The controversial cult of the host club in Japan - Sell physical intimacy to man; buy emotional intimacy from man.

In kabukicho, a red-light district in Tokyo, four young men surround your female correspondent. Hiragi Saren, a 25-year-old with bleached hair, a black tank top and a silver necklace, sits closest. He chatters warmly and glances seductively, his pink eyeshadow glimmering under the chandeliers. His three assistants keep filling your correspondent’s shochu glass and shower her with compliments about her appearance. She doubts their sincerity, but is strangely pleased. After an hour and a half, the bill is ¥30,000 ($200).

Host clubs are booming in Japan. Some 21,000 hosts—well-dressed young men, often wearing make-up like k-pop stars—work at 900 such establishments. They pamper and flatter their female clients. Sex is not part of the bargain but could happen, somewhere else. Clients usually seek psychological rather than physical intimacy. Hosts refer to them as hime (princess), and never ask how old they are or what they do for a living.

To understand the cult of the host, start with two statistics. More than 60% of Japanese women in their late 20s are unmarried, double the rate in the mid-1980s. A recent survey found that more than a third of unmarried adults aged 20-49 had never dated. Many single women visit host clubs because they are lonely. They get a thrill from meeting “the kind of men they don’t meet in everyday life”, Mr Hiragi says.

The first host club opened in the mid-1960s, mostly serving as a dance hall for rich matrons and widows. Early hosts described themselves as “male geishas”, says Hojo Yuichi, who runs Ai Honten, the oldest active host club. At first, the clubs were seen as a fringe, sleazy business. But that stigma has faded.

Successful hosts are now celebrities. In the 2000s they started appearing on tv shows. Today many have a big social-media following. Billboards and trucks display pictures of the highest earners. Hosts feature as characters in manga and anime, too. They have become “an archetype within Japanese popular culture”, says Thomas Baudinette, an anthropologist at Macquarie University. Mr Hiragi moved to Tokyo from a rural area with dreams of becoming a famous host. “I wanted to be part of a world that’s glamorous,” he says.

Glamorous, yet controversial. Feminist groups accuse host clubs of exploitation: overcharging for drinks and manipulating clients into racking up huge tabs. Hosts praise those who spend the most, calling them “ace”. Some customers end up in debt after paying millions of yen for a single visit. Takahashi Ichika, a client, recalls that her favourite host would ignore her and fiddle with his phone when she refused to order champagne. “I would spend more money because I didn’t want him to dislike me. I wanted his attention,” she says.

Some women go to extraordinary lengths to feed their host habit. A survey last year showed that among women arrested for selling sex around Okubo Park, a popular pickup spot, over 40% were trying to earn enough money to go to host clubs. Politicians have started discussing ways to regulate the industry, for example by cracking down on opaque pricing. Host-club owners hope to pre-empt this with better self-regulation.

Some see a link between the cult of the host and obsessive fan culture. In a survey in 2023, 72% of Japanese women in their 20s said they indulged in oshikatsu (avidly supporting a celebrity, for example by buying several copies of each new hit). The objects of their adoration were often pop idols. But some are switching their allegiance to hosts, to whom they can get much closer. Ms Takahashi says she used to spend a lot on boy bands, but when concerts stopped during covid, she started to splurge on hosts instead.

Many other Japanese businesses, such as cuddle cafés, offer intimate services, usually to men. Mr Baudinette worries, though, that for many Japanese people, “intimacy can only be accessed through commoditised forms.”

Yamada Kurumi, a client, works at a brothel to earn enough money to visit the clubs, which she does about once a week. She had boyfriends in the past but finds hosts more exciting. She is unsure whether to seek an office job after graduating from college or to carry on with sex work, which pays better. “A lot of people start losing touch with friends once they get addicted to host clubs,” says Ms Yamada. “My host is already part of my everyday life…If I get a normal job, I probably won’t be able to see him any more. That scares me.” ■

 
Feminist groups accuse host clubs of exploitation: overcharging for drinks and manipulating clients into racking up huge tabs. Hosts praise those who spend the most, calling them “ace”. Some customers end up in debt after paying millions of yen for a single visit. Takahashi Ichika, a client, recalls that her favourite host would ignore her and fiddle with his phone when she refused to order champagne. “I would spend more money because I didn’t want him to dislike me. I wanted his attention,” she says.
This is just a clip joint with the genders swapped. It's the business model of any of these places. Somewhere trying to operate as a "great value" hostess club or strip club would immediately lose all the talent to somewhere that is willing to operate on a rip off model because that will allow the talent to get better comission/tips, leaving only the performers customers didn't really want to see and so the business would likely go under (unless there was no competition in the area to poach the talent) - it's still going to be the economic model of a host club. It's exploitative of customers but no more exploitative than a scenario where a man spends most of his paycheque because he thinks a stripper is in love with him, surely?
A survey last year showed that among women arrested for selling sex around Okubo Park, a popular pickup spot, over 40% were trying to earn enough money to go to host clubs.
Oh Jesus Christ.
 
There's a fascinating documentary on this topic called 'The Great Happiness Space, which must be almost 20 years old at this point, but still incredibly relevant.

I've seen it probably half a dozen times over the years, and there are many, many aspects of the male host culture that just baffle me. Mainly, that the hosts themselves look like dolled up dweebs with retarded hair and fake designer goods.
I wonder if Ouran High School Host Club had something to do with this.
 
I've seen it probably half a dozen times over the years, and there are many, many aspects of the male host culture that just baffle me. Mainly, that the hosts themselves look like dolled up dweebs with retarded hair and fake designer goods. That could've changed in recent years with gymmaxxing and whatnot, but in the mid-to-late 2000s it just didn't make sense.
There's a lot more variety there now. I watched a youtube video on how one of the main club chains (acqua) had a top host was a fat boy who fat girls pick because even when they're paying for it they have low self esteem and won't just pay for an actual hot guy to lie to them. Or maybe it makes the lie too obvious idk, but the argument was that they're thought to 'match'.

The host clubs have been around forever, the article is playing up the obsession part of it when really all this stuff is normal in Japan, but seems weird to westerners. It's being talked about as a problem now in Japan because of how big the associated rise in crime is getting - and it's called 'yami baito' or 'dark part-time' crime and it's not clear who's behind it and it's not regulated / ordered like the yakuza is/was. Stuff like telephone scams, bank robberies. Women going into sex work to pay for their host is an increasing problem, it's happening on a ridiculous scale now because of outside tourism from China, but there is also an increasing problem with stuff like drugs being put into the client's drinks and when they wake up they're told they drank 20k worth of drinks and need to pay it back by Monday by doing sex work. Or rumours of worse, kidnap etc. Basically, the yakuza have always owned a lot of the clubs or club chains, a bit like the gay bars in the west, but now the hosts are sidelining them with their own schemes so it's threatening the industry itself. It's probably a minority of hosts but enough are in on it and you don't know until you're already in debt. There's also an associated massive rise in suicides - there's a particular building in the district that's known for young women throwing themselves off of it.

 
There's a fascinating documentary on this topic called 'The Great Happiness Space, which must be almost 20 years old at this point, but still incredibly relevant.

I've seen it probably half a dozen times over the years, and there are many, many aspects of the male host culture that just baffle me. Mainly, that the hosts themselves look like dolled up dweebs with retarded hair and fake designer goods. That could've changed in recent years with gymmaxxing and whatnot, but in the mid-to-late 2000s it just didn't make sense.

In its heyday, it wasn't common for these dudes to swing 60-100k a year just from talking to women and drinking overpriced champagne.
It makes more sense when you realize it's just a real life version of yaoi comics and shit. They don't actually want any sex, they love the emotional manipulation they get. Buying into an easy lie than facing any sort of real life rejection of actually being in a relationship.
 
Reminded me of this manga/live action drama anthology style series about different women that end up doing sex work for one reason or another, Tomorrow I'll be Somebody's Girlfriend, one story is about a fat chick and a self harmer both doing sex work in order to keep paying for their favorite host.

There's more then enough asian sex workers with the mentality that they will just do it for a short time until they get what we would call a whale/simp/high value man. Reality is often disappointing.
 
To be fair, the Japs were screwed up for at least a couple centuries prior to the steam engine. I've seen that damn picture of the octopus.

Not a picture, the work you're talking about is a mokuhanga, a wood block print, in the Ukiyo-e style of art. The specific piece of art you are talking about is "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", 1814. The woman in question was the wife of a fisherman as well as a shell diver and she is being serviced by two octopuses.
 
Not a picture, you're talking about Ukiyo-e, a wood block print. The specific piece of art you are talking about is "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife", 1814. The woman in question was the wife of a fisherman as well as a shell diver and she is being serviced by two octopuses.
Always good to learn something new. Imagine being cucked by the tako you hauled in for dinner.
 
Realistically, whilst a bit weird, this still sounds less exploitative/pervy/whatever than strip clubs and the like.
Octopus drawing or no, looks like economic problems of the '90s marked the real start of population decline, and '80s saw peak Japan.
I don't know the exact details, but from what I understand the bubble economy bursting was the result of the US imposing some form of economic sanction on Japanese businesses/products in an intentional attempt to cripple their economy, because heaven forbid a country other than the US (or, more accurately, the right people in the US) have a flourishing market and happy population. So yeah, next time you wonder "why is Japan still in a slump/have all these problems?" the answer is "the Jews did it". As always.

Honestly though, from what I understand, both from general research and having a friend (also fellow farmer) who's doing teaching in Japan, Akita to be exact, I think, things could be a lot, lot worse. People on the whole are friendly, the actual country is pleasant and safe and clean, and most of the "WTF Japan, seriously?" stuff seems to be both exaggerated in severity and occurance and confined to massive urban areas, which as a rule of thumb tend to be shit regardless of country. If you're in a suburban or rural area, things will most likely be normal and nice, just Japanese-flavoured. Like, basing your outlook on a society by one of the huge cities is always going to give you a bad outlook (imagine basing your entire opinion on the US on LA, or the UK on London, etc). And even then they tend to be considerably less awful than their counterparts in other countries. Considering Tokyo is one of, if not the, biggest and densest cities in the world, and yet still manages to be on the whole a great deal nicer than most of its non-Japanese counterparts, I think Japan's actually doing pretty well for itself.

Not to say things are perfect of course; the slimy tentacles of globohomo are definitely trying to worm their way into the cracks of Japanese society, and as with literally any country they have issues of their own. But realistically, my outlook for Japan's future and chances of staying non-fucked are cautiously optimistic. Given that a lot of the loudest complainers about Japan tend to be Cracked-tier journoscum, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some concerted effort to push anti-Japanese propaganda to try and deflect from issues at home and to try and nullify people pointing to what Japan does right. ("I mean, sure, Japan has a high standard of living, low crime rates, actual solutions to problems and respect for their own communities, but...weird comics!")

Case in point, around the time of a (relative) spike in reports of harassment on trains, Japanese authorities started arranging women-only train cars as a regular thing, so women who were afraid of being harassed would be able to commute more safely, if they wanted. Predictably, rather than saying "Wow! That's a great idea, we should do that over here!" (because, let's be real, getting harassed on trains is a problem neither exclusive to nor the worst in Japan), journos inverted the story into an anti-Japanese piece, complaining that Japan had "sky-high molestation problems" because people actually bothered to flag the issue up and something was done about it, and that the women-only trains were "victim blaming" and "putting the onus on women to not be molested". Of course, nowadays such a measure would be accused of being transphobic instead, but the point stands- Japan actually did something about a problem and journos twisted it into it being a Japan-exclusive problem and the solution somehow being bad.

I suspect the reason Japan gets this kind of shit is because, in addition to being a safe, successful country with a strong national identity- which as we know, these sorts of people hate- and the fact that people like what they do, they aren't white, and thus people who admire anything Japanese can't be accused of being "white supremacists". (Not talking weeaboos here, I mean justified praise for genuinely good things from Japan, e.g. "why don't we have umbrella vending machines?" or "I wish we had an electronics store like this back home!" or "Hiroko was so helpful showing me where the best place to eat was, she's such a sweet person!") Thus, "issues" have to either be drastically exaggerated, fabricated wholesale or played up in comparison to places that have the same issue several orders of magnitude worse in order to try and discredit it as any kind of model for how to do things- because if people DID start paying attention to a country doing well for itself, be that Japan or anywhere else, they might start asking questions about why the fuck things are so bad back home.

TLDR: Japan has issues but said issues are overplayed by (((journoscum))) to try and obfuscate from things Japan does well, because they hate success.
 
I don't know the exact details, but from what I understand the bubble economy bursting was the result of the US imposing some form of economic sanction on Japanese businesses/products in an intentional attempt to cripple their economy, because heaven forbid a country other than the US (or, more accurately, the right people in the US) have a flourishing market and happy population. So yeah, next time you wonder "why is Japan still in a slump/have all these problems?" the answer is "the Jews did it". As always.
But they were ok to China becoming big and every bit the threat they claim Japan will be. And Lord forbid you criticize the Chinese. Well they probably see China as a threat now but still.
 
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I don't know the exact details, but from what I understand the bubble economy bursting was the result of the US imposing some form of economic sanction on Japanese businesses/products in an intentional attempt to cripple their economy,
My man, the shit they were pulling with real estate speculation makes what Wall Street was doing in the leadup to 2008 look tame.

Shit, at least the USA's real estate shenanigans were diversified across the country, but in Japan it was all about Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo, and that pulled the rug from under the entire economy.
 
There's a fascinating documentary on this topic called 'The Great Happiness Space, which must be almost 20 years old at this point, but still incredibly relevant.

I've seen it probably half a dozen times over the years, and there are many, many aspects of the male host culture that just baffle me. Mainly, that the hosts themselves look like dolled up dweebs with retarded hair and fake designer goods. That could've changed in recent years with gymmaxxing and whatnot, but in the mid-to-late 2000s it just didn't make sense.

In its heyday, it wasn't common for these dudes to swing 60-100k a year just from talking to women and drinking overpriced champagne.
I'm about a half hour in and this is some weird shit.


I just do not understand Japs. Everything is behind a mask, through a filter, done ironically yet completely sincerely.

I can't tell if anyone in this movie is sincere. Even when the hosts are like "We don't love them hos," I can't tell if they're being sincere; it seems like another role put on for an audience.
 
Sounds like a good plot for a hentai. Having Paid Sex With Gross Otaku and Ugly Bastards Just So I Can Spend it All On My Favorite Host Who Hates Me.
I had to google to check that wasn't already a JAV title.
 
My man, the shit they were pulling with real estate speculation makes what Wall Street was doing in the leadup to 2008 look tame.

Shit, at least the USA's real estate shenanigans were diversified across the country, but in Japan it was all about Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo, and that pulled the rug from under the entire economy.
Wasn't the land of just a random palace in Tokyo worth more than the entirety of Cali's GDP during the late 80s?
 
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