The “U.S. Military Town” that flourished together with Yokota Air Base has become a “Multinational Town”…Walking in the Deep Town of Chaos in Fussa City, Tokyo

The Rise and Fall of the “Red Line

Fussa City, where about 4,300 foreigners reside, is becoming increasingly multinational.’ According to data from 2010, the number of nationalities reached 68, the highest percentage of foreigners among the 26 cities in Tokyo. Incidentally, 116 Americans, which is not a majority, was a bit surprising.

Casey Cooper, Dominican-born owner of The Big Bamboo, a Caribbean restaurant not far from Yokota Air Base, said, “I’ve lived in New York and many other cities.

I’ve lived in New York and many other cities, but I’ve never felt any prejudice based on racism in Fussa. I feel this is because over the years, mutual understanding between the local community and foreigners has improved. The fact that it is not overly crowded like in central Tokyo has also made it an attractive environment for foreigners to raise their children.”

Another indication of Fussa’s rise and fall is the old red-light district that stretches in front of the station. A five-minute walk out the east exit reveals its neon district. Prostitution was legal here from the postwar period until around 1957, when it disappeared due to rezoning. Bars and cabarets gathered on the former site, and until about 20 years ago, it was the largest entertainment district in the West Tokyo area, attracting many drunken customers. A restaurant owner who knew the area in those days said, “The peak of the entertainment district was between 1970 and 1970.

The peak was in the ’70s and ’80s. Many U.S. military personnel came to the area, and young girls gathered there to see them. There were probably more than 300 bars and cabarets. It’s calmed down now, but there were many fights in this small corner of the city every day, and it was a town that never sleeps. Locals still call this area “the red line.

Since the 1990s, however, the red-light district, like Base Side Street, has been gradually losing its foot traffic. This is due to the disappearance of clubs and bars as a result of redevelopment due to aging buildings. More than 100 restaurants and bars closed last year as well. The huge mural painted by Lily Franky, which had been a monument of the city, was also torn down, and the store owners felt threatened by the serious decline in the number of customers.

What was interesting about walking along the “red line” was the clear demarcation of the entertainment district within a radius of about 500 meters.

Across Fujimi Street, which runs east-west from Fussa Station toward the base, the area is divided into two districts: an Asian snack bar area with Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese people, and a multinational bar and restaurant area with a concentration of mainly American soldiers, and the two districts do not intersect. When I entered one of the snack bars, a Taiwanese mom told me what was going on.

Most of the snack bars on the Asian side have banned Americans,” she said. This is because Americans who grew up in a cash-on-delivery culture and do not understand the Japanese post-payment system often cause trouble. In this area, there used to be many cases of Koreans going into restaurants that had been let go by Japanese owners, but now they are almost exclusively owned by Taiwanese and Chinese,” he said.

The other area has a rich international flavor, with a mix of Thai, Brazilian, and Peruvian restaurants, bars, and live music venues. The customers seem to be mostly foreigners, but the age range is relatively high. An American man who works at Yokota Air Base told us, “The younger kids go to Roppongi for fun.

The young ones go to Roppongi for fun. We older people have enough to do at the stores inside the base, so even if we go out, we don’t stay long, just for a change of pace.

I visited the area several times and found only three stores crowded with U.S. soldiers, and the rest were sparsely populated. The rest of the shops were sparsely populated, with only a few Asian vendors attracting my attention. When I entered a bar where a Filipina woman was working, I heard the following story: “About 10 years ago, I started working in this area.

About 10 years ago, there was a shooting incident in this area, and since then there is a curfew at the base. People have to be back by 1:00 a.m., so the number of people drinking heavily has decreased. There have been fewer fights and other problems. It doesn’t mean they have disappeared, though. Even so, 60% of the nighttime clientele are base personnel and 20% are Japanese, so the money lost by U.S. soldiers is still significant for this town.

Fussa City, which is facing the sensitive base issue and its aftermath, is focusing on public relations. Noise problems and incidents involving U.S. soldiers and others are immediately reported in detail on the city’s website. A city official in charge of base and external relations said, “The five cities that have Yokota airbase are all in the same boat.

The five cities and one town that host Yokota Air Base and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Urban Development Bureau work together to deal with base issues. In particular, we receive many inquiries about noise, which we report to Yokota Air Base in cooperation with neighboring cities.

The town, which flourished together with Yokota Air Base and built an era as the largest entertainment district in West Tokyo, is quietly being reborn as a multinational town.