These small nightclubs drew youngsters who were looking for something more than the discos in Kabukicho had to offer, as well as media and fashion industry types, and bar girls and boys wanting to let off steam after finishing their shifts in Ginza and Roppongi.īut while the disco era would prove short-lived, New Sazae endured. New Sazae wasn’t the only well-known late-night disco during the ’70s: you could also wiggle your hips at joints such as Mako (now just a regular bar, upstairs from New Sazae) and Black Box. Right: the weekend soundtrack ranges from disco to Madonna to K-pop Left: a faux banana tree enlivens the box seating area. He became a regular customer there, but it wasn’t long before the owner and staff took a liking to him and he earned his place on the other side of the counter. Once arrived in the capital, he quickly fell in with the music and theatre scenes, which in turn led him and his friends to Sazae. This in turn led to a stint as a local radio host, and he was soon something of a star in Nagasaki.Īfter graduating high school, and with no immediate family in Japan, Shion decided to pursue further education at Tokyo’s Sophia University, in order to guarantee his future here. He returned to Japan to attend junior high school, and once back on home soil, his chiseled features and exotic looks enabled him to work as a fashion model. His early life wasn’t easy: having lost both parents when he was a child, he bounced from facility to facility until he was eventually taken to Lyon, France, where he lived with his grandfather for four years.
Shion, who is a quarter French, was born in Nagasaki Prefecture. It gained its new master with the new premises, and Shion has been fully involved ever since, running the club, dealing with customers and managing the place for over 35 years now. The current incarnation of Sazae changed its name when it moved to its present location, 12 years after the original club opened. ‘No, no, no, it’s still just like that! It’s a disco now more than ever!’ says Shion, the master of New Sazae. New Sazae’s manager, Shion, always dresses to impress at the weekend
#GAY BAR IN JAPAN FULL#
Back then, if you climbed the staircase in the middle of the night and pushed open the door, you’d be hit with a blast of the latest dance hits, blaring out at top volume from a dimly lit room full of men shaking their stuff on the dancefloor. When I first set foot there in the late ’70s, at the age of 21 or 22, it was known as a ‘gay disco’. Simply labelling New Sazae a ‘gay bar’ doesn’t quite do it justice, mind you.
And one of the first, in 1966, was a place called Sazae. These gradually spread into what’s now Shinjuku San-chome, but it took until the second half of the ’60s before they finally made their way into Ni-chome. Gay bars only started to appear in the capital after the war, first arriving in the downtown districts of Ginza, Shimbashi, Ueno and Asakusa. The area was still catering to a strictly hetero crowd at that point, however. Originally an inn town on the road out of Edo, Shinjuku took on a seedier guise as the years passed by the end of World War II, it had the dubious honour of being the foremost red-light district in Tokyo. And like nearby Kabukicho, Ni-chome never seems to pause for breath: year-round, it’s the neighbourhood that never sleeps. By night, it’s the prime destination for the city’s LGBT crowd, who flock to dance clubs or more discrete watering holes by day, the bars give way to quirky restaurants and coffee shops. Spread across several blocks of narrow streets packed with hundreds of bars, the capital’s gay quarter has a reputation to rival New York’s Christopher Street and San Francisco’s Castro District – albeit in more coddled surrounds. When you’re gay in Tokyo, Shinjuku Ni-chome is the place to party. But his spirit will live on in the lively bar, which will continue to be an institution for gay culture in Tokyo. Shion, the owner of the legendary New Sazae, one of the earliest gay bars in Shinjuku Ni-chome, has recently passed away.
By Kyoichi Tsuzuki, photos by Kaoru Yamada