Reverberations of Dark Money: The Financial Underworld in Kabukicho, 1999-2010
From the late 1990s through the 2000s, amid the economic uncertainty that followed the bursting of the bubble economy, Kabukicho was infiltrated by black-market money lenders. These lenders, who offered instant loans and lent money without collateral, repeatedly targeted hosts and cabaret girls with exorbitant interest rates and violent collections. The gray-zone interest rate at that time exceeded 40%, and young people were forced to pay back their debts, and they were forced to operate on a bicycle. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a new type of black money business emerged, targeting non-regular workers and night shift workers. Anonymous transactions and electronic money transfers made it difficult to detect. In a corner of the city, lending and borrowing using personal relationships as collateral supported the backstage economy and remained the last credit for those who had been abandoned by the system. Kabukicho's black money is a shadow born from the crack
s of capitalism, and its echoes still live in the depths of the city.
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