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The story
The envelope for a national health insurance premium collection notice sent out by Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward was printed with eye-catching phrases like ‘OPEN IT, OPEN IT, OPEN IT,’ ‘Open it! Open it already~!’ and ‘YOU MUST OPEN IT!’ The story broke after a self-employed man in his 40s who received one told the Tokyo Shimbun it was ‘unpleasant and anxiety-inducing,’ asking the paper to look into why the envelope turned out this way. Reactions on 5ch were split between those sympathetic to the ward’s attempt to boost open rates and those questioning or bristling at spending tax money on such a gimmick.
‘Open it! Open it already~!’ — Bizarrely designed collection notice… How Bunkyo Ward responds to the anxious resident who received it: Tokyo Shimbun Digital
October 14, 2026, 5:00 AM — Paid subscribers only
‘OPEN IT, OPEN IT, OPEN IT.’ ‘Open it! Open it already~!’ ‘YOU MUST OPEN IT!’ ‘This is bad, this is bad, this is bad.’ — The envelope containing a national health insurance premium collection notice sent out by Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward is lined with attention-grabbing phrases, one after another. A self-employed man in his 40s who received it reached out to the Tokyo Shimbun, saying, ‘It’s unpleasant, and it stokes anxiety. I want someone to look into why the envelope turned out this way.’ What intention did Bunkyo Ward have behind the design? (By Sadatoshi Ogura, photos also by the author)
Source: tokyo-np.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
on it
Where you from, talking like that?
Osaka!! (joking that the aggressive phrasing sounds like Osaka dialect)
Just Google image search 'Open it! Open it already~!' and you're set
If they've got the time and budget to dream this up and print it, they could lower premiums more, you'd think
That's the point
It's meant to make people go 'oh, I get it' without having to be told outright
Well yeah, obviously
If you're a regular employee it's deducted from your paycheck automatically anyway
Ignore it and it eventually escalates to having your assets seized
Not opening it only makes things worse
Making the effort to get people to open it is actually a kindness
but the real problem is there's a manager above them who signed off on it
More like 'Yutori generation' (the relaxed-education cohort) than Gen Z
Means someone from the Niconico Douga heyday has landed a decent position now
If they grew up on 2ch through Nico Nama, they probably graduated around 2005
So the boss who approved it is maybe about 44 (^▽^)/
If people still won't open it after all this,
there's nothing left to try
it'll escalate to seizure
Whoever designed this is definitely a forum lurker lol
Hitting us with 2ch vibes from 20 years ago (´･ω･`)
This is just a lazy shortcut to avoid staff having to collect payments in person
It's not 'Tokyo' — it's specifically Bunkyo Ward
Can't help it, it's all 'work-style reform' now 🙂
Googled it and found something
Either way they have to print and mail a notice regardless, so just pay up instead of making them waste more money
Well, if they didn't need to send a notice at all, they wouldn't need to print anything, right?
Exactly that
That just gives the deliberate non-openers an excuse not to open it
Also, does this even work on people who ignore collection notices anyway?
It's to kill the excuse of 'I didn't notice it'
The kind of people who'd actually pay just from seeing a plain paper notice are relatively conscientious already
so I think it's questionable to go out of your way to annoy exactly those people
Background and Key Points of Debate
Collection notices are a routine administrative step sent to people who’ve fallen behind on taxes or insurance premiums, and the wording is normally dry and bureaucratic. What made this one newsworthy was the use of forceful language apparently meant to boost the chances recipients would actually open the envelope. The thread’s main fault line ran between a defense — that encouraging people to open the notice is meant to help them avoid the worst-case outcome of having assets seized — and criticism that the ward should lower premiums instead of spending budget and effort on a stunt like this. A poster claiming to be a Bunkyo Ward resident also shared that their own resident-tax collection notice came in a similarly flashy, multicolor design, suggesting this kind of attention-grabbing notice design may not be limited to this one case. That said, since the original article is paywalled for paid subscribers, details on whether other municipalities use similar tactics, or the ward’s official rationale, couldn’t be confirmed from the text, so no firm conclusion is drawn here.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread ‘[KITA━━━━(゚∀゚)━━━━!!] ‘Open it! Open it already~!’ — Bizarrely designed collection notice… How Bunkyo Ward responds to the anxious resident who received it.’
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