![]() "I can drink coffee and have dinner with the gangsters, while still securing my position by helping local police with my knowledge of the area," Li said.īut life and business have not always been safe for Li. Sleepless town 1988 movie#Most of the stories in the movie are from Li's own experiences, he said, and it was a tough time coping with the police while trying not to provoke gangsters. There are few Chinese gangster organizations in Kabukicho now, said Li, who was the script consultant for Shinjuku Incident, a 2009 movie starring Jackie Chan that depicts the life of a Chinese immigrant in Kabukicho in the 1990s who manages to find his own way among different gangster groups and his friendship with a Japanese police officer. Sleepless town 1988 how to#"They're all smart young boys who know how to deal with different people in this place, and they seldom get into trouble since we own two major streets in Kabukicho, and of course, we have both cop and gangster friends," he said. "They report to me every Saturday," said Li, who excused himself for a while during the midnight interview at his restaurant for a brotherly chat with his apprentices. Since his Hunan Restaurant opened in 2009 he has stopped standing on the street hailing customers and became a "big brother" to the younger guides he recruited, among whom quite a few are good-looking graduates from well-known universities such as the Beijing Film Academy. "What can I do for you, sir? I know everything about Kabukicho!" Wearing expensive black suits, glittering shoes and a businessman-like haircut, Li used to greet tourists with smile on the streets every day, politely handing out his name card. While at first he was ashamed of his jobs, Li later found guiding foreign tourists at Kabukicho paid well and started his pimping business with the help of a local yakuza. To pay for tuition and support life with his second wife, Aimei, Li did all kinds of jobs at Kabukicho, cleaning love hotels, washing dishes at restaurants, dancing with transsexuals at bars and distributing free napkins on the streets. Sleepless town 1988 professional#Li started as a professional ballet dancer in Hunan Province, and when he first arrived in Tokyo as a student of a clothing design college in 1988, he could barely speak Japanese. Since the sale of technically non-coital sex acts like oral sex are all legal, guides at Kabukicho have no problems as long as they abide by the law. Although there is an Anti-Prostitution Law in Japan, loose management and lax supervision have allowed the sex industry to prosper. Li's job is different from regular pimping, he claims. From being a college student doing part-time jobs at love hotels to an "upscale pimp" with 10 newbie apprentices, his 24-year career has made him one of the best-known Chinese faces in Japan. Li Xiaomu, a 52-year-old Chinese resident of Tokyo, is happy to be a pimp, although his ex-wives and numerous ex-girlfriends may not totally agree.Īmong his many titles, including author, Newsweek magazine columnist, media celebrity and owner of a Chinese restaurant in Kabukicho, Tokyo's red light district, Li prefers being called "a guide of the sleepless town." His job is to introduce interesting places or services for tourists and visitors, mostly Chinese people, and he gets paid from tips and commissions with the contracted clubs or bars. Li Xiaomu in Kabukicho the red light district in Tokyo Photo: Courtesy of Li Xiaomu ![]()
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