Hostess Clubs in Japan
Courtney at Feministing points to a New York Times article on “hostess” clubs in Japan where, to be simplistic about it, basically you pay a premium to have young women flirt with you and also to an enlightening roundup of expert commentary on the issue.
Meanwhile, in a rare instance of core requirements paying off, in college I fulfilled my foreign cultures slot with what turned out to be an extremely interesting class taught by an anthropologist about contemporary Tokyo. One of the things we were assigned was Anne Allison’s book Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. It’ll be a bit outdated by now, but it’s highly recommended. Allison is a trained and skilled academic who went undercover and worked as a hostess and is very skilled at blending her reporting with theoretically informed analysis.
In a related vein, I also highly recommend The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief, a documentary I saw three years ago at SilverDocs. It’s about a (relatively rare) club where the genders are reversed and female clients are catered to by male hosts.
30 Responses to “Hostess Clubs in Japan”
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August 13th, 2009 at 8:18 am
Exactly where did Matt go his first night in Pittsburgh?
August 13th, 2009 at 8:29 am
host clubs are not rare. you see them as much as hostess clubs. host clubs and hostess clubs
are all over the place. it’s standard, boring stuff.
there are celebrity type hosts/hosteses who appear on
TV; TV dramas about the wacky world of hosting. all
sorts of stuff.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Let’s see — men pay out huge sums of money and in return they don’t even get sex — they only get the illusionary promise of sex.
Exactly who is being exploited here?
August 13th, 2009 at 8:39 am
One of my colleagues recently went to Tokyo on a short term (2 months) assignment. One evening he claims he was enticed into a club by two attractive women he met while walking back to his hotel from work. They went to a nearby bar, chatted, had a couple of drinks. He claims he doesn’t remember anything after that other than somehow finding his way back to his hotel. Well in any case, a couple of days later he found out that he was charged 4K for the night’s festivities. He claims he was drugged and robbed, and is disputing with the credit card company. However, in the office the jury is out there on whether he was plain stupid (maybe naive is a better word) or is lying.
August 13th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Anyone ever heard of the Badger Con?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_game
August 13th, 2009 at 9:14 am
SLB is right: “Host” clubs are pretty common these days and you see former and current hosts/hostesses appearing on both TV talk shows and fictional programs all the time. This is especially true right now, as more and more young people are turning to the night life for work because of the lack of jobs. In Japanese, they call it “mizu shobai” (selling water) and the term covers a whole range of establishments. There are also “snack” bars which cater to an audience of older men and are usually run by a larger than life middle aged woman who is half mother, half play-temptress.
Japan likes to pretend that the host/hostess thing is normal and that you can do it without any social stigma, but if you’ve ever met any of the “girls,” they’ll tell you that it’s still pretty dangerous. And despite what you see on TV, they are still fairly shunned by the rank and file. Hosts have a slightly easier time of it I think.
As a final irony, on the surface most hostesses would appear to western eyes to be the “stronger” and more “independent” variety of woman.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:18 am
Don-the promise of sex is usually out there and after a certain amount of time expected.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:23 am
“basically you pay a premium to have young women flirt with you”
Japan has a Hooters?
August 13th, 2009 at 9:29 am
Well Sam, a very upscale Hooters.
August 13th, 2009 at 9:58 am
If anyone has more interest in host, hostess and the Japanese sex industry in general, I highly recommend the book “Pink Box”. An American female photographer somehow (through yakuza contacts maybe?) gained access to shoot in pay-for-sex establishments of all matter. Really amazing, and hilarious, book.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:02 am
The press goes out of it’s way to show that women, who used to be in the business world, are now whores or something close.
It’s a way to put women in their place as sex objects, first and foremost, regardless of the facts that only a small fraction women prostitute themselves.
The main reason given, for turning to the oldest profession, is that women cannot earn a living working for the minimum wage.
When you realize that there are more stories about women whoring themselves, as a percentage of the population, than women who do not, it’s plain to see the bias against women.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Japan also has lounges stocked with friendly, mostly long-haired cats. Customers pay an entry fee and get to pet and play with the cats for a set period of time.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Another sad reality that goes unmentioned in all these articles is that the main justification that Japanese businesses use to deny young women well-paying positions with benefits is pregnancy. A lot of companies consider it a risk to give a long-term position to a young woman because the assumption is that she will quit once she gets married and has a baby. There is actually a fair of amount social pressure for her to do so (The idea of working mothers has only started to take hold in the last 10 years).
This is also one of the reasons that more and more Japanese women are choosingnotto get married or have children. They don’t want to give up work.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am
The whole hostess / snack bar thing has been going on for many decades in Japan, by the way (the host bar is comparatively new). Mikio Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), one of the greatest neglected movies ever, is about this phenomenon. Ozu made a movie about hostesses in the 1930’s.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:28 am
“Let’s see — men pay out huge sums of money and in return they don’t even get sex — they only get the illusionary promise of sex.”
Ah yes, the dry hustle lives.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:36 am
re peter’s comment, the cat cafes are adorable. they’re advertised like host/hostess clubs with pictures of their cat “hostesses”. but it’s only like Yen 1,000 per hour.
there is a big distinction between hostess clubs and sex clubs. hostess clubs are not for sex (although there are customers that may arrange/try to arrange after hours meetings). there are clearly set rules. the hostesses make silly chit chat. the japanese guys drink a beer and fall over drunk. any touching of the hostess is a giant no-no and will cause a big scene. most, if not all, the charges go onto company expense accounts.
http://www.nekorobi.jp/cat/
August 13th, 2009 at 11:05 am
The comments that keep linking this to sex are making a major point. The emotional intimacy of an affair is not the same as sex for hire, nor is the dating aspect of an appointment with a high-priced call girl. Companionship, faked or otherwise, relaxed, is something craved by a lot of men and women, long after sex becomes a secondary part of a relationship, especially a marriage.
I recall one of the few original comments ever made about the Lewinsky affair can also be applied to the Sanborn fiasco. The monstrous cruelty of the wife being reminded, day after day, that a man who was supposed to be HER friend and confidant was spending his time and effort on someone else. A lot harder to forgive than picking up a bimbo somewhere.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:06 am
“http://www.nekorobi.jp/cat/”
Dudes, those cats are like surreally cute.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:31 am
The hostesses are very pleasant and good at making you think they actually care about you.
If you want real sex “love hotels” or “soap houses”, with mainly Philipina, Thai girls are for you.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Rum raisin, a friend of a friend had that happen to him in Manila, except he just woke up with everything gone, including clothes. I understand that’s pretty common there, never heard about it in Japan though.
August 13th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Re Midland at 17: “I recall one of the few original comments ever made about the Lewinsky affair can also be applied to the Sanborn fiasco. The monstrous cruelty of the wife being reminded, day after day, that a man who was supposed to be HER friend and confidant was spending his time and effort on someone else.”
——————-
Well, it can sometimes help intimacy survive if spouseA doesn’t see spouseB as nothing more than an ATM machine.
Did Hillary stay with Bill because she loved him — or because she wanted him to make her the first woman President?
“So you think youre a romeo
Playing a part in a picture-show
Take the long way home
Take the long way home
Cos youre the joke of the neighborhood
Why should you care if youre feeling good
Take the long way home
Take the long way home
But there are times that you feel youre part of the scenery
All the greenery is comin down, boy
And then your wife seems to think you’re part of the
Furniture
oh, its peculiar,
she used to be so nice.
When lonely days turn to lonely nights
You take a trip to the city lights
And take the long way home
Take the long way home
You never see what you want to see
Forever playing to the gallery
You take the long way home
Take the long way home
And when youre up on the stage, its so unbelievable,
Unforgettable, how they adore you,
But then your wife seems to think you’re losing your sanity,
Oh, calamity,
is there no way out?
Does it feel that you life’s become a catastrophe?
Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.
When you look through the years and see what you could
Have been oh,
what might have been,
If you’d had more time.
So, when the day comes to settle down,
Whos to blame if you’re not around?
You took the long way home
You took the long way home………..”
August 13th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
We all go to the grave alone
and our most bitter regrets are for the sins we did not commit.
August 13th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The Great Happiness Space is indeed an amazing film, though also a gigantic major downer. For me it might qualify for Most Depressing Documentary That Is Not About Genocide.
August 13th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Filling in on slb’s comments, hostess bars are not really like Hooters at all. The hostesses aren’t usually inordinately skimpily dressed. Misbehavior at a hostess bar can have severe negative implications for men, especially since:
1. you usually go to a hostess bar in a group of your male co-workers, headed up by your boss
2. a senior Japanese manager will often develope a long-term relationship with one hostess bar (sometimes more than one) that he will steer his employees to. Conversely, the hostess bar will work on cultivating relationships with senior managers, which can include discretely introducing them to potential business clients, useful government officials and so on. (finding the right hostess/ally can be very useful for your business career). These relationships can go on for years and even multiple decades.
3. hostess bar bills are usually paid for through the company entertainment budget.
4. thus, severe misbehavior at a hostess bar can result in disgrace at your place of work, trouble with your boss (who’s probably been using that hostess bar as his private social club for years), social ostracism from your co-workers and so on.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
The term Geisha hasn’t been used yet? I can’t bother to be bothered that good looking, sexy young Japanese women are making good money chatting up Japanese businessmen. They’re probably saving for medical school.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
My poli sci class in Japanese politics led me to “Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan“, by Nicholas Bornoff. Bornoff started with the hostess clubs before diving into the sex clubs. It was current when I read it in 1991.
Thus somewhat educated, I assumed the discrete penis iconography on signage I spotted near the old Imperial Palace in Kyoto on a 2001 visit identified clubs that were offering more than pleasant company.
August 13th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Geishas are not prostitutes, and neither are most strippers. -which is more than I can say for Chuck Grassley.
August 13th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Well, it can sometimes help intimacy survive if spouseA doesn’t see spouseB as nothing more than an ATM machine.
Did Hillary stay with Bill because she loved him — or because she wanted him to make her the first woman President?
Wrestle with the demonic Hillary that dwells in your mind if you need to, but please leave the classic rock of our youth out of it.
Meanwhile, MoDo can burn in hell a year for every petty, filthy gossip column she writes exploiting other people’s personal lives, and I won’t bat an eyelash.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
There’s a host bar a couple blocks from my place, supposedly some host bars are for women, and some cater to male clientèle. There’s actually a wide variety of host(ess) bars, and each caters to a different desire. Most are the “legit” kind where you pay through the nose to have a woman tell you how awesome you are. Sex is usually not expected, although it can develop in that direction if both sides want it (or if the woman is pressured into it — this is the downside of these clubs). Some of them develop into actual relationships, an ex-coworker of mine is ‘dating’ a Filipina hostess, though typically it involves him spending outrageous amounts of money at her club, and occasionally he takes her to dinner. I personally think he’s an idiot, but what can you do…
The girls are usually dressed quite elegantly in evening dresses, it’s not like they run around in a thong and boob tassles.
And for those of you wanting a cat fix in Tokyo, Cats Living is one of the first cat amusement parks, and charges only 1200 yen: http://www.tokyoq.com/weekly_updates/tqoole/daibacat.html
August 16th, 2009 at 6:14 am
This sounds like a perfect opportunity to point out that the excellent (and completely insane) anime, Ouran High School Host Club is free on the new hulu-part of youtube now. http://www.youtube.com/show?p=IQ_voZPsL8k
It revolves around a host club (take note, Matthew) that’s a high school activity, and the main character–one of the hosts–is actually a girl in drag. So, you know, there’s that.