LITMIR.BIZ

      The most dynamic city on the face of the earth. Ginza, 1965.

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For me, the lure of Tokyo was irresistible. If Fuchu was like Eureka, the foggy backwater in California I couldn’t wait to escape, Tokyo was Manhattan. It was a half-hour train ride from Higashi-Fuchu Station on the Keio Line to the main Shinjuku Station terminal on the western rim of Tokyo, a ride that took you past rice paddies and bedroom-towns. I made the trip as often as I could, clad in a cheap three-piece navy-blue suit, custom made in two days by an off-base Korean tailor, and armed with a Japanese phrase book and a map of the metropolitan area. I also carried some extra ¥50 coins (then the equivalent of 14 cents) to give to the white-robed, disabled war veterans, some with hooks for hands, who routinely patrolled the Keio Line cars in small groups begging for money, bearing placards describing their horrible fates and singing sorrowful songs to the accompaniment of an accordion player. This was the pitiful result, I learned, of the Japanese government’s neglect of its own disbanded wartime armies. Most of the Japanese passengers looked away.

      There were 15,000 coffee shops in Tokyo, more than in any other city in the world, it was said, and that was long before Starbucks made its debut there. These kissaten featured music from classical to jazz, and you could sit all day and read and relax and no one ever complained.

      I was partial to Ladies Town in the Ginza, where coffee was served by some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen, dressed in long satin bridal gowns and lacy veils, and C’est Si Bon, a little spot playing Piaf and Segovia, run by an aging ex-ballerina who told me that I looked like Warren Beatty.

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      There were also lots of interesting nightspots that openly welcomed foreigners. One of them was the Showboat in Shinbashi, which appeared in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri and was almost as large as a real live Mississippi riverboat. There, the customer was piped aboard a huge replica of a Mississippi riverboat and entertained by a band moving up and down an elevator shaft, as well as by a revolving squadron of hostesses. A girl driving a miniature train collected empty glasses. Also in Shinbashi was the Rendezvous, a military-themed bar where the customer was escorted by a “soldier” past a sand-bagged bandstand to his table and introduced to his hostess, who was clad in a white nurse’s uniform and a pale-blue cap. Up the street in Akasaka was the Golden Getsusekai where the hostesses dressed like Playboy bunnies. In Ueno, there was the Transistor Cutie Club, where the girls were all under 5 feet tall.

A favorite place in Tokyo in those early months was the Club 88, introduced to me by colleagues in intelligence. It was a trendy night spot in Roppongi, one of the more interesting parts of the city, home to foreign embassies, internationally oriented nightclubs, and restaurants and offbeat bars. The US Military Installation Hardy Barracks, home of the Stars and Stripes newspaper, was also located there. The “88” stood for the eighty-eight keys on the piano, which was played by a talented African American named Larry Allen, an ex-GI from Indiana who had recorded songs for American troops during the Occupation and entertained at international and military clubs all over Asia. He was a holdover from the Golden Gate, which had occupied the same real estate in Roppongi until the police closed it down for “moral violations.”

      Allen, dubbed the “Clown Prince of the Keys,” wrote and sang his own music. He favored deep-throated parodies of popular songs. One of them, “Shinbashi Woman,” sung to the tune of “St. Louis Blues,” will give you the idea:

       Shinbashi woman, with all her bumps and curves

       Shinbashi woman . . . those bumps and curves ain’t hers . . .

      The 88 had twenty tables and a long bar, in addition to a separate sushi bar. It was always packed with an eclectic crowd of people. There were diplomats, foreign correspondents, assorted businessmen, and visiting US congressmen. Officials from the police agencies came in and sat alongside yakuza bosses who sat next to CIA agents. At times, one might see Catholic priests and missionaries of other faiths sitting next to exotic dancers and hostesses from neighboring clubs who came in with their boyfriends after eleven, when the hostess bars closed.

The Club 88 was one of the few nightclubs open after 11:30 p.m. It was expensive, although not as expensive as the high-class hostess clubs like the Copacabana or the New Latin Quarter. But even on a military salary of $100 a month (the equivalent of ¥36,000) you could manage the occasional visit if you sat at the bar and nursed your drink until well after the ice was gone, a skill I readily mastered. The club had a rule that women could not enter unaccompanied; the object, supposedly, was to prevent hookers from taking over the place. Nevertheless, every night around midnight a stream of well-painted and striking young ladies would find someone to escort them in, sit at the bar, and negotiate top-of-the-line fees for their proscribed services.