In hard-drinking Japan, alcohol-free drinks meet growing demand from the ‘sober curious’ and teetotallers

Japan’s culture of drinking, especially in the business world, often discriminates against non-drinkers

Alcohol-free bars are rare but growing in popularity, mixing non-alcoholic cocktails for the ‘sober curious’ – drinkers who have decided to cut back

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Japan’s traditional drinking culture extends into business, and people who don’t consume alcoholic drinks often feel left out and discriminated against. Times are changing, though, and alcohol-free bars are growing in popularity. Photo: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP

Published: 12:15pm, 6 Oct 2020Updated: 7:46pm, 6 Oct 2020

At a trendy Tokyo cocktail bar, customers sip brightly coloured drinks with sophisticated flavours, designed for a small but growing market in hard-drinking Japan: teetotallers.

The bar, called 0% Non-Alcohol Experience, is still something of an anomaly in Japan, where drinking is popular and considered an important part of business culture.

With alcohol as a lubricant, the formality that can govern the Japanese workplace slips away, and drinking – often heavily – with colleagues is seen as important to career advancement for some.

There’s even a word for drinking with colleagues: “nominication”, a portmanteau of the word for drink – nomi – in Japanese and the English word communication. That has long put non-drinkers like Hideto Fujino, a 54-year-old fund manager, at a disadvantage, but he and others like him are speaking out – and finding they are not alone.

Mayumi Yamamoto started a non-alcoholic bar in Tokyo. Photo: Philip Fong/AFP

“There are many times that non-drinkers feel uncomfortable,” he said. “You sometimes hear statements like ‘you can’t get promoted if you can’t drink alcohol’,” said Fujino, who started a Facebook group for non-drinkers.