Brother Cohn, “The Man Who Swam with the Bubble,” Reveals His Bubbly Adolescence Brother Cohn, “the man who swam with the bubble,” reveals his exuberant youth.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Japan was in the throes of a bubble economy. WON’T BE LONG” by the “Bubblegum Brothers” was released in the midst of this period and became a million-seller, selling approximately 1.7 million copies.

Clutching 10,000,000 bills, they stopped a cab and drank 2 million yen worth of sake in one night. The production costs for variety shows were sky-high, and we could go anywhere in the world for location shooting… Brother Cohn, who spent many nights in Tokyo with big-name celebrities such as Tonnerzu and RIKACO (59), looks back on his time in the frenzied entertainment world and how messed up it was. Here are excerpts from his autobiography, “WON’T BE LONG: My Life Swimming with the Bubble” (Kodansha), to be released on May 21.

Commuting to Discos Began in Junior High School

In elementary school, I was the type of person who made everyone in the class laugh with my glee. Perhaps because of this, he was not well-liked by serious women. They used to say , “Kon-chan (nickname from his real name, Nobuaki Kondo), aren’t you stupid? Even in class, I wasted so much time talking that the teacher got angry and made me stand in the hallway in my underpants with two of my friends. In the old days, this was allowed as a form of “education,” but it would be very difficult to do nowadays.

In my third year of junior high school, a turning point came. One day, an older student took me to a disco. It was my memorable disco debut. From this point on, my way of passing the time changed from playing wrestling in the classroom to going to the disco.

Discos are usually associated with nighttime, but in the 1960s and 1970s, discos were open from 12:00 noon to 10:00 p.m. If you went in in plain clothes in the daytime, you would find a disco. If you went in in the daytime in plain clothes, they wouldn’t know you were a junior high school student, so you began to sneak in and dance.

At that time, I often went to “The Other” and “Get” in Shinjuku. Unlike today’s clubs, each disco had its own set of steps, and it was lame if you couldn’t dance them and were flopping around in the back. So everyone has to work hard to learn the dances and steps, and aim to dance with the regulars in the front row.

Of course, when I first went to The Other and GET, I didn’t know how to dance or what the rules were. I thought that in order to be popular with girls at discos, I had to be a good dancer, so I went to discos without studying for exams. I was desperate to master dancing.

According to the rules, junior high school students were not allowed in the disco. If the police who were patrolling the disco found out, they would take me to an interrogation room at a nearby police box and make me write down everything from my date of birth to my name.

Back then, the world was a more relaxed place, so even if you faked your age, the policeman would let you go, saying, “You are a high school student, then? If so, that’s fine. But most of the time, the policeman would say, “You’re in junior high school, aren’t you? and they would call my parents on the spot.

Big-name entertainers he met at discos

When he entered the Nippon Sport and Physical Education University Ebara High School, he started going to discos every week.　At the time, the Madison bag was all the rage among students. I was also using a Madison bag, and I used to put my clothes for dancing at the disco in it. When the teachers got suspicious, I would tell them that I had my gym clothes in it.

After school, I would head into town with about eight of my friends and seniors instead of going home. There was a private restroom in Shinjuku where we would all change into our disco clothes. The free restrooms were very crowded and no private rooms were available, so we used the paid restrooms, which were quick and easy to get into. Since we didn’t have any money, we packed our luggage in one locker and split the cost of the locker.

I went to Roppongi and Akasaka, but I still often went to discos in Shinjuku. The discos in Roppongi and Akasaka had an adult social atmosphere and were not the kind of place for high school students to go.

I preferred Shinjuku, where I could dance with girls my own age. On days when my father wasn’t around, I would stay up until midnight and walk home from Shinjuku to Koenji, which took about an hour.

It’s gone now, but when I was in high school, there was a building called “Square Building” about two minutes’ walk from the Roppongi intersection. Almost every floor was a disco. There was a high-class disco called “Castel” in the basement, and there were also “Nepenta,” “Tamatsubaki,” and many other places.

Depending on our mood or the genre of music we wanted to listen to, we would say, “Let’s go to Tamatsubaki today,” or “Maybe Nepenta today,” and decide where we would play that day. I knew which discos were on which floors, so I would often take the girls to the disco that best suited their tastes.

Incidentally, at a disco called “Lexington Queen” (now called New Rex Tokyo), located behind the shabu-shabu restaurant “Serina” in Roppongi, which was frequented by foreign artists, we could eat sushi. There was a glass-walled kitchen on the floor, and you could see the artisans making sushi. Sushi in a disco. Now that I think about it, it doesn’t sound very appetizing.

In the 1970s, entertainers often came to the discos. I myself have seen actress Maria Anzai, Luna of “The Golden Half,” and Jun Togawa. At that time, the successful people who were in the limelight on TV were often at the discos. They were usually seated in the VIP section or on couches in the back, so it was rare to be able to dance with them.

The general public would come up from the main floor and say, “Hey, that’s Maria Anzai. She’s so beautiful! Even so, on rare occasions, celebrities would come down from the VIP seats to the main floor and dance with the general public.

I was very lucky if I happened to be on such a day. Because there was no need to worry about being photographed with a cell phone like nowadays, entertainers could play without much caution.

While going to discos, I learned from my seniors that “play is serious, and work is done with a playful spirit. The values of life that I have cherished ever since were formed during my junior high and high school years.

I believe that the days spent playing disco after school became the foundation of my life and work.

WON’T BE LONG: A Life Swimming with Bubble” (Kodansha), an autobiography that describes the story behind his million-selling hit that sold 1.7 million copies and his friendship with big-name celebrities, is scheduled for release on May 21. The book is available for pre-order at bookstores nationwide and online, and a launch event will be held on May 24 at Tsutaya in Roppongi! Click here to register.