Seedy Kabukicho dancing to an African beat
Africans, aided by a cleanup enforced by Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, are taking over the streets of Kabukicho, Japan’s most notorious entertainment district, according to Flash (9/12).
“They’re really into bottakuri bars (illegal drinking holes where customers are charged extortionately high prices). They drag customers in, get them roaring drunk and then rip off anything they’ve got of value. They sell their stuff to us and we take it to the pawnshops and exchange it for cash,” a yakuza boss active in Kabukicho tells Flash. “Some of the rich black guys are into dealing drugs. They buy 100 grams of speed for 800,000 yen, then sell it in the clubs in 0.2-gram hits costing from 10,000 yen to 15,000 yen apiece.”
Kabukicho has long had a strong attraction for the foreign element of Japan’s netherworld. It welcomed ethnic Koreans decades ago when most of mainstream Japan shunned them. And as more foreigners swarmed into the country during the ’90s, the seedier elements headed straight for Kabukicho.
In the early years of the Noughties, Chinese gangs moved in and assumed a vice-like grip over the district’s vice. But Ishihara’s highly publicized clean up campaign directed at the capital’s entertainment districts drove out many of Kabukicho’s Chinese gangsters and sex workers, who’ve headed to nearby Shin Okubo, but the Africans have swooped in to fill the vacuum created by their disappearance.
“About three or four years ago, most of the guys were working as touts in Roppongi. But when the cops cracked down there, both them and the clubs they were working for moved on to Kabukicho. Nigerians are the most common,” a police insider tells Flash. “What differentiates the Africans in Kabukicho from the Chinese or Koreans who used to be active in the district is that not many of them are there illegally. Most of the Africans are married to Japanese women and have got legitimate visas. Loads of them are also running their own brothels.”
There are at least 40 Africans active as street-side touts, even though the practice was outlawed in April this year. About 20 clubs within Kabukicho’s confines are also believed to be run by Africans, but they don’t have a great reputation.
“One of the African nightclub operators came to my place one night and asked for me to include his joint on the places I tell customers about,” the owner of an information booth providing the poop on Kabukicho sex services tells Flash. “I went to have a look at the place once. Honestly speaking, the guys working there were bloody scary. The joint itself was a bit too shady for my liking, too, so I didn’t tell anybody else about it.”
Most of the African guys working in Kabukicho don’t want to talk about it. Those who do have mainly found their way there following stints performing menial work in the boondocks and then heading into the bright lights and better-paying jobs of Tokyo as their Japanese skills got better and they knew more about the country — a career path that mimics in many ways that chosen by many of the women who work at the flesh trade dens the Africans are promoting. Pay is not great, with wages for a curb-hugging club promoter in the 700 yen to 1,000 yen per hour range.
Flash says the Africans have garnered a reputation for violence in Kabukicho.
“They’re not like the Chinese, they don’t know the way things work here in Japan,” another gangster says. “You don’t know what they’ll do. If they come at you, it’s best just to cower.”
While it seems the Africans are poised to enjoy a long reign over Kabukicho’s less savory elements, cops say that’s not necessarily the case, pointing to a February sweep that netted 130 people in the district and threatening similar such action not far down the track.
“It won’t take too long,” the insider tells Flash, “before the Africans disappear from Kabukicho, too.” (By Ryann Connell)
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