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is a
red-light district A red-light district or pleasure district is a part of an urban area where a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theaters, are found. In most cases, red-light districts are particu ...
in
Chūō-ku, Sapporo is one of the ten wards in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Chūō-ku means "central ward" in Japanese. City administration and entertainment facilities are centred in this ward. History During Meiji Period, Sousei river, precursor of Susukino distric ...
,
Hokkaidō is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The la ...
,
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. It is one of the major red-light districts in Japan along with Kabukichō, Tokyo, and
Nakasu is the red-light district which exists between the sandbank of the and the in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. It is named after a popular, but very short-lived, entertainment quarter of Edo, which existed in the late 18th century. T ...
,
Fukuoka is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancie ...
. Currently, the district is congested with many restaurants, bars, hotels, and adult-entertainment establishments. The name ''Susukino'' is often written as in
kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
and in
katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
, and directly translates as " zebra grass field".


Name

Various origins for the name ''Susukino'' are discussed, but the true origin is not definitely known. One theory is that the area currently known as Susukino was previously covered by . Another theory states that the Susukino is named after Tatsuyuki Usui, a supervisor in the construction of the red-light district in Sapporo (Usui is written as in kanji, and the character refers to grass in Japanese).Susukino Tourist Association, top page
/ref>


Overview

Susukino is not an official designation of any municipality. Rather, it is a commonly used name for a rough area with uncertain borders. Susukino Tourist Association defines the area of Susukino as lying between the roadways of Minami 4 and Minami 6 to the north and south, and from Nishi 2 chome to Nishi 6 chome to the east and west. The name Susukino is widely used in the names of landmarks, such as the Susukino Crossing, Susukino Station (a station of the
Sapporo Street Car The is a tram network located in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan. It is operated by the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau. The system is sometimes referred to by residents as simply the . The first section of the network opened in 1909 as the ; i ...
and
Sapporo Municipal Subway The is a mostly-underground rubber-tyred rapid transit system in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Operated by the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau, it is the only subway system on the island of Hokkaido. Lines The system consists of three lines: ...
).


Area

Susukino Crossing is located between Nishi 3 chome, Minami 4 and Nishi 4 chome, Minami 4, and many neon signs were installed on the buildings along the street. One of those signs is the Nikka sign at the front of the Susukino Building, which has a painting of the Nikka symbol, the King of Blenders, and the background whose colors are changed one after the other. Every September, the Hokkaidō Marathon is held in Sapporo, and runners pass Ekimae Dōri through the Susukino Crossing and Susukino district, which leads to the finish line in Nakajima Park. Every August, the Susukino Festival is also held, and the line of people bearing
Mikoshi A is a sacred religious palanquin (also translated as portable Shinto shrine). Shinto followers believe that it serves as the vehicle to transport a deity in Japan while moving between main shrine and temporary shrine during a festival or when ...
parades down the street. The Ganso Rāmen Yokochō and Shin Rāmen Yokochō, where
ramen is a Japanese dish, Japanese noodle dish. It consists of served in a broth; common flavors are soy sauce and miso, with typical toppings including , nori (dried seaweed), menma (bamboo shoots), and scallions. Ramen has its roots in Chinese ...
restaurants are lined up along the pathway and visitors can have many types of the Sapporo ramen, are also located in the Susukino and are an attraction to sightseers.


History

The Susukino area originated in 1871, when the Hokkaidō Kaitaku-shi, the Settlement Envoyship pioneering Hokkaidō, designated the area from Minami 4 and Minami 5 to Nishi 3 chome and Nishi 4 chome as the red-light district. After the construction of the district, the Kaitaku-shi named this place as "Susukino Yūkaku" (Susukino red-light district), and integrated other
brothel A brothel, bordello, ranch, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in sexual activity with prostitutes. However, for legal or cultural reasons, establishments often describe themselves as massage parlors, bars, strip clubs, body rub par ...
s into this district. One of the reasons the Kaitaku-shi constructed a red-light district in this place was to keep laborers engaged in pioneering Hokkaidō in Sapporo. In 1872, a wall, long, was erected around the Susukino Yūkaku and a gate was placed between Nishi 3 chome and Nishi 4 chome by Kaitaku-shi. In the fall of the same year, an act to emancipate prostitutes was announced by the new government, which had little influence on the district. With the establishment of licensed prostitution, the Susukino and its surrounding area thrived. In 1880, Susukino Kōban (Susukino police box of the Sapporo Precinct) was placed in Susukino. The transfer of the Susukino to the neighbourhood of the Kamokamo River, headwaters of the Sousei River, was planned in 1901, in consideration of the elementary schools and women's professional schools that were located around the red-light district. The transfer, however, was not realised until the summer of 1920. Prior to this year, in 1918, the exposition of the 50th anniversary of Hokkaidō was held in the Nakajima Park, which was located close to the Susukino, and the Susukino Station of the
Sapporo Street Car The is a tram network located in Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan. It is operated by the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau. The system is sometimes referred to by residents as simply the . The first section of the network opened in 1909 as the ; i ...
was also opened. Two years later, although the transfer of the red-light district was not carried out in time for the exposition, the district was moved to the place where Kikusui district in the
Shiroishi-Ku, Sapporo is one of the ten wards in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. As of August 31, 2021, the ward has a population of 213,704. History *1871: Shiroishi village was founded. *1873: Kamishiroishi village split off from Shiroishi village. *1902: Shiroishi vill ...
, is currently located. After all the brothels in Susukino were removed, many restaurants, cafes, and movie theatres were constructed and popularized in their place. It was quiet during
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, but the
cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...
and
dance hall Dance hall in its general meaning is a hall for Dance, dancing. From the earliest years of the twentieth century until the early 1960s, the dance hall was the popular forerunner of the discothèque or nightclub. The majority of towns and citi ...
were erected right after the War, and the American occupation troops also walked around the district. Susukino was not an (red-line) district, an area where prostitution was acknowledged by the government, but was actually an (blue-line) district, where a lot of restaurants and bars illegally promoted prostitution. The Prostitution Prevention Act was enacted in 1958, however, prostitution in Susukino did not disappear. The street stalls were the actual hotbed of the promotion of the prostitution, which were eradicated by their compulsory removal by the government in 1964. In the late 1960s, Sapporo City was reserved as the site of the
1972 Winter Olympics The 1972 Winter Olympics, officially the and commonly known as Sapporo 1972 ( ja, 札幌1972), was a winter multi-sport event held from February 3 to 13, 1972, in Sapporo, Japan. It was the first Winter Olympic Games to take place outside Europe ...
, and the expansion of the Sapporo Ekimae Dōri (Sapporo Street in front of the station), the construction of the
Sapporo Municipal Subway The is a mostly-underground rubber-tyred rapid transit system in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Operated by the Sapporo City Transportation Bureau, it is the only subway system on the island of Hokkaido. Lines The system consists of three lines: ...
Nanboku-line, and the maintenance of the underground shopping arcade, Sapporo Poletown, were carried out in around 1970. In 1974, a department store,
Matsuzakaya ( TYO: 8235, delisted) is a major Japanese department store chain operated by Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores, a subsidiary of J. Front Retailing. When the chain was an independent company, , it had its headquarters in Naka-ku, Nagoya. ...
Sapporo Branch (currently Robbinson's Sapporo Branch) was opened, which was the first department store in the district of the Susukino. Other notable buildings included the "Emperor", a huge cabaret which opened in 1973 and later closed its business in September 2006, and the "Mikado", another large cabaret which opened in 1974 and later closed in the spring of 1982. Since the late 1970s, disco-style bars began to be popular in Japan and many discos were constructed in Susukino, while
nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gener ...
s decayed. In 1980s, a lot of hotels were constructed around the Susukino district. The was held as a part of the
Sapporo Snow Festival The is a festival held annually in Sapporo, Japan, over seven days in February. Odori Park, Susukino, and Tsudome are the main sites of the festival. In 2007 (57th festival), about two million people visited Sapporo to see the hundreds of s ...
in 1983, and since that year, ice statues and other snow objects line up the street of the Susukino district every February. In 1986, a natural
hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by circ ...
was dug into the ground of Susukino. This was called "Susukino Hot Springs", and is used currently in hotels in the Susukino area. The Hōsui Susukino Station, a subway station of the Tōhō line, Sapporo Municipal Subway, was inaugurated in 1988.


In popular culture

* The 2012 video game ''
Yakuza 5 is an action-adventure video game developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega for the PlayStation 3. The game is the fifth main entry in the ''Yakuza'' series. The game was released in December 2012 in Japan, and localized for North ...
'' features a playable area called Tsukimino, which is based on Susukino.Rendering of Tsukimino from ''Yakuza 5''.
/ref> * The 1994 anime ''
Marmalade Boy is a shōjo manga series by Wataru Yoshizumi. It was published by Shueisha in the magazine '' Ribon'' from May 1992 to October 1995 and collected in eight ''tankōbon'' volumes. The series was adapted by Toei Animation as a 76-episode an ...
'' features an episode set in Susukino.


Sources


External links


すすきの通信 susukino tsushin
{{Prostitution in Japan Chūō-ku, Sapporo Red-light districts in Japan Tourist attractions in Sapporo Geography of Hokkaido Yakuza