What happens to all those millions of yen that flow through the coffers of Japan's hostess clubs?
A lot goes into the pockets of the hard-working hostesses, of course, plus plenty is spent the expensive decor and upkeep of the venue.
Not very much goes to the taxman, it seems.
At the end of September 2025, a high-end hostess club in Roppongi was found to have concealed approximately ¥500 million in income. In addition to Fabric Lounge Tokyo's owners reporting lower income and fabricating fictitious expenses, the National Tax Agency said that some of the top hostesses themselves had failed ...
Readers with long memories may recall the story we published in 2015 about Rie Saito, the beautiful hostess who happened to be deaf from childhood.
At the time, Saito was a single mom, Ginza hostess, and author of a bestselling memoir that was turned into a TV drama in 2010. She was also an aspiring politician.
She successfully ran in an election for Tokyo's Kita Ward Assembly in 2015, serving her full four-year term. She had national ambitions and was subsequently selected as a proportional representation candidate for the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan in the House of ...
Hikaru is one of Japan's most popular YouTubers but the 34-year-old has hit a blip in his career after publicly declaring that he was in an open marriage in a video posted on September 14.
Within 24 hours of posting the video, his channel had bled thousands of followers, dropping to below 5 million. In a single day, he lost around 120,000 subscribers. Comments on the video total over 56,000 at the time of writing and views over 4 million.
In the video, Hikaru appears with his 30-year-old wife, Shingeki no Noa (Minori Maeda), a former hostess turned businesswoman in Osaka.
She once made ...
The former HKT48 idol Haruka Kodama has announced that she has worked as a hostess in Ginza.
After making a stunning comeback in gravure last year and released a digital photo book in January, is the model and actor in need of some regular work to keep herself in clover?
Not quite. Along with some ravishing pics of herself in full hostess garb, Haruppi released a video in which she "snuck" into a club for one night and got to try out a shift as a hostess.
The 28-year-old is playing a hostess in the April episodes of Tokyo Kanojo (a YouTube drama series), so she says she was gaining ...
Rui Sakuragi was one of the biggest adult video stars in Japan in the first half of the 1990s. She made her debut in 1989 and then left the industry in 1996 at the peak of her popularity.
In her subsequent career, she was a stripper until the year 2000, and did some acting on TV during those years.
But in the past quarter-century, fans didn't know what she was up to and rumors swirled that she had passed away.
That silence ended recently.
So what is the now 56-year-old Rui Sakuragi doing today? She's working as a hostess at a club in Ginza run by another top ex-porn star, Hitomi ...
How many idols find true happiness? Of course, the majority who do tend to retire and live the rest of their lives in quiet obscurity.
The ones who remain in the news often do so because their post-idol lives are filled with hiccups, personal or professional. If you just read the celebrity news, you might be forgiven for thinking that all former music and gravure idols were divorced or rocked by one scandal or other.
Nonetheless, we suspect that divorce rates among idols is a bit higher than the general populace, perhaps because their jobs and the closed nature of the idol industry means ...
In a sign of just how much affective labor is valued in Japan, the popular hostess Miyako Sakurai has moved to another high-end Roppongi club in a deal worth reportedly ¥100 million.
The move was announced on August 7.
Sakurai was a hostess at Jungle Tokyo in Roppongi, where she apparently earned the club around ¥300 million in three months. She will now be available to entertain patrons with the wherewithal at Club Rio, also in Roppongi.
Jungle Tokyo is regarded as the most exclusive hostess club in Japan.
Sakurai previously worked at the members-only lounge club 45 in Gion, Kyoto, ...
In today's social media–driven world, it can feel like a new meme and "enjo" scandal appear every day to rage-bait us into clicks and views.
One of the more recent examples in Japan was a video in January of a hostess and a client at an expensive sushi restaurant, arguing with the owner about their order. It ended with the hostess and client (who was the one filming the video) leaving the restaurant and staff having to hold back the owner from attempting a physical assault.
So much for omotenashi.
The trouble between the owner and the couple apparently arose because the client was ...
The television announcer and model Kasumi Mori has become a high-class hostess.
Well, kinda. She pretended to be one to film a TV show.
Mori is riding high now from lots of media appearances and exposure as she tries to follow the likes of announcer-turned-actress Minami Tanaka and break out into the mainstream as a model and general celebrity.
The 28-year-old recently released her debut photo book that featured some pretty sexy shots and has been a minor hit, it seems.
In the show, which was broadcast on TV Asahi (and with the full version available on Abema), Mori wore an alluring ...
The model Yukina Kinoshita continues to pursue an unusual path following her scandal, divorce (after multiple allegations of adultery), and losing her agency.
She has released a nude photo book and focused on social media channels like YouTube to keep herself in clover, her celebrity lifestyle apparently unaffected by her complete disappearance from fashion magazine covers.
The 36-year-old mother of two, who is currently dating 30-year-old soccer player Hidetoshi Miyuki, is gradually working more in the mainstream media and recently made an appearance on a TV show called Ai no Hyena on the ...
