| Roppongi Crossing: The Demise of a Tokyo Nightclub District and the Reshaping of a Global City For most of the latter half of the twentieth century, Roppongi was an enormously popular nightclub district that stood out from the other pleasure quarters of Tokyo for its mix of international entertainment and people. It was where Japanese and foreigners went to meet and play. With the crash of Japan's bubble economy in the 1990s, however, the neighborhood declined, and it now has a reputation as perhaps Tokyo's most dangerous district--a hotbed of illegal narcotics, prostitution, and other crimes. Its concentration of "bad foreigners," many from China, Russia and Eastern Europe, West Africa, and Southeast Asia is thought to be the source of the trouble. ROMAN ADRIAN CYBRIWSKI is a professor of geography and urban studies and director of Asian studies at Temple University. He is the author of several books, including Tokyo: The Shogun's City at the Twenty-first Century . |