Rokugunomi

Roppongi’s singles bar is a place where Aomamé deliberately searches for a suitable man, and where the room’s décor and clientele make that search feel both theatrical and practical. The bar brings her into conversation with Ayumi about two middle-aged salarymen, whose appearance and uncertainty become the focus of their mutual scrutiny.

Setting and Atmosphere

The bar is known as a singles establishment, attracting lonely men looking for solitary women and, conversely, women seeking men. Many of its customers are foreigners. Its interior evokes the sort of bar Hemingway frequented in the Bahamas: marlin decorate the walls, fishing nets hang from the ceiling, and photographs show men beside the enormous fish they have caught. A portrait presents Hemingway as a cheerful papa, while the customers seem indifferent to the writer’s later anguish over alcoholism and his suicide with a shotgun. The décor offers a polished, ready-made image of adventure, set against the ordinary business of looking for company.

Aomamé’s Search

Aomamé sits at the counter sipping a Tom Collins, pretending to await an appointment and occasionally checking her watch. In fact, she has come solely to find a man who suits her. It is past 8:30 p.m.; she wears a brown Calvin Klein jacket over a pale-blue blouse and a dark-blue miniskirt. She has not brought her special ice pick, which rests wrapped in a towel in a drawer at home.

Several men approach her, but none appeals. She ignores two students with playboy airs and curtly tells a salaryman of about thirty that she is waiting for someone. She dislikes young men as arrogant, poor conversationalists and selfish lovers. Her preference is for clean, unvulgar, slightly tired middle-aged men, preferably with thinning hair and a handsome skull. Such men are hard to find, so she knows she must accept compromises.

Ayumi and the Two Salarymen

Ayumi points out two middle-aged men at the table just behind them, saying that they have been greedily surveying the room. Aomamé turns naturally to look. The pair wear suits and ties that appear respectable rather than shabby; one is over forty, with an oval, lean face and a receding forehead, while the somewhat younger man looks like a former university rugby player who has recently gained weight. They drink whiskies with water and laugh, even as their eyes roam around the bar.

Ayumi reads their behavior as that of men unfamiliar with this sort of establishment: they have come to enjoy themselves but do not know how to approach women. She suspects they are married and sees in them an air of guilty conscience. The exchange makes the bar more than a backdrop to Aomamé’s search: it is also a space where she and Ayumi assess men together, weighing appearance, manners, and the awkwardness of their intentions.