Merry Bonenkoi

Before they can celebrate the New Year, the Japanese must eradicate all memory of the old. Last week they were eradicating it with kamikaze-like abandon in a venerable tradition called bonenkai (forget the year past), and nowhere more suicidally than on Tokyo's gleaming Ginza.

There is quite a ritual to the occasion. First to come to the Ginza each after noon are the icemen, their saws slashing through great frozen blocks destined for dilution in tumblers of whisky. Next are the fragrant wagons of the noodle vendors, trailing plumes of steam in the neon sunset. Then come the girls--300,000 of them--to work in the 3,000 clubs of Tokyo's six sakaba (drinking quarters). Wispy-bearded Santa Clauses, a legacy of the American occupation, parade in sandwich boards that proclaim the virtues (or lack of them) of such establishments as Le Rat Mort and the Eyebrow Club, Romance Town and the Club Bum Bum Room. Finally come the customers--Japanese businessmen and executives, laden with yen and the ghosts of bonenkai past.

"Teeny-Weeny Wonder." In Tokyo's nightspots there are girls to suit every male personality. Ladies' Town on the Ginza assuages the married man's conscience (and concupiscence) with girls dressed in long, satin bridal gowns and lacy veils; the Aho (Idiot) Club in the Ueno District outfits its girls in crisp white nurses' uniforms and pale blue caps. There are bars with girls in sailor suits (to conjure up memories of the Imperial Navy), others where the intellectual clientele is served by misses who have read every literary quarterly.

Drum majorettes are the feature at the Albion, cowgirls at the Las Vegas, and at the Transistor Cutie Club a bevy of "teeny-weeny wonders" all under five feet tall are trained to peer up tactfully at the businessman in elevator shoes. All told, Tokyo's clubs gross some $1,500,000 a night. From Christmas week through the New Year, they count on trebling that take.

Punching the Clock. Biggest and newest of the nightspots is the Mikado, in Tokyo's swank Akasaka District. Run by a Korean "cabaret king" named Yoshiaki Konami, 54, the Mikado boasts an electric eye to open the door, a "dancing" West German water fountain, 1,250 hostesses in evening dress or kimono, and 30 Japanese Rockettes who bump and grind through Papa Don't Preach to Me in top hat and tails. Bare-breasted "Arabian" beauties alternate onstage with lion-maned Kabuki dancers. There is an exclusive downstairs party suite with 120 of Tokyo's most luscious hostesses, as well as a 16-page leatherbound wine list in which choices range from $5.80 for a thimble of Hennessy brandy to $1.50 for "aerated water," otherwise known as Coca-Cola. During the Christmas season, the Mikado offers its customers an all-purpose bonenkai kit containing champagne, smoked oysters, a noisemaker and a tinseled hat.

Konami offers not only favors, but discipline as well. Each girl punches in on a time clock when she arrives at 5:30 p.m. Roll call is taken and dancing orders given at 6 on the dot, the girls sitting at assigned desks on the club's vast second floor. Every 40 minutes throughout the night, copies of drink tabs are collected at the cashier's office. Those whose tabs are consistently slim get fired. To get girls for so rough a regimen, Konami has 100 recruiters (known as "girl scouts"), who hire only girls between the ages of 18 and 28.

To his 50 top hostesses--a competitive ranking based on nightly earnings --Konami has promised 41 four-door Toyopet Crown sedans and nine Volkswagens. Actually, that is not so much of a bonus: club girls in Tokyo's top spots can earn $12,000 a year in tips and salary alone, not to mention what they make moonlighting.

Girl Scout's Creed. Time was when the bulk of Tokyo's night life was supported by American servicemen. Not any more. Almost all of the customers are Japanese. A recent Asahi Shimbun survey showed that Japan's major corporations spent $1.4 billion this year on nightclub entertainment. The figure represents a $220 million increase over 1964, and amounts to a sixth of the national budget. In Japan, the bar, the cabaret and the nightclub are indispensable extensions of the office, and plenty of legitimate business is conducted between drinks and floor shows.

There is other business too; though Japan's tough antiprostitution law forbids open solicitation, after-hours liaisons are easily arranged. But most of the girls do so well selling drinks that they can afford to remain respectable.

Last week girls of both persuasions were ready and waiting as fully 100,000 men descended on the Ginza on Christmas Eve, sweeping past special police squads and barriers erected to keep drunks from falling into the traffic. It was a merry bonenkai, and a sure bet for a happy New Year.

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