In Japan, Turning the Tables on Rude Customers

The guests arrived 30 minutes before check-in time at a traditional hot springs inn a couple of hours north of Tokyo. When they saw a sign asking that customers wait in their cars, they demanded to know why they could not get their room key early.

The exchange, captured on a security camera, quickly exploded into angry shouting. Eventually it ended on the pavement out front — with the inn’s managing director down on his knees, bowing deeply and apologizing.

The incident was an extreme example of what has increasingly come to be known in Japan as “kasuhara,” an Anglicized abbreviation of “customer harassment.”

While no country is immune to such behavior, expectations for service — and the potential for dissatisfaction — are especially high in Japan, where a famous expression exalts the customer as a god. The tradition of hospitality is such that retail clerks in upscale stores bow to customers on their way out the door, and waiters, baristas and hotel clerks use honorific Japanese when serving.

Whether the abusive incidents are actually increasing is difficult to assess. But after the pandemic’s upheavals, company officials, labor unions and even the government are focusing on the perceived scourge of customer harassment. The push is all the more urgent as labor shortages have given workers more options to walk away if they feel mistreated.