Does Miura give you any idea of a) what the population of hostesses is at the moment, or b) How big this “hostess segment” is? My gut tells me that while the Koakuma Ageha magazine is popular and there’s a certain cultural fascination with the hostess nightlife, the life of a hostess is exceptional.

Just a bit later, series like YuYu Hakusho (with a target audience just a couple years older than Sailor Moon, if anything) would openly romanticize delinquents, even smokers. And today it’s completely mainstream, including in shoujo (Fruits Basket, &c.).

Fantastic essay. Really, everything old is new again: as you mention, impoverished farmers’ daughters from Tohoku have been working (voluntarily or otherwise) as sex workers in Edo/Tokyo for centuries. The only alternative career for most of these women is adult-diaper changer; indeed, once their looks are gone, I’m sure that’s what many-a yankii and hostess finds herself doing.

Your story has been featured on Japundit!

Here is the link: http://www.japundit.com/OnlyinJapan/How_Cabaret_Club_Hostess_became_a_glamorous_and_enviable_occupation_for_young_women_in_Japan...

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/womens-work-and-japans-hostess-culture/

I would like to see a survey of young women who are not hostesses, asking them why they don’t see the industry as a place to be, despite the presence of Koakuma Ageha and the apparent acceptance of kyabajo as a profession for young women.

The “debate” at the NYT is fine for getting the academic’s opinion of this, but what about the Generation Y and Z peers of these girls that choose *not* to go into this trade for reasons they either have or have not thought about — there’s probably an interesting set of data there.

Always easier to come up with titles (especially cheesy ones) for the essays of others. The titles of my own stuff have nearly always been lame.

It’s pretty clear that host clubs exist as a product of hostess clubs. In other words, host clubs boom when the sex industry booms, because their primary customer is women in the industry — not “rich old matrons.” This should be obvious, but I doubt brown skin Gyaru-o are exactly rich matron’s most desirable men.

Also: http://neojaponisme.com/2008/11/27/1980s-sex-business-explosion/

Host clubs boomed in the ’80s when the sex industry exploded. They go hand in hand.

I think you can say the labor pool is similar — inaka lower class yankii — but the audience for host clubs is totally different. Host clubs are not getting a huge influx of cash from corporations using it as a way to entertain clients. They are mostly a way to drain money out of the pockets of mizu shobai workers and act as a way to keep mizu shobai workers from losing their minds. Hosts are their therapists, and hosts are even instructed to make sure their clients never quit the biz. Hosts also recruit non-industry girls into the industry when they start not being able to pay their debts. In other words, the host club is not a product of a wider social need, but an auxiliary organization of the mizu shobai world — almost like a “company store.”

Did anyone else find that NYT debate thing just as depressingly ill-researched as the article that spawned it? First, three people say the exact same thing. Nobody has any numbers. Then, we get this:

Any figures on salaries also need to take into account the working hours, the lack of benefits, and the limited working life of any occupation based on youth and beauty. If we assume that hostesses receive between ¥2,000 (US $20.50) and ¥3,000 (US $31) an hour, then for a 35-hour work week in 48 weeks, it would amount to ¥420,000 (US $4,335) a month at most, or ¥5,040,000 (US $52,080) a year.

As for the clients, how are they able to afford such entertainment in a recession; are their companies paying for this entertainment? And how much profit do the proprietors of the clubs extract from the emotional and aesthetic labor of their workers?

Well, Australian expert lady, thanks very much for asking whether companies are still paying through entertainment budgets or not, but it would be nicer if somebody would get some FIGURES. NeoJ’s analysis beats the NYT all hollow, which is a little depressing- you’d figure the panel of experts assembled by the Newspaper of Record could do a little better than “most of these women didn’t go to college. Most of these women didn’t go to college. Most of these women didn’t go to college, and therefore employment prospects are limited, because they didn’t go to college. Further, who is paying for all this, anyway? Does anybody know? How much of a cut does the club take? Anyone? Please leave a comment.”

Sociocultural explanations are always easier to come up with than socioeconomic ones; I can think of one expert in particular whom the NYT might want to think about bringing on. He once said something interesting about the keitai internet and a prince famed for his multi-tasking ability…

Much of Miura’s analysis relies on the Japanese theme of falling back on traditional cultural roles. But host clubs betray that the other side of the coin– that this line of work is not “traditional” but is in fact the very thing hated by traditionalists, viz., feminization of men. Admittedly, that sort of criticism is also several centuries old, but its relevance throws a wrench into Miura’s thesis.