Nothing outside Tokyo's 24-Kaikan hotel hints at what goes on behind its grey concrete walls. In a back street near the Shinjuku business and shopping district, the seven-storey building could be an apartment block for retired civil servants. A stream of customers in the salary-man's uniform of dark suit, sensible shoes and winter overcoat files quietly through its innocuous doors. Only in the foyer, adorned with scenes from a sex movie, does it become clear that this is one of Asia's biggest gay landmarks.
Past the ticket machine - 2,600 yen (HK$225) for a 13-hour stay to sample its treats. Pretty much anything goes, say guests, who come from across Japan and abroad.
It is very Japanese: discreet, compartmentalised; fastidiously careful about order and details. Live and let live as long as the outward appearance of things is maintained.
'This is a country that happily lives with contradictions,' says Taq Otsuka, author of several books on Japan's gay scene. 'It has its own way of doing things.' Thus Tokyo, a city with a reputation for being one of the most uptight capitals, also boasts one of the most dense and diverse concentration of gay bars and clubs: 2-Chome, home to the 24-Kaikan. But the area is in crisis.
About 300 businesses are jammed into 2-Chome's two blocks, including sex shops and bars catering to a vast array of tastes - known in Japan as kei (speciality). Bars for overweight men, transvestites, spankers, the hirsute, men over 70, older men who want to be with younger men, with names like Popeye, Tarzan, Duke, Brutus and Bambi. 'There isn't much you can't find here,' says Otsuka, who has run Tac's Knot bar for 28 years
But 50 years since its birth as a refuge for homosexuals in what was formerly a red-light district, the block is in decline. The local commercial organisation that promotes 2-Chome estimates that the number of gay bars in the area has fallen by at least a third in the past decade. The once exclusively male gay clientele is filled out at the weekends with the straight, the female and the simply curious.
