When the revised adult entertainment business law comes into effect on June 23, bringing an end to Japan's archaic ban on all-night dance parties, it will mark the end of what has been a challenging period for the nation's nightclubs. But beyond the major metropolises, at campsites and off-season ski resorts, a parallel dance scene has been quietly thriving, untroubled by the so-called fueihō law.

This year's Rainbow Disco Club, which decamped from central Tokyo to a verdant site in Shizuoka Prefecture in 2015, drew over 2,000 people during the recent Golden Week holiday. Some of the same crowd will likely be heading to Nagano Prefecture this weekend for the larger Taicoclub, an all-nighter that balances leftfield electronic acts with more crowd-pleasing domestic fare, and which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year.

2015 also marked the 15th anniversary of The Labyrinth, a three-day party held in Niigata Prefecture, which peddles some of the most hypnotic techno imaginable. And it was a solid year for Rural, a peripatetic techno bash that started in 2009 but has only recently begun to draw wider attention.