Horns of the traffic jam drown out
Her "$10 for blow job,
25 for pussy." But the deal
Gets done, and the traffic
Rolls on into the City of Job
– Michael S Collins in Jump Cuts around the City of Job
The International House of Japan sits smugly atop a hillock, with Roppongi on one side and Azabu Juban on the other. It is a place where drooping diplomats, jaded journalists, wilting academicians and limping leaders gather to discuss nothing in particular, and then exchange notes with interlopers from elsewhere. Legend has it that during his visit to Japan, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was so impressed with the idea of a place devoted to the profundity of nothingness that he promptly thought up a similar place for New Delhi. In November 1960, Crown Prince Akihito of Japan laid the foundation stone of the India International Centre (IIC). Thus was created the embryo of the chattering classes of India's capital city.
The Lodhi Gardens and the surrounding bungalows of the powerful give the IIC a distinctive setting. But the copy is nowhere near to the original when it comes to the colour and character of location. Azabu Juban is one of Tokyo's more upscale residential areas, with a number of diplomatic missions, fashionable shopping streets patterned after Paris and pricey health spas. Roppongi Hills, the USD 4 billion mega-complex that the building tycoon Minoru Mori built to propagate his idea of self-contained compact cities within a few buildings, dominated the skyline until recently. But the Mitsui Corporation has now extended the horizon upwards, with its ultra-modern Tokyo Midtown hyper-complex, the tallest in town. However, more than these protrusions of prosperity, Roppongi is popular among foreigners for its nightlife. The mode of greeting for a foreign visitor at the I-House is often: "Have you explored Roppongi at night?"
Roppongi's decorated alleyways and cobbled streets are lined with topless bars, massage parlours, 'de-stress' cabins, karaoke joints and watering holes where hostesses 'entertain' customers. Music and dance is always the main pitch of peddlers. "When music is used to guide and regulate desire, there is enjoyment, but no disorder," said Yunji, a disciple of Confucius. For some strange reason, touts that accost unsuspecting visitors are often Africans, and their priciest wares involve 'white women', presumably guest workers from Eastern Europe. Foreign women working in the 'entertainment industry' – prostitution is illegal, but 'compensated dating' is tolerated with a wink – in Japan are known as japayukisan. Girls from Southeast Asian countries reportedly dominate the trade. The city government knows everything, but pretends to look the other way as long as nothing erupts as a law-and-order problem. Those who ply the oldest profession in the world are as much a part of the city as are its most recent entrants – career talkers masquerading as public intellectuals.