Japan’s Host Clubs Traffic In Emotions – Analysis

By Ruby Fitzsimmons

Host clubs, where women pay young men to create an illusion of romance, have been fixtures in Japan’s adult entertainment industry since the 1960s. Despite havingover 20,000 practitioners, the industry remains highly controversial. A rise in sex workers citing host club debts as their reason for entering the profession has prompted calls for regulation.

In November 2023, Diet member Ayaka Shiomura proposed a bill for government investigations, public awareness campaigns and support services to protect host club patrons from exploitation. Whilesuch regulationis necessary, there are several caveats.

The bill is built on a simplistic perpetrator–victim narrative which dominates discussions of commodified intimacy. This approach fails to credit the agency of customers and does not interrogate the deeper motivations for host club patronage, hindering any meaningful or prolonged industry change. Up to 80 per cent of host club customers work in the sex or sex related industries and many are aware of the fantasy they are purchasing.

Understanding host clubs requires engagement with theories ofaffective labour — work producing intangible benefits such as feelings of satisfaction and excitement. Post-industrial capitalism relies heavily on the commercialisation of intimacy, where emotions are manipulated for purposes from the benign, such as a cashier’s smile as they pack your groceries, to the more insidious, as seen in host clubs. The affective labour on offer in the clubs is highly stylised, with exaggerated and idealised acts of flirtation as customers are referred to ashime-sama,literally ‘princess’.

The allure of such labour stems from its fulfilment of women’s romantic aspirations shaped by globalised notions of romance and intimacy modelled on the idealised West, which contrasts with Japanese societal structures andexpectations towards genderand romance. To sustain their romantic fantasies, customers turn to selling the very intimacy they themselves are purchasing.

While host club entry is not prohibitively expensive, most profits come from marked up drinks as customers compete against each other for their favourite host’s attention. Women have the power to make or break a host’s career through their spending, as his profits are earned from commission based on how many bottles of alcohol his customers purchase. The customer who spends the most commands the most attention, which explains why women routinely submit to their host’s requests to spend more money, even if it is beyond their means.

As one informant noted, ‛customers compete against each other even though they know their designated host is saying the same things to other women. They feel good when their name gets announced during a champagne call … it’s a matter of pride’.

This reveals a complex interplay between female agency and exploitative practices at work. Hosts peddle pseudo-romance to women, manipulating them out of sometimes hundreds of thousands of yen. But they themselves are used by customers who demand intimate performances.

An ‛affective commodity chain’ emerges, where romance and affection are constantly purchased and sold. Once a customer is fully enthralled by the romantic illusion purchasable in the host club, they often turn to working in the sex industry to fund their visits, selling their own emotions to male customers who provide them with money to spend in the host club. This cycle blurs the line of exploiter and exploited, highlighting the power of affective relationships.

Few women are actively coerced into the sex industry by hosts. While emotionally manipulated into spending their money, the decision to enter into sex work to win a host’s affections is often a conscious one — a more complicated situation than the free choice versus victimisation binary suggests.

This does not negate the need for stronger safeguards against host clubs, or excuse the hosts who do exploit their customers. But viewing host clubs as part of a continuous cycle of mutual exploitation within the capitalist system of commodified emotion offers lawmakers a more nuanced understanding which can lead to fruitful policy discussions and outcomes.

Regulation must address the complexities of Japan’s affective economy and look beyond simplistic victim–perpetrator narratives which mask the deeper societal factors driving demand for commodified intimacy. A more holistic approach is needed to create meaningful and lasting change to this controversial industry.

• About the author: Ruby Fitzsimmons is Associate at Strat7 Incite.
• Source: This article was published at East Asia Forum