Tokyo

Shinjuku Ni-chome is the absolute heart, with some 300 gay bars in five blocks around Naka-dori. Most are tiny venues, of ten or fifteen people, specialised by crowd: bears, drag, lesbian, mixed, twink. The ones everyone knows are Arty Farty and Aiiro Cafe, with its corner open to the street that acts as a meeting point for visitors, plus Dragon Men and GB.

There are lesser-known secondary scenes: Ueno, with 95 classic bars, Asakusa with 67, Shinbashi with 66 and Ikebukuro with 21, geared to a local, older Japanese clientele, with little English and little tourism. Roppongi adds the mixed, international atmosphere, with a notable foreign presence.

Tokyo Pride, known until 2024 as Tokyo Rainbow Pride, is held in June in Yoyogi Park, in Shibuya, and is one of the biggest in East Asia, although attendance is still modest for a city of nearly fourteen million. It was created in May 2011 to make sure Tokyo had a parade. It was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic and returned in full format in 2023.

The Rainbow Week around it includes parties in Ni-chome, cultural events and a fair of LGBT organisations. Outside June, the regular activity is at the akta community centre and in the occasional dates at venues such as Arty Farty.

Shinjuku Ni-chome (新宿二丁目, literally Shinjuku Area 2) is the densest LGBT area on the planet. It is five blocks around Naka-dori street, between the BYGS building, beside Shinjuku-sanchome station, and the small Shinjuku park, to the east.

Its origins are documented from 1948, with the first gay tea house, and the neighbourhood took hold in the fifties: when the 1956 law banned prostitution, the traditional venues of that trade emptied out and gay bars opened in their place. The stations are Shinjuku-sanchome, on the Marunouchi, Fukutoshin and Shinjuku lines, Shinjuku Gyoenmae, on the Marunouchi, and Shinjuku station itself, which is enormous and sits ten minutes away on foot.

The akta community centre, in Ni-chome and open since 2003, is the neighbourhood's HIV and sexual health information point, and it is open to anyone. OCCUR and Regumi, the latter lesbian, are the historic organisations, and Stonewall Japan runs a network of foreigners and locals. Japan's first Pride parade was held in Tokyo in August 1994.

Tokyo Metropolis has issued same-sex partnership certificates since 1 November 2022, covering local rights such as housing and hospital visits, but they do not amount to marriage, which still does not exist in Japan at national level. Shibuya ward was the first municipality in the country to issue an equivalent certificate, in 2015. Among health services, the private clinics of Shinjuku and Roppongi offer HIV treatment and paid PrEP.