It is still early on a humid weekday evening but already this cabaret club in Tokyo’s Kabukicho district is in full swing. At 20-minute intervals a different hostess arrives, takes her place next to her customer and goes to work: pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes and engaging in small talk.

The lights dim and the chatter is interrupted by a troupe of female dancers whose routine only occasionally borders on the risqué.

This is one of Kabukicho’s more respectable hostess clubs, where men and women come to do nothing more than unwind over deftly mixed whisky and water. But just a few metres away outside on Kabukicho’s neon-lit streets, touts prey on inebriated salarymen and tourists wandering the streets of Japan’s biggest red-light district.

As Tokyo prepares to host the Olympics in five years’ time, police and businesses are finally getting serious about cleaning up the capital’s notorious adult playground amid a surge in scamming and aggressive hawking.

In the first four months of this year, police received almost at least 1,000 complaints about bottakuri, or bill-padding, in Kabukicho hostess bars and sex clubs, the public broadcaster NHK said – 10 times the number reported in the same period last year.

The embarrassment that once prevented victims from coming forward is giving way to anger about their treatment by unscrupulous club operators.

Typically, the scam artists approach customers with promises of an hour of unlimited drinks and the company of scantily clad hostesses for a few thousand yen. When the customer attempts to leave, he is charged many times more and intimidated by male staff until he pays up. When challenged, the clubs deny having any business ties with the hawkers who bring customers to their doors.

In recent months there has also been a rise in the number of people who claim they were robbed or tricked into paying huge bills after having their drinks spiked, prompting the US embassy to warn its nationals to take precautions.

Mototsugu Katagiri, chairman of the Kabukicho merchants’ association, conceded that the area’s sleazy image was hard to shake. “We don’t want to erase the atmosphere of the Kabukicho I knew when I was younger, but just force out the bad places,” he said. “We want this to be a place where Japanese people and foreign tourists alike can come, have a drink and enjoy themselves in safety. It will take time, but we’ve made a start.”

Tourist numbers to Japan are rising due to a weaker yen and fading concern about the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. On a recent evening, groups of Chinese visitors ambled along Kabukicho’s narrow backstreets as a public address system issued multilingual warnings about hawkers and overcharging.



With another surge in foreign visitors expected as the city prepares to host the Olympics, businesses say they are determined to drive out aggressive touts and scammers.



Last year they enlisted hotel concierges in their campaign. Now about 60 members of the Kabukicho concierge association dispense advice on reasonably priced bars and restaurants, and will even point guests in the direction of adult entertainment clubs that have been vetted for safety, including a handful of local “soaplands” that accept non-Japanese clientele.



“If one of our customers is ripped off, it reflects badly on the hotel,” said Toshimi Hirano, chief concierge manager at the 970-room Hotel Gracery Shinjuku. “Our business depends on repeat guests, so we want them to have a trouble-free stay and go home with only good memories.”

The 600 sq metre neighbourhood, a short walk from Shinjuku railway station – the world’s busiest – started life as a travellers’ rest stop in the 1700s and was destroyed by a US bombing raid towards the end of the second world war. In the postwar period it reinvented itself as an entertainment district centred on the Koma theatre, which was torn down seven years ago.

Today it encompasses the myriad tiny bars of Golden Gai as well as the world’s biggest concentration of gay bars – both colourful reminders of Tokyo’s eclectic drinking scene.

But it is the hawkers who operate along the streets that stand in the shadow of a giant replica of Godzilla, a local “resident”, that have prompted the latest crackdown.

Of the estimated 4,500 bars, restaurants and clubs in the district, about 100 are considered unsafe, according to Katagiri. And amid a crackdown on traditional sources of income for Japan’s yakuza mobsters, bottakuri has become a new and lucrative earner for organised crime syndicates.

“First there were just a few hawkers, but when they proved how profitable it could be, lots of others followed. Now it’s spiralling out of control,” said Kouichi Teratani, an authority on the area, who is leading efforts to improve its image.

In one recent high-profile case, the manager of a Kabukicho hostess club was arrested for allegedly threatening two male customers by refusing to allow them to leave the premises until they paid 240,000 yen (£1,250).

Some clubs try to resist legal action by printing menus showing their exorbitant prices and placing them where they can’t easily be seen in what are usually dimly lit premises, according to Teratani, whose group has produced tens of thousands of booklets in Japanese and English promoting safe establishments.

The pre-Olympics cleanup coincides with the area’s gradual gentrification, linked to the opening this spring of a 12-screen cinema complex and a 30-storey hotel that dominates the skyline. So far this year, 1,500 hotel rooms have opened in Kabukicho, and a similar number will be added by the end of the year, many of them aimed at visitors from Asia on package tours.

“The aim is to strike a balance between the gritty, slightly risqué Kabukicho and a new, safe version that appeals to foreign tourists,” Teratani said.

Brett Bull, whose Tokyo Reporter website covers all aspects of Japan’s sleazy underbelly, said: “As with Tokyo in general, the possibility of being assaulted or physically harmed is fairly small. But if you are a tourist or unaware of the ripoff problem, you could be susceptible.”



He and other Kabukicho aficionados say that if in doubt, enter bars and clubs that are visible from the street.

“I always like to pick a street-level place that I have some familiarity with,” Bull said. “Watching all the touts, hosts and other Kabukicho denizens stroll past is a great way to spend a couple of hours.”