Books: Rising Sun and Shady Nights

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Some three months after arriving in Tokyo to study the Japanese language and culture, an Englishman in his mid 20s happens upon a restaurant where he thinks he can find some pizza and beer. After checking his coat, he is horrified to be presented with a cloakroom tab for more than the garment is worth. While he tries haltingly to talk his way out of this mess, he is rescued by Ichimonji, an older and evidently much wealthier man. This patron takes the young foreigner under his protection and guides him through an evening of serious drinking at a succession of night spots, culminating at a hole in the wall where a pretty barmaid agrees to dance naked for just the two of them. The student hears the term mizu-shobai for the first time and later learns what it means: the water trade, the fly-by-night world of bars, baths and brothels to which Ichimonji has given him an introduction. The next morning, the visitor wakes up with the woozy feeling that "overnight he had arrived in Japan."

Judging a civilization on the basis of its raffish after-hours entertainments poses certain problems. There may be aspects of the British, for instance, that are not clearly visible from a strip joint in Soho. But John David Morley, 37, never pretends to have found all there is to learn about Japan. He simply notices, as have others, that the drinking behavior of Japanese males is looser than the polite but evasive demeanor they customarily display. The Westerner who can inconspicuously swim along with these schools of nightly revelers will almost certainly see much that is barred to casual or sober tourists. Morley did so and managed to keep his head clear enough to bring back a number of shady moments from the land of the rising sun.

He records the behavior of some Japanese friends in a Tokyo cabaret, how they "sat down with the hostesses they had been assigned and almost at once reached out for their breasts as nonchalantly as they helped themselves to fruit on the table." He observes the clownish scenes that take place each night at subway stations as impeccable railway attendants try to steer hordes of drunks toward their trains. He hears sad stories that would never have escaped without the lubricant of booze. At one bar, a fellow drinker confides that his wife is pregnant and his salary insufficient to support a child. Ultimately, Morley is invited to sleep off the hours before daybreak at this man's apartment. At breakfast the next morning, the host's confessional manner has vanished: "Sober now, restored to the real world, he probably felt ashamed."