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 hostesses who test positive, now the industry is partnering with the TMG itself for these educational videos.
Infections are now on the rise among the young in Tokyo, and inevitably the clusters are not as simplistic as the government and media originally portrayed. Of course, they are not all just coming from host and hostess clubs, but from a range of scenarios.
These three Q&A-style videos, which are about seven or eight minutes long (and in which both participants appear masked throughout), not only offer basic and practical information for Tokyoites but are also a necessary corrective that hosts and hostesses are (solely) to blame for COVID-19 in Japan.
Unfortunately for most international readers, there are no English subtitles on the videos, though Japanese closed captions are available.
Stunning even with her mask on, the hostess in one of the videos is Hibiki Ichijo (一条響), the director of top Kabukicho club Fourty Five (sic), and a minor celebrity who sometimes appears on television.
