Guide · Akihabara

Photography Etiquette in Japan: Where You Can Shoot, and Where You Really Can't — From a Tour Guide Asked This Every Week

Outdoors in public spaces, photography is generally fine. Of identifiable individuals, ask first. Inside shops, assume no unless a sign says otherwise — a great many Japanese retailers, and most anime and hobby shops, prohibit photographing their merchandise. At temples and shrines, exteriors are usually fine and interiors often are not. Staff, performers and café workers are people at work, not attractions.

This is the area where a well-meaning visitor most easily causes real upset, because a camera turns a private person into content without asking them. It is also the area where the rules are least visible, since half of them are posted in Japanese.

Can I photograph people on the street?

Photographing a crowd or a street scene is normal and unremarkable. Photographing an identifiable individual as your subject, close up, without asking, is not. Ask — a raised camera and a questioning look works without any Japanese — and accept a refusal immediately and cheerfully.

Japan takes personal likeness seriously, and depending on the situation and the prefecture, photographing someone without consent can cross into legal territory rather than only social discomfort. I am not going to try to summarise that law for you, because the rules differ by prefecture and by circumstance. The practical version is much simpler: if a person is the subject of your photo, get their agreement.

Two specific cases:

• Children. Do not photograph other people's children, including school groups. This reads far worse here than most visitors realise.
• People in traditional dress. A woman in kimono in Kyoto is very often a tourist in a rental, and equally often a professional going to work who is now late because of a queue of cameras. Kyoto's Gion district has run public campaigns about exactly this, with restrictions on photography in some private lanes. Ask, or do not shoot.

Why can't I take photos in shops?

Most Japanese retailers treat their shop floor, product line-up and pricing as commercial information, and photographing it is prohibited by house rules — often signposted with a crossed-out camera. Anime, hobby, model and doujin shops apply this especially strictly, partly for the same reason and partly to protect the privacy of other customers.

This surprises visitors more than anything else on this page, because the shelves in an Akihabara shop are exactly what you came to see. The rule is real, staff do enforce it, and it applies to video and livestreaming too. More on that neighbourhood specifically in Akihabara etiquette: anime shops, maid cafés and secondhand culture.

Some shops explicitly allow photography, sometimes in a designated area or of a specific display, and some will say yes if you ask at the counter. Asking costs nothing: shashin, ii desu ka? (photo, is it OK?) with the camera raised is universally understood.

The same applies in restaurants. Photographing your own food is completely normal. Photographing the interior, the staff or other diners is not, and a flash in a quiet restaurant is its own small crime.

What about temples, shrines and museums?

Grounds and exteriors are usually fine. Interiors of halls are often prohibited, and where they are, there will be a sign. Never photograph a ceremony, a wedding, a funeral or a person praying. Tripods and drones are prohibited at most sites, and drones are heavily restricted in Japanese cities generally.

Museums vary widely, sometimes room by room within the same building, and the sign at the door is the authority. Where photography is allowed, flash usually is not.

The underlying principle at a religious site is that you are in a working place of worship. See shrine and temple etiquette for the rest of it.

The places where the answer is simply no

Onsen and public bath areas, changing rooms, inside maid cafés and similar venues except where the venue explicitly sells you a photo, station platforms in some restricted areas, and anywhere with a crossed-out camera sign. In these places, having the phone in your hand at all is the problem.

The bathhouse is the absolute one. A phone in a bath area is a serious incident, not an etiquette slip — leave it in the locker. Details in onsen and sento etiquette.

Also worth knowing: phones sold on the Japanese market generally cannot mute their camera shutter sound, a long-standing industry convention aimed at discouraging covert photography. Your foreign phone probably can be silenced — using that silence to take photos you would not take audibly is exactly the behaviour the convention exists to prevent.

How to ask, and how to read the room

• Ask with the camera, not with a sentence. Raise it slightly, catch their eye, tilt your head. Everyone understands it.
• Shashin, ii desu ka? — sha-shin, ee dess ka. Photo, is it OK?
• Read a hesitation as a no. A polite refusal in Japan often arrives as a pause, a tilted head, an intake of breath, or chotto… (a bit…). None of those mean "convince me."
• Look for the pictogram. A crossed-out camera is the sign, and it is often the only signage in English you will need.
• Do not block the pavement. A tripod, a queue for a shot, or standing in a shop doorway is its own etiquette problem regardless of what you are shooting.
• On trains, photographing other passengers is not acceptable, and railway photography from platforms is restricted at many stations for safety.

Frequently asked questions

Is it actually illegal to photograph someone in Japan? It can be, depending on the circumstances and the local ordinance, and I would rather not give you a confident legal summary of something that varies by prefecture. Treat consent as the requirement and you will never need to know the details.

Can I take photos of maids or street promoters in Akihabara? No, not without permission, and the answer is usually no. Photos with maids are generally a paid service inside the café rather than something taken on the street.

Can I post photos of strangers to social media? Publishing widens the problem rather than solving it. If someone is identifiable and you did not ask, do not post it, and be aware that identifiable people can and do ask for removals.

What about photographing food in restaurants? Your own food, yes, quickly and without flash. Some high-end and counter restaurants prohibit it entirely — there will be a note on the menu or the chef will say so.

Are drones allowed? Assume no. Drone use is tightly restricted in Japanese urban areas and around most tourist sites, and casually flying one for holiday footage is not something to plan on.

Learn to read the signs before you need to

Half of this is knowing what a Japanese no-photography sign looks like, and half is knowing how a Japanese "no" sounds. Both are things I teach on the Tokyo First Day Tour: Japanese Manners & Survival Class — a three-hour walking lesson on your first or second morning in Japan, in real shops and real streets, so you spend the rest of your trip photographing confidently instead of nervously.

The rest of the map: Japanese etiquette: a complete guide for first-time visitors.

About the author. I am Yuuki, a Japanese teacher and Akihabara tour guide in Tokyo. I run small-group tours in English most weeks, rated 4.96★ on Airbnb, and I have watched over 1,500 anime series — which is how most of my guests find me. I get asked to explain a crossed-out camera sign roughly once per tour.

See the Akihabara anime tour →

Sources: Kyoto City Tourism Association, Gion Manner (Message from Southern Gionmachi); Japan National Tourism Organization, Shrine & Temple Visits — Best Practices.