The Dark Underside of the Host Bar Industry

What is a Host?

Host clubs are bars where young male hosts serve women drinks and charm them with conversation. Typically, one evening can cost a group hundreds of thousands of yen, sometimes even millions. This style of business, where patrons are entertained in an air of frivolity, are deemed a risk to public morals, and are therefore controlled under the Act on Control and Improvement of Amusement Business, requiring clubs to gain approval from the prefectural public safety commission to operate.

Host clubs have complicated pricing systems, but generally, earnings are bolstered through sales of overpriced bottles of champagne. Of course, restaurants also inflate the price of drinks, but host clubs set prices several times the market value. In addition, clubs promote drinking rituals such as a “champagne call,” when all the hosts down bottles together in one go, and a “champagne tower,” where champagne glasses are stacked as a tower and the drink poured into them from above. These antics can see patrons rack up a massive check in no time.

Hosts’ income, aside from a meager basic wage, is largely based on the spend of customers they are entertaining. In effect, their job boils down to encouraging their patrons to order as much champagne as possible.

Making It Easy to Spend Big

It is no easy feat to make a customer order an exorbitantly priced bottle of bubbly. But from my observations, I identified two main factors that enable it—fun and relationships.

From the outset, clubs strive to create a fun atmosphere, through plush furnishings, pleasing music, fancy alcohol, and handsome hosts. Multiple hosts attend to customers, and the conversation is always agreeable. Hosts do not just listen attentively, show empathy and flatter—they also tease, and sometimes act angry or sad, building up a congeniality that appears genuine.

Relationships between hosts and guests become convoluted, complicated by the hierarchy within the host club, clashes between assistants, and rivalry with other customers. The clubs allow customers to nominate their favorite host to serve them—another fee on the menu. But if that host is popular, he may have less time to spend with each customer.

While the nominated host is away from a table assigned to him, assistant hosts make sure patrons are not neglected. Drinks ordered through the assistant are added to the nominated host’s sales, so it is important that he build good relations with his colleagues.

Women Embroiled in Host Feuds

One characteristic of host clubs is the monthly ranking of hosts according to total sales, which stirs rivalry between them. Because the higher ranked hosts gain financial rewards for their efforts, it motivates them to hone their skills of persuasion, with customers becoming caught up in the process.

Sometimes, hosts even message their regular customers in an effort to boost their ranking. “If I can sell two more bottles of champagne, I’ll be in the top three this month. Tomorrow’s our end of month, so I’d appreciate anything you can do to help me.”

Such pressure may result in customers placing high priced orders in “support” of their favorite host. If guests order a bottle of champagne, the club announces their names and the brand over the loudspeaker. Then their host visits the table to thank them, and the champagne is promptly imbibed. Everyone knows who spent how much on which host, and presumedly hosts change their treatment of customers according to the value of their spend.

Chronic Shortage of Hosts

The good looks of the hosts are important to customers, but this does not necessarily mean that the industry has a tall barrier to entry in terms of the appearance of prospective hosts. The job is labor intensive, and suffers a chronic manpower shortage. When a nominated host is busy serving other customers, assistant hosts look after guests for him; the more hosts there are, the easier it is to fill the gaps until the customer’s favorite returns to the table. Because the basic wage is low, a club is not disadvantaged much by keeping more hosts on the roster.

Meanwhile, in recent years, it has become common for clubs to sponsor cosmetic surgery for their hosts, which they tout as an official “project” of the organization. This is buoyed by the fact that customers and hosts now have less prejudice toward surgery. But other hosts take pains to research clothing and hairstyles, spending time, money and effort on their eyebrows, facial hair, and other aspects of beauty care, which in itself is enough to differentiate them from the average guy. When cosmetic surgery also becomes an option, physical appearance is no obstacle to employment. Host clubs “never turn anyone away.” Their basic stance is that the host’s employment depends on his motivation. These days, if you search online, there are endless recruitment ads for hosts, but as far as I am aware, men are more often moved to apply after hearing stories from friends and acquaintances.

Indebtedness and the Consequences

Because hosts are forever mired in fierce competition, they will do almost anything to get an advantage—not only at the club, but also outside of work hours, messaging or dating customers, dining with them before work, or drinking with them after hours. The time, money, and effort spent in these endeavors is at the hosts’ discretion, and so long as their sales numbers remain healthy, many clubs are willing to overlook lateness or absence from the job when they are engaged in these activities. Each host therefore needs to attract the interest of more customers and encourage them to “invest” in him.

One technique employed is to allow customers to drink at the club on credit. Customers may order champagne in the form of a loan from the host, which is added to his sales and thus contributes to his ranking. At times, hosts actively urge, almost even coerce, customers to order champagne on credit. But customers who incur more debt than they can repay often go missing. In these cases, the host is required to make up the difference. Yet despite the risk of customers absconding, hosts still use the credit system to boost their ranking.

Reforming the Host Club Industry

Once hosts get a customer on the hook for a serious bill, it is not unheard of for them to manipulate the affection of these women and compel them to take on shady work, such as in brothels, to repay their debt. Recent years have seen growing awareness of the issue of malevolent host clubs, which has reined in their behavior to a degree. But nothing has changed in terms of the loneliness suffered by customers caused by a dearth of communication, nor the morals of hosts who take advantage of their affection or yearning for emotional attachment. Even if accounts are outlawed, customers may find other ways to fund their spending, such as consumer credit—whether high-interest loans on the legal side of the line or illicit loan-sharking. Tougher regulation of host clubs may help to curb such tendencies, but complete eradication would be difficult.

Even with law reform, host clubs are likely to simply be rebranded. Similar phenomena will occur unless there is a deeper change in people’s values and the issues they face in modern society. The problem is not with women working at brothels to fund visits to host clubs, but rather when they are being forced into prostitution against their will. Fixing this problem requires more than simply legal reform. We must build a sounder, healthier society.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: The gate to the Kabukichō district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, home to numerous host clubs. © Pixta.)