It is not discretion being exercised. The venue has no room to be flexible about it.
A separate rule shuts anyone under 18 out of any bar between ten at night and six in the morning, smoking or not — see what a bar is licensed to do after midnight.
What to take with you
- Look for the sign at the entrance. A smoking-permitted venue must display one; absence of a sign means smoking is not permitted.
- Small and owner-run is the profile. In Tokyo, a bar with paid staff cannot use the exemption, so the smoky counter bar is typically a one-person operation.
- Size is a clue, not proof. Under 100 m² is a condition, not a permission — all four conditions must hold.
- If anyone in your party is under 20, ask first. A fully smoking-permitted bar cannot admit them at all.
The same logic as the guide to cover charges applies here. What you cannot find out online is often answerable in five seconds at the door, once you know which thing to look at.