Inside Japan’s host clubs: male geishas or just pretty men?
The tables are turned at the Shangrila in Tokyo’s red-light district, where men do their best to please big-spending female customers – even when it involves bizarre requests
It’s just before midnight when the sounds of the first ‘champagne call’ of the evening ring out in Shangrila. A dozen slim, perfectly coiffed and stylishly attired young men gather around the woman who has ordered champagne and begin a carefully choreographed performance designed to make her feel like the most important person in the world. The call-and-response lyrics of the song tell the young lady that she’s a princess and that the attentions of this pack of Prince Charmings is focused entirely on her, which it is, for these few moments at least. In reality, the champagne call, complete with funky dance moves, serves to show appreciation for the minimum of 40,000 yen (HK$2,720) she has just spent.
Shangrila is a host club in Tokyo’s Kabukicho red light district, where the young men earn a living by entertaining the female customers and encouraging them to spend big. It was the owner of Shangrila who 15 years ago created the champagne call. It’s now standard at host clubs across Japan.
Host clubs are the male counterpart to kaba kura (a Japanese contraction of ‘cabaret club’, where hostesses entertain men) and have grown in both popularity and social acceptance in recent decades. Many see the role of hosts and hostesses as an extension of geisha culture. The performances of hosts may not have the refinement of geisha – ‘gei’ is written with the Chinese character meaning art – but singing and engaging conversational skills are prerequisites, along with the right looks.
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As with geisha, the suggestion of sex is more central to the work of hosts than the act itself, though the line is sometimes crossed outside the clubs. For the most part though, it is the egos of customers that are stroked rather than body parts. The role of the hosts is to entertain, compliment and listen to the female customers; to play the perfect boyfriend, albeit one who needs to be bought expensive drinks.
