Originally published in Play.

“Hey, man! Come to my club. Beautiful Japanese Girls. Touch all you like,” a Nigerian man shouts at a lost American tourist.

“You want massage?” a Thai prostitute asks a Japanese businessman, as a young couple hustles through the gauntlet of massage parlours and hostess clubs that make up Kabuki-Cho, Tokyo’s most popular red light district. Despite recent efforts to clean up the neighbourhood, Yakuza and Triad-run shops openly cater to every vice imaginable. It is what Obi-Wan Kenobi might call a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.” What a great place to set a video game.

Kabuki-Cho is home to the characters of Sega’s Yakuza series. Actually, the game takes place in a fictional version of the town called Kamura-Cho, but anyone who has been to the real Kabuki-Cho will be able to navigate its fictional version with ease. For the first PS2 Yakuza game, the development team at Sega recreated the district with incredible fidelity- and just enough minor differences to avoid copyright infringement. The anticipated Yakuza 3 for PS3 brings this fidelity to new heights. Presented below is a short photo tour of both Kabuki-Cho and Kamura-Cho that highlights the great lengths the game makers went to make even the most prison-hardened yakuza feel at home.

This sign marks the most famous of Kabuki-Cho’s many entrances. It simply reads “Kabuki-Cho Road Number One.” Its digital counterpart hosts a slightly more creative message that roughly translates to, “The Unrivaled-on-Heaven-or-Earth Avenue of Kamura-Cho.” This sign exemplifies Sega’s tendency to take the reality of Kabuki-Cho and transform it into an exaggerated, yet recognisable digital form.

Kabuki-Cho is a place that requires no exaggeration, however. It’s an area where thinly-veiled criminal activities occur in the open, despite closed-circuit camera monitoring and a heavy police presence. Take the example of the Annaijou, or “Information Place.” These outlets provide visitors with free information about the services offered at various bars and clubs in the area.

Many of the venues advertised are legitimate and legal businesses. Others maintain a veneer of plausible deniability when it comes to illegal activity- like hostess bars, where salarymen pay beautiful women to drink with them. However, drinking isn’t the only thing that takes place. These clubs often engage in a practice called “after,” where the customer can pay a certain fee to see the hostess “after” her shift. Ostensibly, the buyer is only paying for the young lady’s time. Anything that happens during that period is the business of two consenting adults. Hostesses play a prominent role in the side missions of Yakuza 3, where it’s possible to invest in, and manage, a club and the women in its employ.

In addition to hostess bars, many specialty clubs catering to those with very particular fetishes sometimes advertise in Annaijou. One of these niche clubs, Sky Heart, was designed to look like an aeroplane cabin. Customers would pay for the privilege of groping and harassing the stewardesses. The particular fetish of molesting flight attendants did not prove popular enough to support Sky Heart, and it eventually went out of business. That said, another club that caters to those who fantasize about fondling women on bullet trains is still alive and well.

Annnaijou also dispense information about more explicit venues for prostitution, such as massage parlours and brothels. They will often provide information about the available talent. “All our girls are under 45 kilograms!” claims one advert.

Kabuki-Cho isn’t only about sex; it’s also about gambling. The most popular form of gambling in Japan is pachinko, a form of pinball that involves dropping balls through a pegged board. Since most kinds of gambling are illegal in Japan, customers don’t win cash. Instead, they keep the balls that land in correct holes at the bottom of the board as “souvenirs.” Of course, these “souvenirs” can be exchanged for cash at the various shady stalls that tend to crop up around pachinko parlours.

“Oriental Passage” is Kabuki-Cho’s most prominent Pachinko parlour. Sega replaced it with the redundantly named “Volcanic Volcano.”

The businesses in Kabuki-Cho offer more than simulated sexual assault and gambling. There is a long but dying tradition of family-friendly entertainment in the neighbourhood. These businesses are mostly located around a single plaza near the Number One entrance. The Koma theatre, which occupies an entire city block, dominates this square.

The theatre fell on hard times in the middle part of the last decade and shut down at the end of 2008. The closure dealt a severe blow to the Kabuki-Cho renaissance movement, a group championed by Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, which is attempting to remake Kabuki-Cho into a thriving and respectable cultural hub. However, the digital version of the Koma theatre is still alive. The theatre is far too important a landmark to remove from the game, regardless of the fate of its real-life inspiration.

Given that Yakuza 3 is a Sega game, it is only natural that all the arcades in Kamura-Cho are Club Segas. In reality, the nearest Club Sega is on the other side of nearby Shinjuku station.

The Humax game centre lies next to the remains of Koma theatre. This arcade, with its loud collection of brightly lit crane games, is impossible to miss. While arcades in Japan are struggling, they are far healthier than their western counterparts. Thanks to cramped living conditions, many Japanese gamers prefer to play outside of the house and will focus on one game at one arcade night after night for years on end. Usually, the newest games dominate the scene, but occasionally, one will stumble across a Street Fighter III or Marvel vs. Capcom 2 master. We’ve found such encounters occur more often in Kabuki-Cho than in desolate suburban arcades.

The denizens of Kabuki-Cho work from the late night into the early morning, and tend to sleep during traditional business hours. Where do they shop? At Don Quijote, of course. Inexplicably named after the fictional and foolhardy Spanish knight, Donki, as the locals call it, is a discount chain that sells groceries, electronics, furniture, gag gifts, and pretty much anything else you could name, 24 hours a day. Imagine a hellaciously cramped, multi-storey Tesco Extra.

Yakuza 3 plays up the presence of organized crime in the area. In reality, while Kabuki-Cho teems with Yakuza activity, a beefed-up police presence (since 2002) has made Yakuza members harder to spot on the street. Other Japanese cities contain red light and nightlife districts with far more ostentatious roaming gangsters. Nearby Yokohama City contains bars and neighbourhoods where they display their underworld affiliations openly. We once saw an elder syndicate member repeatedly hit a subordinate in a train station and then jump the ticket gate, while employees pretended not to notice. A call girl occupied the upper floor of our apartment building in that same neigborhood, and her Yakuza manager would often visit. Decked out in a bright white track suit and sunglasses, even at night, he looked like a villain straight out of the Sega’s series.

However, the criminals of Kamura-Cho are far more violent than their real life counterparts. While mobsters do fight each other, and we have witnessed it, brawls are not a common occurrence. The Yakuza are businessmen, and violence is bad for business. Commonly-spotted Yakuza activities can seem downright innocent. Lower-ranking gang members can be seen selling fried octopus at shrines and festivals, while higher-level members, as in most organized criminal organizations, know how to make money without doing any of the dirty work themselves.

Despite police and Yakuza intervention, violence does occasionally rear its head. Teenagers, who may or may not have gang ties, will sometimes roam in groups and shake down men who look weak or vulnerable. We’ve seen this happen twice, once in broad daylight on a crowded street just outside of Kabuki-Cho.

The Golden-Gai’s claustrophobic alleys

There is one area of Kabuki-Cho that is relatively free from Yakuza influence. The business owners of the Golden Gai (called Champion-Gai in Yakuza 3) are quite proud of their tradition of resisting organized crime. The illicit establishments that pervade the rest of the area are absent here, and locals consider it the safest part of Kabuki-Cho. It consists of a few narrow alleyways, lined with nearly 150 bars that hold as few as three people. The largest watering holes will seat ten if customers don’t mind being packed together like commuters on the Tokyo subway during rush hour.

Some bars are so small that they only accept regulars. If you don’t have a friend to vouch for you, tough luck. Each bar caters to a specific kind of clientele, and the area has been popular amongst artists and the cultural elite since the sixties.

Even we have our own regular bar in Golden Gai. The owner is reclusive and doesn’t want his tiny establishment flooded by swarms of tourists, so we’ve been sworn to secrecy about its exact location, but we can tell you that if you are resourceful and know the right people, you can find a small bar that caters to retro gamers called Qunais Bros.

If you ever come to Tokyo, Kabuki-Cho is a must-see. While there is all kinds of illegal activity in the neighbourhood, thousands of people a day come and enjoy the area without breaking any laws. Even if you can’t make it to the real thing, Kamura-Cho has a similar atmosphere that, while not as good as the reality, offers a fascinating view of the seedier side of Tokyo.