Japan’s government has its eye on host clubs. The venues, where stylish young men entertain female customers over drinks, have come under fire due to stories of coercion, abuse, and women taking up sex work to pay off their club debts.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) wants to pass a new law regulating how host clubs operate. However, one researcher specializing in the nightlife scene of Tokyo’s Kabukicho neighborhood says this debate is happening in an information vacuum. Here’s why she thinks the proposed law, purportedly intended to help women, is driven by sexism and disdain.
A researcher and a fan
Sasaki Chiwawa (pen name) is a graduate of Keio University and is currently a first-year Master’s student in Social Studies at Ritsumeikan University. She’s also a fan of Kabukicho and host clubs and has written numerous books on the subject. I first learned of her through her book A Disease Called Pien (ぴえんという病), which chronicles the birth of the jirai-kei and ryōsan-gata subcultures in Shinjuku’s nightlife district.
Sasaki says she became enchanted with Kabukicho at age 15, when she was attending a “high-class” high school associated with the prestigious Ocha no Mizu University. Stressed out by the demands of school, she started going to Kabukicho to blow off steam with a friend from a previous school. (“The girls at Ocha no Mizu were all princesses, they would never go there.”)
She began attending host clubs when she turned 18. She still patronizes them today, spending a reasonable 30K to 50K yen ($207 to $346) per visit for up to two to three hours. Sasaki admitted, however, she’s gone in for the champagne tower before, which runs about 1.5 million yen ($10K).
A safe place for a fake romance
“Why do women get hooked on hosts?”
That’s the question posed by the cover of Sasaki’s latest book, The Youth Hooked on Kabukicho: The Anatomy of Exploitation and Dependence (歌舞伎町に沼る若者たち 搾取と依存の構造; Japanese version – affiliate link). The book is a response to the increasing media and government scrutiny applied to host clubs.
Stories of women who have gone into debt with the urekakekin system (a payday advance arrangement) or been hounded by malicious hosts into prostitution continue to make headlines in Japan. That’s led to a debate on how to regulate the industry to curb its excesses.
The debate around host clubs, Sasaki insists, is missing some essential context.
“People are debating about host clubs without knowing what sort of work they actually do,” Sasaki said. “There are thousands of hosts – it’s not like all of them are deceiving women.” To counter this, Sasaki spends the first half of her book talking about the work that hosts do – duties at the club as well as all the overtime hosts put in after hours.
Host clubs have been around for years, however. Why are they only now receiving added scrutiny? Sasaki pins it to the growth of host clubs over the past few decades – and changes in Japanese culture.
“Originally, host clubs started as dance clubs, with the men serving as escorts to rich women. The 1970s saw the emergence of the Ai Honten restaurant, which evolved into a place catering to entertaining women. Men could earn money and the adulation of women by being affable male companions, even if they had no education.”
The rise of oshikatsu (推し活), supporting one’s favorite star or idol, plus the growth of the Internet led to hosts becoming idols in their own right. That’s led to this unique culture in Japan of women paying men for entertainment.
Sasaki says, for some women, the payment aspect is part of the appeal.
“Regular men who come onto women are generally looking for sex. But when a host says you’re cute, his objective is money. It’s safer – sex doesn’t enter into the equation.”
“Women get judged just by virtue of being women. At a host club, a woman can use money to enjoy herself by putting herself in the driver’s seat. She can have fun with the man she likes, at the distance and type of relationship she desires. Being able to buy into this environment is one of the benefits of host clubs.”
What do hosts do?
In chapter two of The Youth Hooked on Kabukicho, Sasaki delves into the life of the host. For most, it’s not an easy life.
The number of hosts plying their trade is amazing. One host club company alone, Group Dandy, employs over 1,200 young men as hosts. It’s not hard to understand why.
The top “players” – the guys touted on billboards as bringing in the big money for their clubs – can make as much as 100 million yen ($693K) a year.
Besides the big money at stake, hosting is an egalitarian profession that doesn’t care about anyone’s education or background. Some hosts are students at elite schools like Keio University. Others are ex-convicts who can’t work anywhere else in Japan except in the country’s nightlife scene.
Even if they don’t end up as big players, a host can make decent money. One host club company, New Generation Group, says that hosts in their 20s can make 6.2 million yen ($43K) a year – considerably more than the 3.7 million yen a year they could earn in a regular job at that age.
Getting to the top level, however, is a grind. Hosts earn the big money by bringing in devoted customers and splitting the earnings with the club. New hosts without customers earn a measly 5,000 to 10,000 yen ($34 to $69) a day. They spend most of their workdays cleaning the club or standing around Kabukicho with signs advertising the business. After the large sum of money required to maintain their appearance – clothes, hair, etc. – many are left with nothing. Those hosts have no choice but to serve as errand boys for the players in the hopes of being treated to a free meal.
One 100M yen player interviewed by Sasaki says getting to his level required waking up every hour to check for LINE messages from his customers. He spent his afternoon in restaurants and shisha bars with patrons before heading to the club. He would see three clients in succession after hours.
“It gets easier once you’re an established name,” he said. Getting there, however, requires an all-out effort.
“Hosts aren’t objects, they’re people”
The news stealing the headlines about host clubs relates to women who take up prostitution in order to fund their host club habits. There is a range of quasi-legal sexual services in Japan. Some women resort to illegal prostitution (the line here is fuzzy) or other crimes to keep the money flowing.
Perhaps the most notable example is Sugar Baby Riri, a.k.a. Watanabe Mai, who’s serving 8.5 years in jail for fraud. Prosecutors accused Watanabe of defrauding men of 19.9 million yen ($133K) – and of making more money selling a book that describes her tactics to create “fake romances.”
For the most part, Sasaki argues that this should be treated as a matter of individual responsibility. Female customers, she says, need to remember who hosts are.
“Hosts lay out what you have to pay to have this or that type of relationship. Some women, once they’ve paid out a lot, are afraid of losing priority if they spend less. But hosts aren’t objects. They’re people. They might quit next month. But women who can’t wait to save up to make their host number one take up sex work, since it’s the fastest way to earn money.”
Sasaki: Hosts are victims too
In the urikakekin system, women commit to buying an expensive item, such as champagne, and repaying it at the top of the month after they get their salaries. With urikakekin, customers get what amounts to an advance directly from the establishment. There’s an alternative system, tatekaekin, where the hosts themselves shoulder the financial burden directly.
This is where the stories come in of women using sex work to pay off their debts. The media and Japanese government have jumped on these stories out of a fear that sex work to fund host club habits will become normalized.
Sasaki opposes the urikakekin system – but not just for the reasons raised by the media.
“The narrative in the media is that women are the victims,” Sasaki said. “They’re young, stupid women, ignorant of the world, who’ve been deceived by hosts.
“But the hosts are young men too! Most are in their 20s, some are 18 years old. They’re being told to use urikake or tatekae to pursue young women and get their numbers up. So I oppose urikakekin on those grounds – not just to protect young women, but to protect the young men, too.”
Sasaki says there’s been trouble with the urikakekin system caused by customers as well. “Women with only 10 yen to their names who can’t afford to eat go to host clubs because they know they can eat and drink on credit. Or they refuse to pay because they didn’t get their desired return – their host didn’t become number one, or they couldn’t establish a relationship.”
Making women into victims is also sexism
On social media, some contend that women who get in over their heads to the point of taking up sex work are simply reaping what they sowed.
“That’s spot on,” Sasaki agreed.
“I’ve been going to host clubs for seven years and have never gotten in over my head. Yeah, I’ve gone overboard on occasion, but it was fun. I have no regrets.
“Of course, there are cases where women are in a terrible situation – the host is manipulating them, hitting them. Those are crimes. Outside of that, if you’re saying you have no choice but to do sex work, well, then maybe you should only go to host clubs when you have the money for it. For those women who spend money they don’t have because they want to be loved, yes, I’d say they brought that on themselves.”
Given this, what does Sasaki think about the current legislation on the table that would restrict host clubs from such activities as urikakekin, romantic guilt-tripping, and covert upselling?
“The politicians passing these laws look down on women attending host clubs, whom they see as selling their bodies to support men. They feel this need to create a system to protect them.” If a man embezzled from his company to pay a cabaret club hostess, Sasaki noted, he’d be arrested. “But in this case, the hosts are being blamed for causing many women to choose sex work.
“In my personal opinion, the government thinks it’s invested a ton of money in high-end education for women to end up in sex work. It lowers national power in their eyes. They think that if women were in high-powered jobs and lifting up the GDP like the salarymen of old, we wouldn’t have these issues. They can’t turn their back on women engaging in this untaxed, ‘grey zone’ work that does nothing to add to the GDP.”
Ultimately, Sasaki thinks it’s good to have some rules so that people have legal recourse when incidents occur. “But I don’t think any laws will change Kabukicho that much,” she said. “The government can’t regulate issues of love. They can control the most severe issues, but the people who want to go will go. There’s no such thing as a perfect strategy.”
She thinks the current proposals are steeped in sexism. “You don’t come up with this kind of proposal unless you’re a sexist who sees young women as societally naive, as idiots who need to be protected.
“At the same time, it’s also easy to blame men. Everyone is criticizing the work that hosts do, saying it’s evil work that creates more miserable women. That’s why I wrote this book. Do these people really know what hosts do? Learn that first, then let’s have a debate.”
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Sources
歌舞伎町のホストの給料はどれくらい？新人からトッププレイヤーまで徹底解説. New Generation Group
