Singing the Soemon-cho Blues

“Soemon-cho. This place is interesting...” observes my friend as I take her out for dinner. Her head moves from side-to-side, the bright lights reflect in her eyes. I understand why she has mixed emotions. It has long been associated with bars, hostess clubs, and the bizarre pickup rituals that happen on the bridge. There is also something else about this place, a lost spirit trapped within a neon prison.

My friend and countless other people before her would scarcely recognize Soemon-cho as represented by artists such as Kawase Hasui. His prints, painted almost 80 years ago, show a quieter, more contemplative time. A softly colored moon hangs over an area gently lit by lamps, under which geisha peacefully stroll. Critics describe Hasui’s work as art of ‘longing’ and ‘desire for the old ways of Japan’. To him Soemon-cho was the perfect expression of this, a district still in touch with Japan’s ancient history.

These sentiments would be echoed many years later by famous singer Maekawa Kiyoshi. The place to him seemed both depressing and uplifting, inspiring him to pen a song to express his mixed feelings. This song was called “The Soemon-cho Blues”, a tale about achieving happiness among depression and darkness. Listening to the plaintive wail of the singer, we can experience some of the feelings Japanese people have every time they visit.

The Soemon-cho district has always been famous for dissipation. An old word, kuidaore, was coined there; the people of Osaka literally ‘eating themselves to bankruptcy’ there. Appropriately, this is perfectly expressed in the sheer number of restaurants crammed into such a small area. Elsewhere in Japan there can be as many Italian and Indian restaurants as native ones, but in Soemon-cho the cuisine is very much Japanese.



The streets beckon us with enticing restaurants, but we resist. There is one particular eatery we are looking for and we find it deep amongst the old buildings in Hozenji Yokocho.

The restaurant is called Meoto Zenzai and we take our seats where a famous author came to drink the sweet bean soup that he so loved. He would have hardly recognized the Soemon-cho of today, but its vital energy would have been very familiar. Even in his day it was full of theaters and comedians desperately trying to make a living. The young man’s name was Oda Sakunosuke and he would become one of the most important writers in Japan’s literary history. He too saw the area as a mixture of good and bad. His classic novel “Meoto Zenzai” perfectly reflects this by telling the story of a marriage surviving despite the antisocial acts of the husband. Like Soemon-cho, Sakunosuke was often misunderstood; critics mocked him and his “hooligan” style of writing as being irresponsible and lacking depth.

“A strip of restaurants and theaters where a peculiar type of Darwinism is the rule for both people and shops: survival of the flashiest.” Lonely Planet’s website states tongue-in-cheek. As many Asian and Western tourists know, the district still has a strange appeal that can never be perfectly explained by words alone. Perhaps that is why Soemon-cho is still so popular. Everyone sees differently, so everyone has their own image.

Text: Matt Coslett Photos: Joey Parker