Tourist visa hostesses cashed in at Tokyo clubs back in the day

(First published on April 11, 2022)

Third in a five-part series

TOKYO — By the end of the 20th century, the Roppongi-Akasaka area had changed dramatically. Gone were the big band hostess clubs. The New Latin Quarter had fallen victim to a fire that gutted the Hotel New Japan and caused the deaths of many people, while the Mikado, with its 1,200 beeper-carrying girls went bankrupt after the owner died and his daughter took over. (Local residents still remember the bizarre sight of the cabaret's hostesses, many in hair curlers and scarves, staging a huge daytime protest outside the Mikado, over unpaid wages — which, unfortunately, would never be forthcoming.)

In place of such clubs would come smaller, more intimate ones as well as discos.