Keep in mind that part of Japanese tradition is the Geisha, which began @1751. True, prostitution in Japan is against the law these days, and Geisha are not prostitutes, but pleasuring men was part of their skill set for a long time. This was an accepted part of Japanese culture. Even without sex, how many American women would be comfortable knowing their men were spending hours with beautiful, educated, and refined women? Not too many I bet!
…I take it you are unfamiliar with the European equivalents? Typically called ‘courtesans’? Though, to be fair, institutionalized prostitution of this sort was older in the European tradition and largely went away (though not entirely) with the move towards democracies.
This thread is just odd. Not outright racist but certainly a lot of ‘othering’ and more than a tinge of misogyny.
What’s odd to me is the strong “Madonna/Whore” syndrome that pervades America’s view on human sexuality. We want our mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, and daughters to be virginal and pure, but yet sex is splashed everywhere and young men’s fantasies focus on quite the opposite. The ghosts of the Puritans are still among us. Women are the objects of men’s desires and then the focus of their derision if they satisfy those desires.
I suppose? But it’s not like the attitude was all that lax even in feudal Europe.
It was accepted some men would seek companionship from other women, especially in cases where they had to engage in marriage for political reasons.
But that’s quite different from accepting that women were just ok with their husbands openly visiting prostitutes on a regular basis. That’s going to be true for Japan as well, no matter what people take away from this sort of ‘man on the street’ video.
Speaking of “projecting a lot here with not a lot behind it” this explanation is nonsense.
I’ve seen plenty of “on the street” interviews where people disagree with the interviewer.
This isn’t really true on several levels.
Geisha were and are entertainers for the elite, and “pleasuring men” was not as sex workers but rather through singing, dancing, drinking and conversation. Certainly, a lot of geisha have relationships with their customers, but that wasn’t their primary focus. There were prostitutes then and there are prostitutes now.
Geisha have always been for the very wealthy or elite, but for everyone else, there are hostesses, which fees range from quite expensive to sometime more affordable for the average man.
The more educated, beautiful, and refined the hostess, the more expensive the establishment. High end places in Ginza can cost hundreds of dollars per customer for an evening which includes no sex or intimate touching. During the bubble, it could go over $1,000 per person.
Inexpensive establishments would be much less, and often seems to be bored college women whose primary marketability is the ability to not roll their eyes at the inane conversations of drunk “salary men.”
Hostesses drink and have conversations with the customers but not sex so much. Some hostesses do go on dates with customers, but it’s an insanely expensive way of having a relationship.
Japanese women also aren’t particularly excited about their men spending a lot of time at hostess clubs. I have to say that in the decades of living her, I have yet to have a Japanese woman brag that her man was spending time (and consequently a lot of money) with “beautiful, educated, and refined women.”
Now, THAT definitely does not surprise me. LOL
How would this be any different from a high-end escort service in the US?
I think it is whether sex is part of what you are buying.
Wiktionary shows that it has a second definition as “sexual services” in Japanese, though not other languages where those symbols form a similar word. 風俗 - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
My understanding of high end escort services in the US is that they are essentially prostitution, with dating as well. Perhaps there are escorts who don’t provide sex, but my understanding is that is part of the arrangement.
Japanese hostess clubs:
Hostess clubs are very common and many salary men go to them. Often they can be expensed to the company but there are some men who pay themselves.
A certain percentage of the customers will date hostesses, although those dates usually end up back at the hostess club after dinner. Some hostesses will have longer term / deeper relationships with customers and these would be more similar to high end escort services (from what I read as I don’t have the money or time management skills for personal research).
Given that alcohol and late nights are involved, it wouldn’t surprise me if hookups after work aren’t unheard of. However, it’s not part of the normal part of the service and doesn’t involve most of the customers or hostesses.
So, basically, hostess bars are different than the sex establishments.
Also note that there are host clubs with male hosts and female customers. Also note I have no experience with those, because I was never young and handsome enough to work there.
The sexual services is the only definition which is used now. I haven’t seen it used for customs. Perhaps that’s an older usage, but the second usage has replaced it now.
Which raises the interesting side question of whether folks ethnically non-Japanese are of especial interest to Japanese ladies, or are for lack of a more delicate term, are beneath their interest.
Good looking transcends ethnicity, or at least not-good-looking sure does. But once some body (heh) is above the pretty-enough threshold how do the young (or middle-aged?) ladies handicap the ethnic horse race?
I had started a longer answer, but it looks like I may have Covid so I’m going to answer this quickly and then perhaps give the background later.
In general, Japanese have a sliding scale of acceptance of non-Japanese, with Whites on the top, then other East Asians, Southeast Asians, brown skinned and then often Blacks on the bottom.
After I got married to my (now ex-) Japanese wife, her mother told me that she had no problem with her daughter getting married to a foreigner, but noted that she wouldn’t have allowed her to marry a Black.
White gaijin used to be seen as exotic, kind of like how many American women like British accents or many American men like Swedish women.
Now that I’m offically old (I just got a senior discount for an airline ticket) and I’m not paying attention to pop culture, I’m not going to guess what them young’uns are doing.
When I was first in Japan, we were rare, and meeting a gaijin who spoke Japanese was really something most Japanese never experienced.
There are many hostess clubs with Fhilipina hostesses, often quite fluent, but I’m not aware of any host clubs with foreign hosts. It’s not something that I’ve looked for, so there could be some, just I don’t know.
Hosts and hostess need to have more than good looks, you need to have an ability to make the other person feel great about themselves. This is especially true about hosts as there are many hostess clubs where they simply hire attractive younger women (college age) and a lot of guys like that.
More expensive hostess clubs and host clubs in general need to have people more skilled at flirting and making the customer feel special.
In one of my first experiences, I remember the hostess laughing at sometime mildly amusing that I said, and how genuine the laugh sounded. I don’t remember who said it, but there’s the saying “sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
Thank you. Good luck with the maybe-COVID.
Unfortunately, it’s Covid but the worst of the symptoms have gone. My whole family got it but we mostly just had fevers and coughs.
A little more background of how Japanese view race. Note that as always, this is just generalities and not indicative of how all Japanese feel.
Frequently Japanese categorize people by skin color, culture and race. There is a strong hierarchy which dates back to when Japan was first opening up to the West.
I found this online and think it’s accurate.
It still seems to be in place, with Japanese often feeling deferential to white Westerners (gaijin), and seeing themselves above other Asians, which is above Southeast Asian, and also above “brown people” and then with Black people the lowest.
For the most part, gaijin aren’t discriminated against in daily life, with the exception of renting apartments, although not really accepted into many aspects of Japanese society, either.
With the event of explosion of popularity of Korean culture, especially K-dramas and K-pop, there seems to be a lot more acceptance of Koreans. This dates back to Winter Sonata in which millions of middle aged Japanese women fell in love with Bae Yong-joon.
Taiwanese have generally been more accepted than Chinese for historic reasons as Taiwan was a model colony of Japan through the end of WWII.
One noticeable difference in how white foreigners are viewed than other Asians is when dealing with bureaucracy. When going through customs, my family gets waved though when I’m there and handling it compared to when my Taiwanese wife is by herself or taking the children.
Wikipedia says there are only about 2% ethnic Taiwanese left on the island of Taiwan! Whatever the exact number, it’s pretty bad.
A (Black) American sailor told me an appalling story to the point that Americans were really not welcome, certainly not viewed with “deference”, in a small town in Wakayama in the 1950s or 1960s. I have no reason to doubt him; then again, sea stories.
Who are they counting as “ethnic Taiwanese”? The indigenous population, the pre-KMT Han, or the KMT migrants?
The indigenous population. Note the percentage line up.
Couple of things to notice on that video:
- The respondents actually express a wide range of opinions. (though yes, probably more “it’s fine” than you’d expect elsewhere).
- Note that in typical Japanese fashion, the behavior isn’t judged on its own absolute merits alone, but embedded in a web of social expectations and obligations. i.e. are you going to wreck the relationship? are you going to embarrass me? are you putting more effort into them than me?
was there a work obligation to visit the hostess bar with your pervy boss?
As others have noted there’s also a bit of a spectrum around paid companionship in Japan, witih one extreme being just sitting and talking to someone, progressing through 2nd and 3rd base and beyond. Given the spectrum of activity, you’d expect a spectrum of attitudes as well.
Note also that it’s the younger women who put tighter boundaries around it. I’d guess that when the competition is in your same league, the threat feels more acute. It’s not just the age difference, it’s something specific.