Tokyo’s Ni-Chome LGBTQ+ area sees surge to open new bars
Melvin Muranaka long wanted to open a bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ni-chome LGBTQIA+ district, where he first felt free to be himself as a gay man, and with the ebbing of the coronavirus pandemic he thought his chance had come. “I had a really strong image I was living in hiding, but when I came to Ni-chome the impression was that everyone was drinking and having fun just as they were,” said the 29-year-old Muranaka, who is half Filipino. “It showed that I could really be myself too – which surprised me, and moved me,” he told Openly.
But Muranaka’s quest to open his own bar in Ni-chome ran into a snag – a surge of interest from people also wanting to open new bars in the area and subsequent shortage of properties, despite the district’s ageing buildings and the future threat that some could be torn down.
Ni-chome, made up of some 400 mainly small bars packed into roughly five city blocks, is often cited as the world’s densest concentration of gay and lesbian bars.
Weekend nights are especially lively, with people spilling out onto the streets – a safe haven for LGBTQIA+ people in a nation where same-sex marriage is not legal and some gay bar managers are not fully out, even to their own families.
