Inside The Real Kowloon Walled City that Inspired Kowloon Generic Romance

Even with competition from heavy-hitters like Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX and Anne Shirley, Kowloon Generic Romance (KGR), which is based on the manga series of the same name by Jun Mayuzuki, has emerged as one of the foremost critical darlings of the Spring 2025 season in anime—especially here on ANN. For the uninitiated, KGR follows Reiko Kujirai, a real estate agent living and working in Kowloon Walled City. But when she falls for her coworker, Hajime, she becomes increasingly aware of another Reiko Kujirai who looked just like her, and was engaged to Hajime at one point, but is dead. Moreover, Hajime isn't the only one who seems to know the other Reiko. Thus begins this Reiko's journey into solving the mystery of who this other Reiko was, what happened to her, and perhaps more importantly, who she—this Reiko—is.

And at the heart of this cool series is its backdrop: the somehow nostalgic Kowloon Walled City. With its bright lights, bustling streets, and towering, cyberpunk-esque infrastructure, this vertical altar to steel and cement feels alive in KGR. And much like how Reiko is trying to discover where the other Reiko ends and where she begins, this romantic depiction of the iconic city from the not-too-distant past might leave you wondering how much of this portrayal of Kowloon Walled City is rooted in reality.

A Brief History of Kowloon Walled City

You don't need a degree in urban planning to know that 6.4 acres (almost-but-not-quite five American football fields) should be no match for 35,000+ residents (comparable to Fenway Park filled to maximum capacity). At upwards of 3 million people per square mile, that would make it by far the most densely populated place on Earth. And yet, that's exactly what Kowloon Walled City was and still would be today if it had only stuck around. What led it to that point is either terrifying or impressive, depending on who you ask. In the interest of not keeping you here all day, I can't emphasize enough that I'm condensing this long story down to only its bare essentials.

The 1993 book City of Darkness: Life In Kowloon Walled City by photographers Greg Girard and Ian Lambot forms the bedrock of what we know about Kowloon Walled City in the English-speaking world. It contains photographs, essays, and interviews with former residents of Kowloon Walled City.

Without getting too into the weeds, the story of Kowloon Walled City as it pertains to the purposes of this article begins in the 1940s. Amid the Chinese Civil War, Hong Kong—including Kowloon Walled City—became a hotspot for Chinese refugees. In a segment of City of Darkness: Life In Kowloon Walled City written by Julia Wilkinson (an English freelance writer based out of Hong Kong who's been to and written about Kowloon Walled City several times), she writes, “By 1947, there were 2,000 squatters camped in the previously deserted city.”

Even before this, the question of who had governmental power over Kowloon Walled City was divisive. The main parties involved at this stage, in any case, were the governments in China, Britain, and Hong Kong—the latter of which tried to evict Kowloon Walled City's residents since Britain and China couldn't reach an agreement on how to respond to this sudden population boom. It ended up being wildly unsuccessful, to the tune of the British Consulate in Canton being set on fire. “To prevent Anglo-Chinese relations deteriorating any further, the Government quickly dropped the eviction programme,” wrote Wilkinson, “It marked a turning point in policy; from now on, apart from a couple of occasions, the Government was to adopt a largely 'hands-off' approach toward the Walled City.”

At this point, Kowloon Walled City had a rapidly growing population, and now its proverbial parents weren't home. If you came into this already knowing anything about Kowloon Walled City, then you probably know what happened next. In the absence of official regulations and growing influence by gangs, the 1950s and 60s were when, Girard and Lambot write, “undeniably, residents lived among the most extraordinary depravity.” They go on to quote a magazine which described the city during this period as having, among several other things, “27 gambling halls, 19 opium dens, 17 heroin dens…more than 30 brothels…and four drug factories.”

While it's impossible to verify these numbers, this is hardly the only place you'll see the sentiment that the Kowloon Walled City of this era was a lawless den of drugs and debauchery. Earlier in the book, Wilkinson, who referred to these decades as “wretched years,” would quote a June 1968 issue of the Hongkong Standard: “The Walled City remains the vice centre of Hong Kong…with an estimated 5,000 drug addicts. The only difference [since the raids] is that many drug operators have gone underground.”

While a few raids had been carried out in the years before this, it wouldn't be until the jaw-dropping 3,685 raids that were conducted between 1973 and '74 (Wilkinson notes that there were “2,580 arrests, seizing nearly 500 pounds of heroin and 3,891 pounds of opium”) that things began to change more rapidly within the Walled City, to the extent that they had local crime under control within a decade. And, of course, the population continued to skyrocket, reaching the aforementioned 35,000+ residents by the late '80s. Still, none of this necessarily means that all of Kowloon Walled City's problems were behind it now.

Following the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, it was announced in 1987 that Kowloon Walled City—whose sanitation still left much to be desired (more on that later)—would be demolished, and eligible residents were to be compensated. And sure enough, the demolition went on from March 1993 to April 1994. Today, in stark contrast to the concrete and manmade chaos of its look between the late '40s and early '90s, a park that's covered in luscious greenery now stands where the one-of-a-kind city once did.

Daily Life in the Real Kowloon Walled City

So, bearing all this historical context in mind, let's take a brief glimpse into the daily lives of those who lived within the towers of the Walled City, built with nary a care for things like zoning. Well, even a glimpse might be a bit tricky because, for one, it was dark—literally and figuratively. Because of the city's dense structure, very little (if any) sunlight made its way to the lowest levels, save for the yamen. In a nutshell, a yamen is an administrative building. However, in the context of Kowloon Walled City, it was also a social hub. From above, it looks like a giant hole punched in the middle of the city. But outside of the yamen, you could also get a decent view of the sun or the moon by going to the city's roof. But even then, the roof wasn't without issues.

With, again, an exception for the yamen, Kowloon Walled City was 10–14 stories tall, and there were only two elevators in the entire 350ish buildings across the city, meaning you would probably have to walk up. And even if you decided to make the trek anyway, you wouldn't be rewarded with, say, the perfect picnic spot to enjoy your lemon chicken. Per Girard and Lambot, the roofscape had “small private gardens, tangles of television aerials and cabling, washing lines, makeshift water tanks, and a myriad crevices and cracks of all sizes between the buildings. Rubbish, as always, and a devil-may-care dilapidation were ubiquitous, and weeds grew profusely on the few inaccessible roofs. During the final clearance, teams of masked and suited workers were seen stripping the corrugating asbestos sheeting, so prevalent on the roofscape and elsewhere in the City, to make the demolition process less hazardous.”

As if that's not already bad enough, right by Kowloon Walled City was the now-closed Kai Tak Airport—an infamous airport amongst aviation enthusiasts, who often refer to it as “Kai Tak Heart Attack.” This well-earned nickname comes from how the airport would put planes exceptionally close to several buildings, which terrifyingly required the pilots to make Initial D-esque movements. This means that low-flying planes were constantly roaring not-too-distantly in the Kowloon Walled City sky, day in and day out.

But no conversation about daily life within Kowloon Walled City is complete without a discussion on, of course, sanitation—the poor state of which is widely believed to be a key part of why government officials wanted to tear the Walled City down. Let's start by setting the stage: in spite of the city's density, water for personal use was an incredibly limited resource, which made several aspects of life difficult, to say nothing of the hygienic implications. The available water wasn't always clean. Per Girard and Lambot, “The residents' description of well-water varied by location: those in the northern sector complained that it was murky, heavy and malodorous, while others noticed a film of surface oil and black soot-like particles.” Furthermore, a former resident of Kowloon Walled City recalled in a 2013 South China Morning Post article that, “when it was raining, the street was nearly always flooded. Water would rise to people's knees with trash floating around, but the residents just walked through it in their bare feet.”

And remember: this is all combined with a general filthiness throughout the cramped city. As mentioned earlier, the rooftops were often strewn with trash, which was also often found in, of course, the streets and alleys. In turn, not trailing too far from the trash would be the rats, which were massive, many, and miasmic.

Still, this isn't all to say that Kowloon Walled City was little more than a dank, vertically inclined petri dish, densely infected by rats and all manner of vice. There were also everyday places like homes, restaurants, shops, and factories. People lived, worked, and raised families within Kowloon Walled City. And not unlike the buildings that would define Kowloon Walled City's visual identity, entire communities were built up within these walls. It was their home, and they loved it. Despite everything, there's a certain warmth—a nostalgia, to stay on-theme to KGR—in the voices of many of the people who remember life in Kowloon Walled City when they talk about it. Said one former resident in the aforementioned 2013 South China Morning Post article, "Life was poor, but we were very happy.” “We had very good relationships in very bad conditions,” said another, “Even now, many people stay in touch with each other even though some old friends are overseas.”

The Romanticization of Kowloon Walled City

By now, you've probably got the (correct) impression that while the Kowloon Walled City of KGR has some crumbs of truth in it, overall it's a pretty rosy (or rather, sunflower-y) vision of the real-life historic city. It my also be weird to think of, say, the 1980s and 1990s as a historical era. But both decades have American Girl historical characters-slash-dolls for them, which is the best barometer for establishing how long ago history was that I can think of for someone old enough to remember at least the '90s.

The further you get into KGR, the more its sci-fi elements make their way to center stage—not to mention there's the occasional use of smartphones (which, yes, is also in the manga). There's a valid argument to be made that KGR isn't exactly aiming to create a strictly historically accurate Kowloon Walled City in the first place. Besides, true historical accuracy, in general, is little more than a mirage. Even so, I always think it's a shame when any piece of fiction goes out of its way to set itself in a very specific historical time and place without really doing that, setting much (if any) justice when it comes to exploring its historicity. In the best of circumstances, it's a massive waste of what could've otherwise been a fantastic learning opportunity. And in the worst case, it's a fertile breeding ground for misinformation and a way to maintain persistent myths.

Fictional works that explicitly go to Kowloon Walled City tend to paint the city as a lawless wasteland where fists reign supreme. This makes it perfect for narratives where a criminal underworld is prevalent. See this non-exhaustive list of examples (asterisks denote having at least some scenes that were filmed in Kowloon Walled City): Long Arm of the Law (1984), Bloodsport (1988)*, Crime Story (1993)*, Chasing the Dragon (2017), and Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024).

But there's another prominent strain of fictional works set in Kowloon Walled City, albeit less explicitly so. What I'm referring to are works that don't say they're set in Kowloon Walled City, but are taking enough obvious visual inspiration from it that you can argue that they're spiritually set there. In particular, I'm referring to a lot of cyberpunk media, which has long been fascinated with the city's iconic architecture. Ghost in the Shell (1995), of course—with its moody darkness, high-rises, and low-flying planes—stands out as arguably the most obvious example.

No matter how much I want to, I know that if I sit here and interrogate the ethics of historical fiction as a genre—namely, under what circumstances and to what extent does it or does it not have a duty to maintain at least a baseline level of historical accuracy (and where that baseline exists)—it would be akin to opening Pandora's Box. Doing so would completely and utterly derail this article well past the point of no return. Still, I think it's worth at least bearing these questions in mind when trying to grapple with examining a piece of historical fiction. And this goes double for a unique case like KGR, which ignores the history and reality of its setting, but also bucks the trend of reducing that setting to a sanctuary of sin.

Put in more simple turns, I have mixed feelings about how KGR goes about addressing, or more accurately, not addressing, the historicity of its setting. While it's a massive disservice to largely ignore it (as KGR is), it's also a massive disservice to pretend as though Kowloon Walled City's identity begins and ends as a cove of crime. It's a welcome and refreshing change of pace to see the Walled City glorified as something other than a cyberpunk city or an action movie come to life. But at the same time, I don't think glossing over, if not completely omitting, the more grim aspects of life in Kowloon Walled City is quite the right way to go about it either. That it's a sci-fi show be damned, the balance between fact and fiction when it comes to the setting is off. And that's a shame because my complicated feelings about how this series treats the historicity of Kowloon Walled City aside, the writing has been nothing short of great.