Kabukicho

Arakicho is an old Shinjuku district of winding alleys and bars, where Kido arranges to meet Misuzu Goto while searching for the missing Daisuké Taniguchi. The neighborhood’s history as a pleasure quarter gives the meeting place a past of its own: a setting where an inquiry into another man’s identity begins amid the ordinary traffic of Tokyo nightlife.

Setting and Character

In late January 2013, Kido tracks down Misuzu through Facebook after the telephone number Kyoichi Taniguchi provided proves out of service. Learning that she is a web designer, he finds her page and explains why he is contacting her. Misuzu replies quickly, worried and confused about Daisuké, and asks him to meet at a friend’s bar where she works nights on the side. Kido doubts a bar is an appropriate place for a serious conversation, but accepts, suspecting that Misuzu may feel safer meeting him there than alone.

A District with a Past

The bar lies in Arakicho, a short walk from Yotsuya-Sanchome Station. On his first visit, Kido takes a brief stroll through its closely interwoven alleys, lined with bars and restaurants. The cold and morning snowfall have given way to clearer weather by afternoon, and the district presents itself as an active mixture of old streets and everyday commerce rather than a single-purpose nightlife quarter.

A colleague at Kido’s firm tells him that Arakicho was once a famous pleasure district. Its cultural history also reaches beyond the neighborhood: it appeared in Kafu Nagai’s 1931 novella During the Rains. Nearby, a publishing company occupies a building that had been a love hotel during the bubble-economy years. These overlapping uses—pleasure quarter, literary setting, former hotel, present-day business—make the area feel shaped by successive lives rather than fixed in one identity.

The Meeting Place

Arakicho offers no shortage of places to eat and drink, with restaurants serving German and Spanish food, curry, pork cutlet, sushi, and traditional fare. Kido has already eaten buckwheat noodles in the underground dining area of the Tokyo Bar Association Building, but the neighborhood’s choices make him regret having settled for a light meal. Even on a Monday evening, people are out, and taxis repeatedly arrive and depart.

The bar itself is on the second floor of a building crowded with small establishments. Its sign reads “Sunny” in stylized yellow lettering, a bright name for a place that operates only at night. Inside, the dim, cozy room holds a six-stool counter and two low sofa tables. A live Ray Charles album plays; soul-music memorabilia, including a Marvin Gaye LP and a photograph of a child Stevie Wonder, covers the walls. The sofas are occupied, while a lone regular at the counter drinks Guinness and practices coin magic. Kido later learns that the bar’s name comes from a hit song by Bobby Hebb.

Narrative Significance

Arakicho is more than a convenient address for Kido’s appointment: its layered history quietly echoes the novel’s concern with identities and lives that do not fit a single, stable account. The district’s past as a pleasure quarter persists alongside its restaurants, taxis, publishing offices, and intimate bars. Against that shifting urban backdrop, Kido’s search moves from an out-of-service number and a social-media message toward a face-to-face meeting with someone connected to Daisuké’s past.