All You Need Is Morbid

Love for Rent

The plan had been to spend our first night in Tokyo in a hotel.  Mason would go to a party in the Shibuya District, meet the woman who intended to lend us her apartment for our stay, and I would crash at the hotel and try to get over my jet lag.  We’d move to Terri’s the next morning.  The American ex-pat’s generosity thrilled me.

Stumbling with jet lag, Mason and I checked into the local hotel.  The room turned out to be so small that one of us had to sit on the bed while the other dressed.  A sign on the TV advertised movies by the hour, along with in-room massages.  Other than those questionably illicit touches, it seemed like a no-frills business hotel anywhere in the world.  Mason tucked me into bed and off to his party he went.

Terri didn’t have the keys ready that night, so we packed up our stuff and headed to her apartment, hoping someone would meet us there to let us in.

To our surprise, Terri met us on her doorstep.  She had an appointment with Immigration.  She’d overstayed her visa and wanted to make certain they’d let her back into the country after she attended the SXSW music festival in Texas.  She’d been told that the over-stay shouldn’t be a problem, if she claimed to have been sick and could show prescriptions.

The Japanese kid bringing us copies of Terri’s keys was late.  We hung around, getting to know her.  She worked for a Japanese company, managing several bands and trying to get them exposure in the U.S.  She and Mason only knew each other via email.  It charmed me that she would trust us to stay in her home when we were virtually strangers with friends in common.

Eventually our keys arrived.  Terri gave us directions to the Little Tribeca Coffeehouse for “the best hot chocolate on the planet.”  She also suggested a walk around Love Hotel Hill.

We forgot about that for the morning, as we busily explored Aoyama Cemetery.  In pursuit of lunch later, we found the love hotel area by accident.  A building with 3-D topless muses on its faux-brick façade stood next to a three-story silver-wrapped building tied up with a big red metal ribbon.  No restaurants lined the district, or coffee shops where one could linger.  No one wanted to be seen in the neighborhood.  Even the underground garages had curtains to shield their contents from prying eyes.

On Love Hotel Hill, a reasonable number of couples roamed around on this overcast day.  Most were young (we found out later we’d timed our vacation during spring break).  The girls wore big black sunglasses: the only place I’ve seen anyone wearing sunglasses in Japan.  The boys fought down smiles.  They walked side by side and didn’t touch each other.

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Compared to the “date club” advertisements handed out by touts near Shinjuku Station, the love hotels seemed innocent and somewhat sweet.  The population of Tokyo at that time was more than twelve million people; an additional twenty-four million lived in the surrounding region.  Housing remains so expensive that apartments tend toward the miniscule.  One man we visited housed his infant daughter in a closet while he and his wife slept on a loft above the television.  Often adult children remain at home until they marry -- and in many cases, the eldest son’s wife merely moves in with her in-laws.  No one assumes privacy.  There’s no place to “park,” since the majority of Tokyoites can’t afford a car.  There’s no place to make-out -- like, say, the last row of a movie theater -- because kissing is an extremely private act among Japanese.  Even handholding in public is slightly scandalous.

Into this climate blossomed the love hotel, where privacy can be rented by the hour.

Prior to 1950, Japanese couples retired to ryokans:  traditional Japanese country inns, many of which proffered private hot springs.  By the end of the 1960s, love hotels boasted fantasy rooms, copying Las Vegas honeymoon suites or exotic hotel rooms from other countries.  During the bubble economy of the 1980s, hotels vied for business with gaudy exteriors.  In the 90s, some fetish hotels advertised dungeon rooms or rented costumes or filled their halls with vending machines full of sex toys.  An estimated 37,000 love hotels line the alleys of major cities and the outskirts of rural towns, even clustering at freeway off-ramps.  According to Moon Publications’ Japan Handbook, the Shibuya district hosts the largest concentration of love hotels in all of Tokyo.  Two percent of Japan’s population -- 1.4 million couples -- visit love hotels on any given day.