It seems whenever the western media wants something saucy, they make an article or video about Japanese hostesses.
Vice did a 24-hours-in-the-life-of video of a “high-class hostess” last year.
Now the BBC has jumped in with this interview with a Kabukicho hostess.
As a hostess at a club in Shinjuku Kabuki-cho, Emiri Aizawa, 27, pours drinks, lights cigarettes and listens to men.
“My main job is let them have fun,” she says.
“Of course, there have been customers who asked for more, because we are men and women, but I politely say, ‘No.’ “I don’t think you can do this job for a long time if you do more [by sleeping with clients].”
In one night, on her 23rd birthday, she brought in 27 million yen ($245,000; £150,000) for the club, of which she received a sizeable chunk.
And as a model with her own fashion line, she earns more than $1m a year.
“My modelling career and the clothing brand only happened because I did well at the club,” she says.
“Because I am a hostess, I have faced a lot of discrimination.
“People said that I wouldn’t achieve anything, but that made me more determined.
“So I don’t think there is anything that women cannot achieve.”
It’s a very clean and positive portrait of a hostess’s life. While this is a pleasant change from the usual sleaze, we also feel that it is missing out on the real facts of the matter. E.g. being a hostess is very unhealthy, since the hostess are constantly drinking and surrounded by smoke. The hours are, of course, anti-social, plus there is the pressure to sleep with clients. Oh, and then there’s the Yakuza involvement in the clubs as management and/or clients.
Another major factor the report does not touch on is the gentrification and Disneyfication of Kabukicho — not least with the “Godzilla hotel” (Gracery hotel and Toho movie theater complex) and the “robot restaurant”, and plush redevelopments like the new APA hotel tower (one of at least three new APA hotels in Shinjuku). We want to know if this has affected Kabukicho’s hostess clubs at all? There has been a big crackdown — at least, “big” in terms of publicity — on certain scam clubs in Kabukicho. This is part of a drive to clean up the area, but is this all for show? The hostess clubs and sex clubs are certainly still there (visible from the Godzilla hotel).
