An expansive restaurant in Tokyo’s upscale Nishi-Azabu district, Gonpachi is perhaps best known as inspiring the location of the most audacious fight scene in Quentin Tarantino’s "Kill Bill.”
Now it’s at the center of a different kind of battle: one between authorities calling on restaurants to close early to stem the spread of the coronavirus and business owners who say such requests are pushing them past their limits.
With Japan’s virus strategy dependent on voluntary cooperation, the struggle shows the limits of its social compliance model as the pandemic drags on into a second year. Japanese authorities have singled out eating and drinking in public as the biggest source of infections, and called on bars and restaurants in regions under its state of emergency to close by 8 p.m.
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