The moral panic over host clubs and prostitution in Japan continues unabated with a story yesterday in the Tokyo Shimbun about a 20-year-old woman whose whopping ¥10 million debt to a club prompted her to begin doing sex work.
While still a high school student in Kanagawa, she went to a host club in Yokohama in autumn 2021. The chandeliers and attention of the hosts seduced her, and she was hooked.
She ended up with a debt of ¥10 million, forcing her into prostitution at Okubo Park, Kabukicho, to pay it off. The club was demanding she pay back as much as ¥300,000 a day. Even after she ...
We recently wrote about the frankly shocking papakatsu compensated dating fraud perpetuated by a woman to fund her trips to host clubs.
It shows many things, not least the extraordinary lengths some women will go to to feed their addiction to host clubs.
This issue has drawn attention of late, with host clubs seen as more exploitative than hostess clubs. Host clubs have developed an image as an ecosystem that preys on vulnerable women and with a financial structure that leads to debt, whereby women are encouraged to rack up huge bills that they pay later.
Many of the women who go to host ...
One of the biggest trends of the year has been the crackdown on prostitution in Okubo and Kabukicho, especially very young women soliciting customers on the streets.
Most prostitution in Japan operates through structured services, such as "delivery health" call girl services that send a sex worker to your hotel room.
With the gentrification of the main parts of Kabukicho into a tourist attraction, it can be easy for some to overlook the seedy nature of the backstreets and forget that it borders an entire block of love hotels that stretch all the way to Okubo. And that streetwalkers are ...
Times are tough for host and hostess clubs, since they were demonized during the first wave of coronavirus infections in Japan and, inevitably, even their loyal patrons don't want to risk the close quarters of such clubs during these times.
But if you are brave enough, now is actually the best chance to visit the clubs. They are likely to be empty and you will have the pick of whichever host or hostess you fancy talking with. Plus you can get a discount.
We came across a photo report about a first-time visit to host clubs in Kabukicho in the coronavirus era. The young Japanese woman makes ...
In a further sign that hosts and hostesses are skillfully trying to reframe the media narrative that has demonized their trade as hotspots for spreading coronavirus infections in Tokyo, the city's metropolitan government has released educational videos on COVID-19 that see two hosts and a hostess ask doctors questions.
After host clubs began cooperating with the Shinjuku government to initiate testing for employees and stem the spread in Kabukicho (and the demonization in the media), and the government started handing out cash payments to clubs that agree to close and to individual hosts and ...
Tokyo is experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections, with upwards of 200+ infections announced per day. Almost all of these, so far, are younger people able to cope with symptoms and the pressure of the city's health facilities is currently minimal. Let's hope that this situation does not worsen.
As we have continued to write on these pages, much of the blame for clusters has focused -- we think, overly and unfairly so -- on the mizu shobai "water trade" world of nighttime entertainment, particularly host and hostess clubs, which have been almost demonized by the mainstream media ...
Infections continue to rise in Tokyo as we enter the second wave of the coronavirus in Japan, though numbers remain very modest compared to other countries.
Much of the blame and media attention has focused on hostess and host clubs. We have followed this as part of our monitoring of how the COVID-19 is affecting the adult industry in Japan, where sex workers, gravure idols, strippers, and hostesses are facing a sudden and serious decline in income.
There has also been some name-calling between Ginza and Kabukicho, as the hostess clubs in each district try to claim that they are not the ...
As the city reopens following its soft lockdown, one establishment has made headlines for changing its operating style to fit the new normal that is post-COVID-19 Tokyo -- and also opening itself up to a broader demographic ahead of its closure.
The host club Ai Honten (literally, Love Head Office) will open only on Saturdays and Sundays as a cafe. For once, male customers will also be admitted. So this is also a kind of education project, helping people experience what a host club is like without having to pay the usual costs entailed.
First opened in 1971 and one of the most renowned ...
Host culture in Japan is so big now that apparently even pre-teens aspire to look like the hirsute Kabukicho drinkers-for-hire.
Ryuchalo is the son of a beauty blogger called Chiimelo (yes, the names are pretty wacky), and apparently he wanted to celebrate his 8th birthday as a host.
In fact, he even celebrated his birthday at a host club in Kabukicho, a notorious red-light district if you discount the recent partial gentrification (or should that be Godzillafication?).
Ryuchalo spent his big day in August at Superstar club, which is owned by Jin, a famous host.
He even got to ...
Staged Seduction: Selling Dreams in a Tokyo Host Club is a new book by Akiko Takeyama, published by Stanford University Press. It is an ethnographic study of the men and women who produce and consume love in Japan's host clubs, examining not only the "fixed times and formal spaces" like the late-night sessions in the clubs themselves, but also beyond.
Why it is very easy to find media reports and articles about hostesses, male hosts are less famous outside of Japan.
And yet arguably, this is the more interesting phenomenon, since there are bars and clubs where you pay to hang out ...
