In Japan, a campaign to encourage young people to drink more alcohol

Alcohol consumption in Japan has been falling sharply for 20 years. To remedy this, its tax agency is launching a competition among young people aged 20 to 39 to encourage them to drink more.

AP - Koji Sashara

Text by: Frédéric Charles

2 mins

Japan has been concerned about a sharp decline in alcohol consumption for the past twenty years.

To remedy this, its tax agency is launching a competition for young people aged 20 to 39, unlike those conducted elsewhere in the world to reduce alcohol consumption.

Advertising

Read more

From our correspondent in Tokyo

, 

This invitation to drink more raises, without doubt, more negative reactions abroad than in Japan where this contest called "Saké Viva" by the National Tax Agency (NTA) in reference to sake, rice alcohol , arouses either indifference, irony or sarcasm.

Young people under 40 have until September 9 to send in innovative ideas, new products, design, marketing, drawing inspiration, among other things, from the virtual world of the metaverse.

The finalists of the competition will be invited on November 10 in Tokyo to an award ceremony.

Generational decline

Alcohol consumption in Japan has been falling sharply for 20 years.

And this decline is generational: young Japanese drink less.

In the country, drinking has long been a business constraint.

After work, department heads forced their youngest employees to go to restaurants or bars.

Alcohol was used to reinforce the feeling of belonging to a group, to temporarily abolish the hierarchies in a very rigid society.

Today, young people are less accepting of being regimented in this way and many do not drink alcohol at all.

The aging of the population also explains why the annual consumption of sake, beer, whiskey or other spirits has decreased from 100 liters per person in 1995 to 75 liters in 2020.

Encourage consumption above all for tax reasons 

But if the National Tax Agency wants to revive the consumption of alcohol in Japan, it is above all for fiscal reasons, because taxes on alcoholic beverages represented in 1980 5% of the total revenue of the Japanese State against 1 .7% in 2017. This is the biggest drop in 30 years.

The government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida faces a chronic budget deficit.

The public debt represents two and a half times the country's GDP.

The largest beer manufacturers are now diversifying their activities into biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

►

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

• Japan

• consumption

• Feed