Tokyo’s Lost Mania Nightlife Scene

There was a time when people in Tokyo not only worked hard, but also worked just as hard. From the mid-1970s to the 1980s, even asphalt streets seemed possible. The economy flourished, and the night stretched endlessly, filled with neon lights, alcohol, rhinestones and fantasies. This is a city that is intoxicated by its own potential. Continuously high is electric.

Roppongi’s Flamingo Bar opened in 1985

Tokyo ten years of oversupply

In the 1980s, nightclubs shone as Tokyo’s answer to the jazz era, a playground for the newly rich, where money flowed freely like Dom Pérignon.

The engine behind it is the bubble economy – real estate speculation, the dazzling splash of credit easing and the stock price inflation, making office workers and landowners rich. The cost of landing in Ginza in Tokyo is higher than that in Manhattan, while Banks throws loans to any loan in any way that pulsates. The party held in Roppongi is to believe that fantasy will never go bankrupt. You can buy that kind of beauty. This desire is useless.

Biba’s Sunday Disco (circa 1984) | Obata hitoshi/hagamag

Sunday School in Crescent Disco

It’s not just adults filling up the dance floor. Depend on Early 1980sa strange phenomenon has taken over: wearing a sunlight disco with junior and high school students.

In the Kabukicho area of ​​the crescent moon, the towering Daini Toa Kaikan building becomes the ground zero for this young Quake. Clubs including Biba operate on four floors. A 1982 murder involved two junior high school girls who were picked up and dropped off in Kabukicho Disco and later attacked on Chiba, one involved two junior high school girls, one involved two junior high school girls, one of whom originally evolved in a murder in 1982 and later attacked in Chiba, one of which started, one was killed. Afterwards, a curfew was imposed, resulting in a mature daytime gathering campaign. In 1984, Biba opened at noon on Sunday. The stairwell was wrapped in uniform teenage lines. The bathroom is the only part of the building with windows, which makes it still daylight easy.

Scenarios lead to routine Collidea fighting choreography between two boys, stepa group dance for girls. There is even a Jenka Conga lineCan’t open my sight. ”

The rise of host clubs

Under the flourishing floor of Toa Kaikan, another dramatic form of nightlife emerges: the Host Club. These are the male equivalents of the male lead bar – young men in sharp suits, rhinestones and stage names sold conversations, attention and fantasy to Kabukicho’s women.

Hosting Club traces back to the deceased The 1960s. By the 1980s, the number of these clubs increased significantly, with about 50 venues in Shinjuku alone. As owners earn commissions on beverage sales and try to improve their rankings, the format quickly became highly competitive.

Where to survive in queer Tokyo

From Kabukicho’s Neon Dazzle to another revolution several blocks from Kabukicho – Shinjuku ni -Chome, since Late 1940s. After the passage of the Prostitution Act in 1956, another kind of nightlife began to flourish with the reorganization of the red light district.

By the 1980s, Ni-Chome hosted hundreds of private bars that cater to the needs of gay, lesbian and trans customers. Space is coded – specifically for meat, women, bears, resistance – available through referrals and loyalty. This nightlife is provocative and political. It survives as much as its wonders.

Juliana’s Tokyo (circa 1995)

The rise of roppongi and bubble charm

Meanwhile, Roppongi’s nightlife turns redundant art into art. Discos such as Turia, King & Queen and Region cater to a new type of elite: stylish, edgy, image-obsessed people, and cash out of the bubble economy.

A site in Turia was designed to look like a spacecraft crashing in the area. The club was founded by space designer Kotetsu Yamamoto and run by Layton House, embodying the architectural absurdity of the time. However, this ends with a tragedy. exist January 5, 1988a huge lighting fixture fell on the dance floor, killing three. For some, it feels like the last curtain call of the disco era. The Star Fan era will officially end in a year.

Juliana’s Tokyo and the Death of an Era

Even after the outbreak of Japan’s bubble economy in 1991, it triggered a decade-long financial downturn, which later became known as the “lost decade”, Charm did not die overnight. The market collapsed, property value plummeted, and corporate surplus began to slowly unravel. On the Tokyo dance floor, though, denial still shines.

In the same year, Juliana’s Tokyo opened in the Shibra Waterfront. It quickly became a national sensation. Adjustment Dancing on the glow in a tight body dress Otachidai (protruding base), while the technology stimulates and glows lights in the smoke. Office staff and college students are submerged every night, waving their feathers Yuri Fans like the battle flag. The singing of “Juliannas Tokyo” became a loud voice for a generation, as a generation refused to succumb to the imminent recession.

Even though it closed three years later, Juliana remains one of the most iconic nightclubs in Tokyo’s history. It symbolizes the last breath of the charm of the pre-stage era – a fantasy that provocatively takes place in the shadow of an economic collapse. When it is off, the lights are not only going off on the dance floor. They became dark in an era.

One of Juliana’s Carnival Night CDs has been digitized here – With slam beats, screaming synthesizers and the iconic singing itself.

afterglow

Today, many old disco buildings are gone. Toa Kaikan was still standing, but the music had long stopped. Juliana became a sports store, then an advertising agency. Turia’s website is not recognized. Velfarre, once Roppongi’s jewelry, was demolished in 2007.

However, the lights didn’t really go out.

Urban pop music encapsulates the smooth optimism of this era, and global enthusiasm has recovered. Retro flyers are circulated online. In the back streets of the Crescent, aging bartenders still line up in a worn laser disc, and some hostess clubs have not changed the carpet since 1984. Even today, you’ll find Juliana themed club night queues in her 20s, feather feather feather the Hand the Hand to Bean to Bean to Bean rejecting the beat of refusing death.

Tokyo has not been forgotten. Now just dancing in other costumes.

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