Beauty and the Beast

Send two drunken Brits to a hostess bar?  Why not.

Not what you may have heard or seen in the movies, Hostess Clubs serve a variety of functions for their patrons. Conversation, attentiveness, singing, and a bottle of whisky with your name on it, it’s no wonder the customers keep coming back. Just don’t forget your wallet. Or your credit cards. Or your bank account number.


Friday night, and the streets of Hiroshima’s drinking district are swarming with people out for a good time. College kids, business men, couples of all ages and of course those on their way to work in one of thousands of little bars, clubs and restaurants, greeting one another with wry shouts of “Good morning!”

On one street corner, three drunken salary men push their way through the taxis crawling by. They steady one another with arms around shoulders, wearing their neckties as headbands. A young woman in what looks like a bridesmaid’s dress and platform shoes steps forward and says something to the men, who wave her off and continue. They know where they’re going, and in another few minutes they find it, and tumble laughing into the elevator of a building that is utterly characterless except for the long strip of glowing signs bolted out front, listing its tenants. At least one of the businesses is a hostess club, and that’s where the men, like countless others tonight, are headed.



The first thing you need to know about hostess clubs is that much of what you’ve already heard, or seen in movies, is just hype. While it’s true that a small percentage of the clubs are tied to the sex trade, for the most part hostess clubs are in the business of dreams. The best hostesses practice the art of coquetry as if they were born to it, stringing customers along for months or years with neither a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,’ but an endless, bewitching ‘maybe.”

There are different levels of hostess clubs, ranging from dowdy little joints in old onsen towns full of rough, middle-aged fishwives to the stratospheric palaces of Tokyo’s Ginza district, where in certain clubs top hostesses have sometimes made a hundred million yen (about a million in US dollars) a month. Despite the differences, though, the basic pattern is more or less the same everywhere.

When a customer enters a club, usually one he frequents as a regular or has an introduction to, he’ll be welcomed warmly and ushered to a seat as far from other customers as space allows. In most clubs, Japanese real estate being what it is, that won’t be very far. A hostess will join him or, if his pockets are deep enough, he can have two or more to keep him company. He’s already running a tab, because at most clubs there’s a substantial charge just to come in and sit down. If he’s a regular, he probably has a ‘keep bottle,’ perhaps whisky or cognac, which he’s purchased at a ridiculously inflated price for his own consumption. A common feature of the clubs is a glass-fronted cabinet lined with such bottles, each tagged with its owner’s name. He may also buy the hostess’s drinks, or be charged every time one girl gets up and another sits down, a practice especially popular in clubs with ties to the mafia. Walking into a hostess club can get very expensive, very fast, and many customers are either rich (it’s not unusual for these men to spend half a million yen a night at the better Ginza clubs) or out on a company expense account.

With the customer settled, drink in hand, it’s time for the hostess to do her magic. No matter how tired or drunk the customer may be, no matter how dull or shy, it’s her job to be fascinated with him. She may initiate light conversation, or just listen in rapt attention as he speaks, laughing at flat jokes, lighting his cigarettes and keeping his glass filled. If asked, she may sing karaoke, sometimes dancing as well, or join the customer in a duet. Not every customer walks into a hostess bar looking for bawdy conversation, but then again many do, and it’s here that the hostess is called on to do her best work. Most hostess club managers (the ubiquitous mama-san, often a former hostess herself) frown on romantic involvements between their customers and employees. Such entanglements invariably bring the kinds of problems no mama-san can afford. On the other hand, without certain possibilities shimmering in the air, the clubs would lose much of their allure. A hostess’s job is to lead her customer along a tightrope, rejection on one side and seduction on the other, without allowing a fall in either direction. Depending on the personality of the hostess, she may encourage a bit of lewd talk while keeping things strictly playful, or she may feign shock, giggling and blushing as she turns aside wandering hands with a motherly slap.

It’s important, however, to give customers a certain level of access, and this is where the tradition of dohan arises. Dohan is a system which allows regular customers to meet hostesses outside of working hours, usually for dinner. Men may also festoon their favorite hostesses with gifts, and take them shopping during outings together. All this is engineered to strengthen the ties between regulars and their favorite clubs, and a hostess who consistently fails to bring in dohan dates may lose her job, or at least have her pay docked. And of course, in some cases real romances do develop. It may be the promise of this last, unlikely possibility that keeps some men coming back over and over.

Or it may not. Many customers simply want someone to listen to them, or behave as though they matter, and for such men the salacious side of the business is probably less important than the care that’s taken care in making them feel welcome and important at their favorite club.


>>Access
●Shintenchi
Streetcar
Hiroshima station===(Steet car No. 1, 2, or 6, 10min.)===Hacchobori====(on foot, 10 min.)====Shintenchi

Bus
Hiroshima station===(Bus No. 6 or 10, 10min.)===Hacchobori====(on foot, 10 min.)====Shintenchi

>>Map
Hiroshima downtown map>>Click here to view