Nation's first smoke-free beach opens for season in Kanagawa

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) The beach at Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, opened its bathing season Friday with a basic smoking ban in place.

The prefectural ordinance bans smoking on beaches except for special smoking areas but carries no penalty. The roughly 600-meter-long sand beach has five roofed smoking areas and operators of seasonal seaside houses will patrol voluntarily to ask smokers to use them, one of them said.

A similar ordinance is in place in Shirahama, Wakayama Prefecture, but Kanagawa was the first prefecture to enact such a rule in May.

Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa attending a beach opening ceremony.

"We'd like to create clean and safe beaches that all the people — both smokers and nonsmokers — can enjoy," the governor said. "Since Kanagawa beaches have many visitors from outside the prefecture, we need to fully enforce the new rule."

Yoshimasa Makabe, who heads a guild of beach house operators on the beach, said he hopes families will enjoy the beach more with the separate smoking areas.