The Cafe That Helps Beat Writer’s Block—by Fining You $22

Customers who fail to meet their deadline pay a fee; ‘I sit down and immediately start typing’

Kyoko Ohtagaki prefers the Manuscript Writing Cafe to co-working spaces because there are fewer people, no music, and traffic from a nearby highway sounds like white noise. Suryatapa Bhattacharya/The Wall Street Journal

TOKYO—At the Manuscript Writing Cafe, people on a deadline pay to put themselves under the gaze of a manager in hopes of curing writer’s block.

Joe Sasanuma, a lawyer at a technology company, is under orders from his publisher to complete a legal book by the end of the year. Alas, the words to explain the contractual obligations of cloud-computing providers haven’t flowed effortlessly. So Mr. Sasanuma has been visiting the cafe.

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