A Night of Steam in the Afterglow of Neon - At a Ramen Restaurant at 2 a.m. in Kabukicho, 2000-2010

A Night of Steam in the Afterglow of Neon - At a Ramen Restaurant at 2 a.m. in Kabukicho, 2000-2010

It is 2:00 in the morning. Whenever the sliding door of the store opens, the smell of steam and soy sauce escapes into the alley. Hosts seat their guests and cabaret girls light up cigarettes at the next table. Smoking is now prohibited inside restaurants, but back then it was not uncommon to see smoking in small restaurants, and the steam and purple smoke created a scene. The law was strengthened step by step, and smoking was banned indoors in principle in 2020. Later, only exceptional smoking-only rooms will remain.

The owner says, "This is a refuge for everyone. This is a refuge for everyone. Behind these words lies the fact that Kabukicho in the 2000s was both light and shadow at the same time. Behind the neon lights of the main street, crackdowns were stepped up, and cleanup operations and touting regulations were implemented. around 2009, international press coverage focused on the strengthening of measures against illegal solicitation and rip-offs, and the town continued to meet nighttime demand despite its reduced glamour.

Meanwhile, Japan as a whole was hit by the rapid cooling of the economy after the Lehman Shock, and consumer spending and employment cooled. As nighttime sales became harder to read, an after-work drink took on more meaning than a tight finish. The heat of the bowl of rice was neither a sense of accomplishment nor luxury, but merely a restoration of body heat of having made it through the day. On the macro level, exports and employment are taking a hit, and on the micro level, there is more silence to slurp noodles in silence.

The evening's occupations come together at this restaurant. The dry jokes of the hosts, the small sighs of the cabaret girls, and the tall tones of the cab drivers. The ritual of topping off ramen, which has taken root in Tokyo's nighttime culture, is no different in Kabukicho, which is why the shop's curtains are lit until the late hours. Ramen is both the end of a conversation and a prelude to the next night.

And there is another context. Kabukicho has undergone expansion and contraction as a postwar entertainment district, and with each milestone of purification and redevelopment, the place of the night community has been rewritten. The survival of Golden Gai and small eateries cannot be explained by economic rationality alone. It is because the city needs a place where people who work at night can breathe again. At the counter at 2 a.m., when the bottom of the bowl of rice is visible, the city becomes a little quieter. The steam recedes and dawn approaches. It is still night here, and it is already morning.