Ikinobiru Toshi (The city living on: The sociology of Shinjuku Kabukicho)

“Shinjuku Kabukicho” is where the adult entertainment industry of inner-city Tokyo, which is considered a “global city,” is concentrated, and the fact that it has continued to exist for over half a century is by no means self-explanatory. Associated with gangs and brutal crimes, this entertainment district representing Japan has frequently been the target of “crackdowns” and “cleanup operations.” How is it that Kabukicho has continued to exist in the way that it has? It is this mystery of “the existence of Kabukicho” that drives this book. This mystery is expressed from a sociological point of view, which avoids the folk theory that tell stories of change from a short-term perspective and aims the sociological theory that explains “the exitesnce of Kabukicho” as a platform enabling these stories.
 
However, the attitude towards the subjects of urban and regional sociology, has exclusively focused upon local communities made up by its residents. By reviewing the existing literature in this field, we come to understand that resident-centrism and emphasis on the community were not the only options, but that the other developable possibilities had been neglected under their shadow. This book aims to inherit these other possibilities by focusing on the “activities,” such as the occupations and the work within the space representing “place,” which includes not only the subjects living in the area but also those who come and go (“moving” in and out), and in this way it offers a “local area” approach to the research.
 
Fieldwork techniques have been adopted for this book. For a place like Kabukicho, its ambiguous social structures make it difficult for statistical surveys to be successful, and thus fieldwork is effective in probing, through explorative means, the topics themselves that ought to be examined. This ambiguity historically came about due to a combination of factors, such as the decline of local organizations as the area developed into an entertainment district, the revision of laws that paradoxically made law enforcement by the police difficult, and the decline in municipal initiatives.
 
The fieldwork outcomes, consisting of interviews and participant observations, were descriptively analyzed across three levels, each level appropriately set to represent a space. The first level of space consists of multi-tenant buildings, placing importance on the workings of the local shopping district structures, municipalities, the police force, as well as the real estate agencies. Extricating the importance of real estate agents, which has not really been discussed until now, and examining and analyzing such information represent one of the book’s achievements. The next level of space concerns the clubs within the multi-tenant buildings and addresses the adult entertainment businesses (kyabakura, host clubs) and sex-related businesses (on-site health clubs and soaplands, and delivery health escorts); both the management and worker perspectives for each of these businesses were explored by listening to the stories of those involved, as well as by engaging in participant observation. The management and labor aspects of the sex industry revealed here are closely associated with the third level of space, which focuses on the various activities that unfold on the street. This level concerns the conflict between barkers and scouts—who act as mediators stationed outside the clubs—and those who patrol the shopping district and disapprove of the deterioration of the area’s image caused by these mediators, creating an equilibrium state of compromise.
 
An essential factor enabling the reproduction of Kabukicho indicated in the conclusion, which synthesizes the analyses of the above three levels of space, is the “mediating-separation” activities of its people. This puts into context the characteristics of the place in Kabukicho, where “subdivisions that flow without order accumulate.” Such characteristics of this place are not only a social space issue but are also related to the physical space of multi-tenant buildings, promoting a certain relativization of the social-relation-centristic perspectives of traditional sociology. These characteristics of this place and the reciprocal interactions within the mediating-separation activities have made it possible for Kabukicho to continue and reproduce.
 

(Written by Toru Takeoka, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2018)