The 39-year-old gravure model and celebrity Yoko Kumada is “working” at a luxury hostess club in Ginza. Well, kind of. The initial media headlines were a little misleading.
Kumada’s entrepreneur husband was arrested last month for assaulting her, including allegedly hitting her in the face, but was released without charge two days later. She has announced her intention to start divorce proceedings, though there are also reports that the incident was prompted by her husband’s suspicions of her adultery, which might complicate things. She and her husband have three young children.
She shared with fans on Instagram a picture of herself in a kimono and heavy makeup. She was supposedly going to work that day at the top Ginza club Nanae.
She filmed a “one-day experience” of working as a mama (female manager) and entertaining male patrons at the club. Released on her popular YouTube channel, the video was shot after her husband’s arrest, leading to speculation that this would be her new means of financing herself.
Nanae’s own YouTube channel shared videos of Kumada in action, including this one of her having her hair done and undergoing the transformation into a kimono-clad mama-san.
The latter video, in particular, sparked a brief media frenzy and the rumors that Kumada was actually now working at the club. But the whole thing was presumably just a one-off stunt and jukujo Kumada is unlikely to pursue a genuine career in hostessing, though many models and idols do (either moonlighting or full-time after their career fades). If anything, though, the video is a nice showcase of the inside of the club for folks like us who can’t afford to drink there.
Clubs like Nanae, despite expensive outlays in sterilization renovations, are really suffering during the protracted states of emergency in Japan that mean restaurants and bars are supposed to close early and not serve alcohol. In the early months of the pandemic, host and hostess clubs were among those establishments blamed for spreading the virus (when in reality, offices and packed commuter trains were just as guilty, if not more so).
Nanae possibly paid Kumada to do the video (since a lot of celebrity YouTube content is sponsored), though we imagine customers would be even more delighted if the club employed her full-time! She also did a recent gravure shoot for Weekly Gendai magazine with fellow jukujo models Asami Kumakiri and Misumi Shiochi, in which all three slim, older women pranced around on a bed in their underwear.
