Ishihara Tightens Screws On Tokyo's Red-Light District

Ishihara tightens screws on Tokyo's red-light district

By Josh Noblestone

TOKYO If you're an old Japan hand and you walk through Kabukicho, Tokyo's infamous red-light district, on a Friday night, what you notice are not the garish neon signs, the one-stop sex-shop information centers, or even the bustle of people. What you notice is what's not there: the touts.

The days when Japanese men in black suits, white shirts and dark ties would openly accost customers, grab them by the arm and usher them into the assorted sex shops, fetish clubs, massage parlors and "bottakuri" bars (places where people are deceived and physically forced into paying up) have, for all practical purposes, ended.

In the dark corners and alleys, you may find the odd man looking for prey, but the days when the "kyakubiki" (customer pullers) announced their wares like a carnival barker seem like a distant era.

If you look closely at the skyline and the lampposts, you'll notice what has replaced them: surveillance cameras. They are the same kind of cameras that went up around Shibuya station this spring, and the same ones that will probably be introduced to the Roppongi area later this year. It's all part of Gov Shintaro Ishihara's plan to clean up the streets of Tokyo: first the touts, then the juveniles lurking around after the new official curfew, and, of course, the "bad foreigners."

Just as New York transformed Times Square from a den of sleaze into a giant upscale entertainment area in the mid-'90s, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Metropolitan Police Department and even the Liberal Democratic Party are trying to do the same for the major nightlife districts of Japan's capital. But in the all-out effort to clamp down on crime and restore order to Japanese society, some residents argue the authorities are applying overly draconian measures or that the whole effort could be nothing more than a safari on gaijin.

This from Japan Today, more here.

Comments

[phatrick]

Sounds like the red light district is no longer safe for school girls to go and sell their panties to middle aged perverts. I hope they get that taken care of. It also sounds like investment banking is going to become alot less fun. What are those idiots going to spend their bonuses on if they can't get heroin and prostitutes?

[MC]

If you go to the site and see comments posted by readers, they bring up some good points. They are not targetting the root of the cause, the yakuza who bring in dodgy foreigners, recruit underage girls to work in the sex shops, and provide the money to pay off police and government officials. Ishihara is a bit of a xenophobic blowhard, so it's hard to take anything he says without a grain of salt. That being said, the trade will just move elsewhere, there are varying degrees of this going on at nearly every major train station.