‘Carnivorous women’ with yen for men find licking to their liking

With growing numbers of hesitant, herbivorous males matched by more assertive, carnivorous females, sex in Japan has truly turned topsy-turvy. Nikkan Gendai (July 17) reports that increasingly libidinous Japanese women have been flocking to discreet “sensual massage parlors,” where they pay to be pampered by young hunks.

An office worker in her 30s who patronizes such a place in Shinjuku’s Kabukicho district tells the tabloid, “The place where I go has a membership system and won’t admit anyone without an introduction. A 90-minute session costs 30,000 yen.”
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Delinquents, dust-ups and drunken dames — Kabukicho drifts downward

Tokyo’s Kabukicho area as captured at night by the camera of photographer Hajime Kiyohira is seen to be increasingly turning into a Mecca for Japan’s youth, similar to Shibuya, reports Flash (Apr. 20) in a special pull-out section.

The four-page spread features a drunken girl urinating in a street corner; a salaryman takes a punch from an aggressive street tout in front of the infamous Parisienne coffee shop; women unable to walk are sprawled in the arms of their boyfriends as they are dragged away; a police officer chases and eventually corals another unruly tout; and a man with his clothes piled at his feet at the intersection of the Furin Kaikan building announces, “Hadaka de nani ga warui!” (What’s wrong with being naked!), as passersby snap photos with their mobile phones. Read more

Japan’s cunning bottakuri bars con compliant customers

Last month’s incident in the Minami district of Osaka in which comedian Tamotsu Kuroda of the group Messenger was arrested for assaulting a bar manager following a dispute over a 250,000-yen bill highlights the increasingly common practice of bottakuri, or to rip off, that is ongoing in Japan’s entertainment areas, reports Spa! (Jan. 26)

“Those rip-off joints in Osaka scrutinize their targets beforehand,” says the owner of a near where Kuroda’s altercation took place. “There’s a possibility that the bar was assuming Kuroda could afford a certain level of tab just because he is a popular comedian. There have been an increasing number of bottakuri cases here in the Minami area.” Read more

Suspected ‘black widow’ Kanae Kijima with possible ties to nightclub host

Documents related to the investigation of marriage fraud suspect Kanae Kijima reveal that she had an association with a nightclub host, reports Shukan Asahi (Dec. 11).

Saitama Prefectural Police have learned that the 34-year-old was probably supporting a male acquaintance, aged in his 30s and employed at a host club in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward. “He is the most important person in the investigation,” says a source close the investigation. “He is not showing up to work now. And he might be the reason for Kijima’s crimes. The money she got from these guys was used to feed and take care of him.”

The same documents indicate that police are presently building cases for murder around the suspicious deaths of six men, many of whom gave Kijima sizable sums of money. Thus far, Kijima has been arrested four times for defrauding multiple other men, in their 40s and 50s and residing in various prefectures across the Kanto region, out of a total of 7.7 million yen after posing as a prospective marriage partner. (That figure is an update by Shukan Asahi over previous reports.) The most recent arrest occurred on November 18. Read more

Creative new commerce keeps Kabukicho hopping

“First it was Koma Stadium, which shut its doors last New Year’s Eve,” a local mutters. “Now it’s the Kabukicho McDonald’s outlet, which closed on Aug. 31. I think the place went under because it became a hangout for bar hostesses waiting for the trains to start running and homeless people, who just sat there nursing a cup of coffee.”

But, reports Shukan Shincho (Oct. 8), that doesn’t necessarily mean Tokyo’s largest adult entertainment zone has fallen victim to the recession. New businesses are springing up, appealing to consumers with super-low prices.

One such example is the Shateki Oh (King of the Marksmen) in Kabukicho 1-chome, which has been thriving since it opened last April. As the name implies, the shop is a quirky type of shooting gallery, similar to the tacky types often found in rural hot springs resorts. This one seems to be attracting sightseers on group tours to Tokyo. Read more

Tohoku red-light town looks to Tokyo’s Kabukicho for revival

Sendai’s Kokubuncho entertainment district is modeling an initiative for its rebirth upon the ongoing clean-up of Tokyo’s infamous Kabukicho area, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Sep. 29).

Hard-hit by Japan’s recession, various business and long-term building owners of the area, located in the city’s Aoba Ward, came together last month to form the “Kokubuncho Development Project.” The aim of the organization is to enhance the brand of the city — whose over 3,000 bars, restaurants and sex clubs have shared a style similar to that found in Tokyo’s Shimbashi and Ginza districts.

The first step was to come together as a group. Last month’s meeting consisted of approximately thirty men and women of varied ages, backgrounds and professions. Read more

Hosts in Kabukicho

(Photo by The Tokyo Reporter, November 2007)

Gals flash hard cash to $leep with $umo-$ans

The institution of host clubs, where Japanese women pay out rather exorbitant fees for the companionship of dashing young hunks, has been covered ad nauseam in the English media.

But the third installment of an ongoing series in Nikkan Gendai (Apr. 23) sheds light on a heretofore unfamiliar topic: that plenty of women are willing to pay big yen for the privilege of getting poked by a sumo wrestler.

Female groupies who clamor for a relationship with a strapping sumoist — and there are many — are known in the trade as sumo gyaru. It’s hard to generalize about their age, appearance and other attributes, although the daily tabloid notes that they often tend to be well fixed financially. Read more

Clampdown on boys behind bars in Kabukicho

The bust earlier this month of “boy’s bar” Junk #9 Powers in Tokyo’s red-light district of Kabukicho is an example of the ambiguity and ongoing evolution within adult businesses in Japan, reports Nikkan Gendai (Mar. 7 and 14).

A boy’s bar is the inverse of a “girl’s bar,” where multiple women chat and serve drinks to men from behind a long counter. The setup is a means of exploiting the Law Regulating Adult Entertainment Businesses, which views service across such a non-visible barrier to not be entertainment and legal in the wee hours. In other words, boy’s and girl’s bars are masquerading as run-of-the-mill drinking establishments.

For Junk #9 Powers, which received between 50 to 60 patrons each day and accumulated 4.8 million yen in receipts monthly, the violation occurred due to guys chatting with ladies at tables in the early morning, a violation of the adult business law that requires such “entertainment” to cease at 1 a.m. Indeed, girl’s bars have been under similar scrutiny. Read more

Kabukicho conundrum

TOKYO – The framed certificate from the Tokyo public safety commissioner sitting inside the office of Yoshihisa Shimoda acknowledges his successful completion of training in thwarting the activities of boryokudan, or criminal organizations. Such an accreditation should be very practical given his task at hand.

For years, it was well known that the bread and butter of a typical yakuza gangster working the darkened streets of Kabukicho has been the sale of ordinary items like hand towels and ice cubes at heavily marked-up prices to the area’s seedy kyabakura (cabaret clubs) and bars in exchange for any necessary “protection” of business operations.

Shimoda is the office manager of Discovery Kabukicho, an organization whose goals are to rehabilitate the image of Japan’s most vast red-light district, located just east of Shinjuku Station. “At the end of the day, we want Kabukicho to be clean,” says the manager, who along with two other staff members began operations in April. “We want security, safety, and a pleasant environment.” Read more

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