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The story
The “Lake Biwa Three-City Simultaneous Fireworks Festival,” which three cities in Shiga Prefecture had planned to hold jointly, has been cancelled, and the organizing committee announced it is proceeding with discussions on the premise of issuing refunds. However, the scope, timing, and method of any refunds have “not yet reached a final decision,” and on 5ch a wave of comments questioned whether the committee actually exists in any real form and where the collected funds have gone.
The organizing committee for the fireworks festival — which had sold tickets for a simultaneous fireworks display across three cities in Shiga Prefecture before announcing its cancellation — updated its social media account on the 21st.
Addressing buyers of viewing-seat tickets and food-stall vendors, the committee stated: “On the premise that we will issue refunds, we are proceeding with confirmation and discussion — including the legal and accounting aspects — of the scope, method, timing, procedures, and other necessary matters regarding refunds.”
At the same time, it stated that the specific refund method, timing, and scope of eligibility have “not yet reached a final decision.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
I'm pretty sure it actually is just one person.
Isn't it just one guy? It's way too sloppy for it to be more than that — the only other person involved is probably the influencer who promoted it.
In the Tokematch case (a watch-trading scam), the arrest came right after they put out an announcement just like this one.
The name sounds impressive, but isn't it actually just one guy?
Haha, fair. Really it just comes down to: hurry up and give the money back already.
Their imaginary in-house legal counsel. Or maybe "Chappy" (Japanese slang nickname for ChatGPT).
Didn't the Sanriku Fireworks Festival also say it would refund people and then never actually did?
Is this just about staying under the legal bar for fraud while they stall for time?
Seems pretty obvious that the longer this drags on, the more the money gets moved around and the harder it becomes to ever recover.
If this really isn't fraud, they should just say "we will refund in full" instead of "we're looking into it." They should announce a concrete date for the refund process, and do it on the official website — not on social media.
If they'd actually been making preparations and then had to stop, fine — but they've only ever pretended to be making progress, so it's more accurate to say this is just building themselves an alibi for later excuses.
Aggressive about collecting money, zero about paying it back out — that's the real answer here.
If people paid by card, the sales would already be locked in at the end-of-month settlement anyway.
The year after: resolute scrutiny and refund preparations.
The year after that: we'll bring you next-dimension, unprecedented refund measures (mocking the government's habit of promising "unprecedented" policy fixes that never arrive).
Is this the North Korean fried-rice method, lol (a jab at hollow propaganda promises with nothing to actually show for it)?
If they're showing intent to refund and none of the people who paid have filed a police report, the police can't just move on their own.
So it comes down to how long they can keep stringing people along by continuing to claim they intend to refund.
Not even a single police report has been filed????
Paying money for a good seat isn't cheating in any way, lol.
Even if some people did buy tickets hoping for good seats, that's not cheating at all. And the main victims here are the food vendors and other stallholders. You clearly don't get it.
That's the next phase.
If it's fraud, the debt doesn't get discharged in bankruptcy, but if it's treated as an ordinary commercial debt it would be — so they might be dragging this out just to set up bankruptcy proceedings.
Maybe they blew it all at the pachinko parlor, who knows.
It's probably already been moved to another account, someone else's name, some company's account, or into crypto by now.
The biggest fireworks festival where I live charges rip-off prices, and whether it's cancelled for bad weather or cut short by equipment trouble, they never refund a single yen — the well-off crowd who go just accept that's how it is.
That's not what an AI would tell you. All I can say is there's a serious legal problem here — but online purchases are excluded from the cooling-off system. Seems like once you buy online, that's just it. The law hasn't caught up.
Background and Key Points
Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake, sits in Shiga Prefecture, and lakeside fireworks festivals are one of the region’s biggest summer draws, historically free events funded by sponsors and municipal budgets that in recent years have shifted toward paid reserved seating as costs and crowd-control needs have risen. Events like this are typically run by a “jikkō iinkai” (executive committee), a loose, often unregistered coalition of local businesses, municipalities, and volunteers assembled just for the occasion — a structure that has no legal personality of its own, which is why posters could plausibly ask whether an “executive committee” here means an actual organization or effectively one individual collecting money under an official-sounding name.
The thread’s real fault line wasn’t whether the festival should have refunded people — everyone agreed on that — but whether the vague “we are proceeding on the premise of refunds” language is a genuine holding statement or a calculated way to avoid crossing into criminal fraud (which under Japanese law requires proving deceptive intent at the time money was collected) while stalling. Posters also disagreed on who the real victims are: ticket buyers, or the food-stall vendors who fronted costs to participate.
What outside readers will likely miss is a legal detail one poster raised almost in passing: Japan’s cooling-off system, which lets consumers cancel certain contracts, explicitly excludes online purchases, so buyers here have essentially no statutory refund right to fall back on. It’s also worth knowing Japanese police generally won’t open a fraud investigation on economic cases like this until a victim files a formal complaint (higai todoke) — meaning nothing moves until buyers themselves go to the police, not the other way around.
*This article compiles excerpts and a summary from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “‘Refunds Are the Premise for Discussions’ — Committee for Cancelled ‘Lake Biwa Three-City Simultaneous Fireworks Festival’ Updates SNS, Specific Method, Timing, and Scope Still Undecided.”
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