Kyoto gets tough on tourist behavior with latest geisha district ban

A ban on tourist access to some private-property alleyways in Kyoto's Gion district to take effect in April has perhaps long appeared the inevitable next step in the city's over tourism wars. Is it a show of determined force or just a weary last stand in a battle already lost?

On Friday a local council in Gion district announced plans to ban tourists from entering some of the area’s narrow alleyways from April. The ban comes on the back of continued pleas from frustrated locals who say the intrusive and nuisance behavior of overzealous tourists is having a detrimental effect on their livelihoods.

(Hanamikoji-dori in Kyoto's popular Gion district. Photo taken 2017.)

The Gionmachi South District Council said on Friday that from next month signs would be erected at the entrances of private streets telling tourists to stay out or face potential fines of up to 10,000 yen, according to news reports. Messaging on the signs will be written in Japanese and English. 

“We don't want to make streets off-limits but taking into consideration the voices of the local community, the nuisance to the local community, and the stress on the local people, we can't help but make the decision to prohibit trespassing,'' council member Isokazu Ota said.

Some of the private streets on either side of the north-south running Hanamikoji-dori will be affected by the bans, although it’s unclear how they will be enforced.

Gion’s private streets had been left open to the public thanks to the generosity of the locals and in some cases it may be that tourists have been unable to recognize streets as private, according to reports.

In other cases though, tourists have been blinded in their pursuit of the geiko and maiko that can sometimes be spotted in the area moving between appointments. The prospect of getting a prized snap of these traditional entertainers has turned some tourists into what Japanese media has labeled, “maiko paparazzi.”

We’ve been here before.

While the latest measure to tackle the bad behavior of some tourists in Kyoto has reportedly been six months in the making, it’s even older news of a kind.

A 2014 incident in which a geiko was reported to have had the sleeves of her kimono torn at tourist hands served as a kind of watershed moment in local tolerance and led to signs being erected around Gion pointing out bad behavior.  

In 2019 a ban on photography along some private streets off Hanamikoji-dori was introduced in order to further combat snap-happy tourists engaging in a pursuit of the geiko and maiko. The local council erected warning signs at the entrance of the targeted streets threatening fines of 10,000 yen for taking pictures without permission. 

With the photography ban coming in October that year there was little time to judge its efficacy before the COVID-19 pandemic saw restrictions on travel and ultimately a ban on tourists from overseas altogether.  

The restrictions brought about a temporary cessation in the conflict, both internal and external, between the upsides and downsides of Kyoto’s pursuit of income from tourism and of the tourists’ pursuit of a travel destination often billed as one of the best in the world. And as much as stakeholders on both sides were likely anxious for restrictions to be lifted there can be little doubt that the return of tourists would have been welcomed with no shortage of trepidation.  

And returned they have. 

The number of foreign visitors to Japan in January of this year was around 2.69 million, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, almost the same number as in January 2019, before the pandemic.

With the latest ban and threat of fines, it appears that authorities and stakeholders, as well as tourists, are once again having to wrestle with issues of overtourism and bad behavior on the streets of Gion. 

Even before this the Southern Gionmachi Council, along with organizations including the Gion Geiko Association, issued a statement last December on behalf of local residents. 

“This area has been maintained in order to pass the storied and sophisticated landscape of this district to future generations, and to provide locals with an attractive place to live and work. This is therefore not a theme park, but a place where people live their daily lives,” the statement read.

The council went on to list nuisance behaviors that it “would like people to refrain from.” Polite as ever. Arguably too polite? 

The list has been posted on the official travel guide website of the City of Kyoto and Kyoto City Tourism Association. It includes making loud noises, damaging property, entering property without permission, and littering, among others. 

It’s a list that reads like something a teacher would have to make clear to a recalcitrant student.

How worried should invested parties be then, that the culprits often appear to be grown adults presumably with enough expendable income to make the not inexpensive trip to Kyoto - be they domestic tourists from Japan or those from overseas?

Very worried perhaps?  

That there should be a need for the threat of fines at all seems to suggest that the awareness campaigns and polite appeals to good manners haven’t worked. The culprits are perhaps being driven by the prospect of a reward that far outweighs any discomfort from cultural conflict or angry glares - likely an addictive hit of social-media induced dopamine. 

A quick glance at the usual platforms will reveal that many users have long since stopped caring about acquiring the relevant permissions to shoot photographs or film. There’s a good chance we’ve all been made the unwitting subject of someone’s social media post in recent years, and we probably weren’t dressed up in kimono at the time.  

What chance then for the real geiko and maiko?