Arashi Scalping Arrest

Upon further investigation, the authorities found that the same woman had resold some 300 tickets to concerts over a period of 18 months, earning in the process about 10 million yen ($98,000).

The arrest sparked more than the usual level of coverage but also some confusion, as there are actually no laws in Japan that expressly prohibit the resale of concert tickets for profit. There are a number of websites, chief among them one called Ticket Camp, that specialize in listing tickets for resale by private individuals.

What the Japan concert industry objected to in the full-page ads they bought in several newspapers last month was the practice of profit-making parties – some related to organized crime – who buy large amounts of tickets when they go on sale and then immediately turn them around for more money on resale sites. In the case of the Sapporo arrest, the suspect is actually from Kagawa Prefecture in western Japan.

Apparently, she violated a local law that requires people who sell tickets to public events obtain a special license to do so. Some commentators have theorized that, since the police do not have the authority to arrest people for reselling tickets at higher prices, they have to resort to other means and other regulations. With the concert industry exerting pressure, there may be more such arrests.

Other laws at their disposal, and ones that are also locally administered, are “anti-nuisance” regulations that many municipalities implemented as far back as the ’60s to address “dafuya” (scalpers), who stand outside venues before concerts selling tickets at inflated prices.

In such cases, violators are arrested for hanging out in public spaces and bothering passers-by, and not for the resale itself.

This is thought to be a veiled attempt at controlling the activities of underworld organizations, which typically dispatched scalpers to concert and sports venues.

However, these laws can be used only to prosecute people who sell tickets on the street, and now that online resale websites have become easier to use, onsite scalpers have become a rarity.