Kabukicho Macabre Tour: True Crime in Tokyo

 I feel I need to start this blog with a couple of caveats. First, I'm not a true crime fan. I find a lot of the media surrounding real life murders, sex crimes, and serial killers to very often have a real rubbernecking quality to it. People gawking at some of the worst crimes humans do to each other because it's very sensationalist. I've found the genre to always be like this. As a kid Time-Life would run adds selling books or video tapes documenting some of the most notorious serial killers in modern American history and it just felt incredibly weird. I get it because the cases and people involved are actually pretty interesting, but at the same time it just feels so voyeuristic at the same time.

Second caveat: I have actually never taken a tour in my adult life! Not since grade school where we got ushered around parts of New York City. And they definitely weren't taking us to red light districts of any sort. However, the Kabukicho Macabre Tour was something that came highly recommended from people who insisted that I would love it so I went in with an open mind on a cold and rainy Saturday night. 

Yeah, they were right. I loved it.

Let me back up a little bit. For the uninitiated, Kabukicho is a district in the Shinjuku Ward of Tokyo, Japan. What is it famous for? It's an entertainment district, but primarily it has a reputation for being a red light district. There are hundreds of bars, host clubs, love hotels, and sex workers all packed together around several blocks. It's all neon lights, thousands of people, and non-stop action. It has the nickname of "The Sleepless Town" and that could not be any more accurate. I've never been to this part of the city and not seen it crowded. However, Kabukicho is not without a reputation that goes beyond the bustling crowds and tourist friendly Godzilla head that looks down the main thoroughfare. It is has been, let's say sanitized, in 2025 but in previous decades it was known not just as an entertainment district but a hotbed of crime. It still carried that reputation, though it's considerably lessened since the 80s and 90s.

However, the stories of the district remain and they make the primary focus of the Kabukicho Macabre Tour. Our guide, Vivian, took us around the length and breadth of the district and gave us what I felt was a thorough but concise history of crime and punishment in modern Tokyo. She's extremely knowledgeable about not just Kabukicho, but also the ins and outs of the Japanese criminal justice system and how crimes are even investigated. I'm underselling exactly how interesting this all is, but it was a reality check on how little I really know about this aspect of Japanese society. Do you know how many autopsies are performed in Japan? I didn't before this tour! But I digress. The stories are the highlight of the tour and Vivian did a fantastic job of explaining the background of some of the most famous incidents that have happened in Kabukicho over the years. Her descriptions are so vivid and there were more than a few times that I flinched upon hearing them. If you're familiar with true crime at all, it's very likely that you've heard some of these stories but seeing some of these sites in person and realizing that these incidents were so big that they changed the very layout of Kabukicho over the years. 

Where I think the tour really succeeds is putting all of these events into cultural context. Yes, they are sensational, gruesome, and violent events. It is the Macabre Tour after all. But since Vivian is a literal expert on these subjects, she helps to explain the full background and how they fit in with what was happening in Japan at the time they happened. You come away with a better understanding of Japan itself by seeing the darker side of it. This is a very thoughtful tour in my opinion and there's real value in it. There are very few times you will get to hear about unhoused people, gangsters, sex workers, and minority groups in Japan because they're inconvenient for a lot of people's narrative of what they want Japan to be. But knowing and acknowledging the elements people consider unsavory can actually give you a better understanding of how things work here.

One other thing I want to touch on: the video game sized elephant in the room. If you've ever played one of the Yakuza video games, you'll very quickly start recognizing landmarks from the game in the real world. It might even feel familiar walking around. Because Vivian is so good at her job, she's very familiar with this aspect and she makes sure to point out these landmarks for the video game nerds on the tour. I was apparently the only one in our group who knew the games and while I didn't take the tour for this reason, I greatly appreciated having this detail noted. Especially since most of the stories on the tour inspired events in the Yakuza games. More like all of them. 

This is a truly fascinating tour and if you are ever on vacation in Tokyo, this is definitely worth your time. You will come away from it having learned something new and I imagine even people with a lot of experience traveling to Japan will learn something new as well.