Love in a capsule

Press, 27 May 1981, Page 23

Love in a capsule

Tuck yourself into a capsule only six feet long and prepare yourself for future shock, Japanese style. “It’s the wave of the future,” says Takeo Uemura, manager of the Capsule hotel in a bustling Tokyo suburb, 30 minutes from the heart of the capital. “By the year 2000 people will be staying in them all over the world.”

Uemura says that almost all the 70 capsules in his brightly-lit little hotel, only two minutes’ walk from Mitaka station, are filled every night with people in need of a bed and unable to afford a normal hotel room.

Uemura charges about $lO for an overnight stay in a capsule equipped with television set, radio, reading lamp, digital alarm clock, safety box for valuables — and even a fold-out writing desk. Uemura says, proudly, that the Capsule Inn, owned by a tough entrepreneur named Kimiyasu Ase, is the first of a chain he hopes to open throughout Japan. Ase also dreams of marketing his capsules — approximately three feet high, three feet wide, and upwards of six feet long — throughout the world. “A regular business hotel needs 50 square metres for 70 capsules and space for vending machines, toilets, and showers.

Upstairs from the Capsule Inn, Ase lives in a large room with two capsules against the wall. “I sleep in them to test them,” he says. “They are better than regular beds. They are good for home, office, ski resorts, trains — some day the whole world will live in capsules.” He attributes the potential of his capsules — which he is attempting to market under the trade name of JAZ, standing for “Japan from A to Z” — to rising land prices and the population explosion. “Land around here costs more than $lOOO for a single square metre,” he notes, gazing out of the window on the bright lights of a typical Japanese station district of nightclubs, coffee shops, “love

hotels,” and noisy amusement machine parlours. “So then I wondered what would be the most efficient way to take care of them, and I hit upon this idea about six years ago.” With the population zooming above ten billion by the middle of the twenty-first century, Ase sees a world piled high with capsules of every shape and form, for every purpose. “My own capsules are just the beginning,” he says. “Now I am experimenting on new designs for new purposes. A capsule can do anything.” So far, Ase says, he has no competitors, despite the claims of “Capsule Inn Osaka.” The difference, he notes, is that his capsules are portable, whereas the ones in Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, are built into what was once a sauna bath. Another vital difference is that his capsules open from the side, whereas you have to hoist yourself into the ones in Osaka from the end of the bed. Not all of the customers at the hotel in Mitaka necessarily share the enthusiasm of the owner and the manager. “It’s a little noisy here sometimes,” says a young engineer who commutes from the inn to his job in the drawing office of one of Japan’s mighty industrial combines. “Sometimes drunk people stay here, and then it’s difficult.”

Manager Uemura contends, though, that some of his customers have been bedding down in capsules ever since the inn opened two years ago. He denies admittance to drunks as much as possible and has cameras poised in front of every row for security. Nor does he countenance two in a capsule. Not one to overlook human needs, though, the entrepreneurial Ase is designing double-bedded capsules for production next year.

“This is a serious project,” he says. “Suppose a young couple cannot marry because they cannot have a house. To solve the problem, they can stay in a capsule. It’s clean and cheap. “Love in a capsule,” he observes, “is as good as anywhere else, maybe better.”

By

DONALD KIRK

“Observer,” London.