Secrets of Nam Ku Terrace (3): Little Tokyo and the Chitose Hotel

By the late nineteenth century, Wan Chai had become home to a sizeable Japanese community. Many ran brothels, restaurants, and inns, earning the district the nickname “Little Tokyo” even before the war. In fact, the Ship Street area was also a hub of Japanese activity before the war. Opposite Nam Ku Terrace—at No. 6 Hau Fung Lane, later the site of Tung Chi College—stood a lively Japanese hotel called Chitose Hotel. A Japanese visitor to Hong Kong once described it in Record of Japanese Impressions in Hong Kong:

“I stayed in a geisha house that also served as a restaurant. Next door were the geisha’s rooms, and the sound of the shamisen late at night was terribly noisy… Originally, there were four or five inns catering to Japanese visitors in Hong Kong, but because of the ‘Marco Polo Bridge Incident,’ the British authorities intervened and merged them into one, reasoning that in such times it would be difficult to manage if Japanese inns were scattered across the city… At the entrance of the inn where I stayed, Indian policemen were stationed on guard… The Chitose Hotel resounded with orchestral music at night, very noisy indeed, but at dawn it was utterly tranquil. Situated beneath a cliff, the bare rock face slowly emerged from the morning mist—a view worth a fortune.”

By August 1942, when Japan had already occupied Hong Kong, the government declared Wan Chai a Japanese residential district and ordered residents to move out within three days. Deputy Governor Shigeru Hirano further directed the Japanese army to establish 500 “comfort stations” along Lockhart Road to serve ordinary soldiers. As for Chitose Hotel in the mid-levels, being the only pre-war hotel catering to Japanese guests, it naturally became the wartime venue for high-ranking officers.

There has long been a rumour that Nam Ku Terrace itself was turned into a comfort station during the war, though no concrete evidence has ever confirmed this. It is possible that the confusion arose simply because Nam Ku Terrace was so close to Chitose Hotel. In those tense times, local residents saw officers heading uphill for entertainment, but few would have dared to investigate further.