>Modelled on the hostess bars that came before them, host clubs offer women a place to drink expensive champagne and chat and flirt with young men hired for their looks and conversational ability. Sex is not on the menu, but it is not unusual for hosts and their customers to meet privately.
>Hidemori Gen, who runs a drop-in centre in Kabukichō, has seen a dramatic rise in women who have been forced into sex work to pay their host club tabs. He has had 300 consultations in the last five months alone, mostly from parents who are too embarrassed to talk to friends and family, and know the police won’t act because no crime has been committed.
>“We are talking about intelligent women with promising futures who become entrapped,” said Gen, 67, the founder of Nippon Kakekomidera [Japan refuge temple], a nonprofit that has been helping troubled youths in the neighbourhood since 2012. “Host clubs operate like cults. It’s a vicious business model that is no different from human trafficking. Host clubs are not selling champagne – they’re selling women’s bodies.”
What the fuck!?
The number of businesses that should be allowed to offer debt as an option should be kept as minimal as possible. If someone can’t pay cash upfront, then they should be declined. Allowing debt traps like this is a failure for a society, and the repercussions not outlawing them shouldn’t surprise anyone. Simply not allowing these clubs to offer the option of debt would pretty much solve this issue in an instant.
>Host clubs employ tried and tested tactics to lure women through their doors – and keep them coming back. An hour with unlimited alcohol on the first visit can cost as little as ¥2-3,000 (£11-16). The visit is followed by lighthearted, complimentary text messages from the hosts, who encourage the women to visit again. Sexual relationships are common, as are empty promises of marriage from the host.
>“The typical pattern is for the cost of an evening to rise 10 times on each occasion,” said Gen. “By their third visit, women who have been tricked into believing the host is romantically interested in them are charged ¥300,000, and on it goes. The club takes photos of their ID as a way of pressuring them into honouring their debts.”
Oh wow. Relationship dynamics must be radically different in Japan for this to work.
I remember in Persona 5, one of the confidant’s friend almost trapped by said scheme, although in the end they managed to resolve the problem.
But it is truly reeling that they inserted actual social issue that actually happened in Japan, and I never thought it was real!
Kabukicho’s always been a bit rough around the edges but over the past 15 years odd it’s been relatively sanitised, however over the last like 2 years but particularly 2023 the whole ‘Toyoko kids’ thing has brought a weird amount of aggro to Kabukicho. You have a weird mix of down and outs and obviously teenage runaways many of whom are on the game, a few sketchy old and or fat blokes lurking around working up courage to walk over to one of them, and a bunch of private security guards there watching over them. The vibes are extremely ugly for Japan.
Edit: oh and also you have a bunch of shameless Instagram fuckers like drunkinjp out there giving out free booze, stoking the fires, and recording all sorts of it for clout.
Aight, we gonna need Kiryu soon.
It’s just like going to debt for OnlyFans, but banning it only results in people trying to go around the ban because the causes that drove them to that behavior are still there. Those women (and men, as the reverse exists too) need help.
Loneliness is an epidemic impacting not only men 🙁
Isn’t this quite well known?
I believe there’s the equivalent club for men with women as hosts. In Los Angeles at least, there are a few of these private clubs around (men patrons) as I learned from Los Angeles subreddit. While men may not be as susceptible to being a victim of sex trafficking, I’d imagine there’s serious recuppersions for not paying financial debts. Seriously fucked up for anyone entrapped by this.
Wow, this is something out of feudal Japan. Sheesh
Well… this article was very illuminating for me. I remember walking through Osaka being confused as fuck as to what these venues with the faces of these handsome idol-looking guys plastered all over them were actually for.
So. Those women are attending host clubs, get in debt in the bar, and then… prostitute themselves in a brothel nearby to pay a debt to a bar, instead of just telling the host club to go fuck itself and go drink for free in another one till they are banded everywhere? What would a bar do? Sue you? Event if there is some paperwork which i doubt, no court would accept it, worst case scenario you’d be ruled to pay a small fraction over a long period of time if a bunch of bars join up the effort and proof you have committed some kind of a fraud.
What the hell is wrong with them Japaneses?
I watched a video on an infamous scammer who developed a scamming system where she ripped men off for like millions of yen but she blew it all on Hosts. It was nuts, she was this super successful con artist but still living in a capsule room because she was spending all her scam money at a host club.
Didn’t everyone already know this? This is common knowledge.
This downplays this, but this shit was practically part of the plot of Yakuza:LAD
The power relations are not so simple because host clubs are “where women buy men”. Some Japanese feminists defend host clubs.
Why can’t women buy men when men can buy women? They argue that banning host clubs is patriarchal.
Nevertheless, the current situation, where people are even borrowing large amounts of money, is escalating too much in my opinion. I think the system of borrowing money is a quandary and should be regulated.
Looks like debt slavery is back again…
This is a well known thing and one of the female characters in the tv show Tokyo Vice falls in the same debt
For anyone who has played Persona 5:
This story is EXACTLY what Makoto’s Confidant/social link deals with.
If you didn’t understand the subtext when you played it, and thought Makoto was just being nosy/annoying to her friend because she didn’t like her friend’s “cool” boyfriend… well, now you know.
The game itself references a lot about Kabukicho night life. (For example, the NPCs who tell Joker about their “all-you-can-drink booze on the cheap” are touters trying to lure people into rippoff bars where the yakuza extort you into paying hundreds of dollars for ice cubes in your drink, and sometimes even drug you and steal your credit card. Knowing that, character reactions to the touters make a lot more sense.)
Do a bit of research on Kabukicho, and play it again. You realize stories like this article are exactly what the game comments about in its subtext.
Fascinating!
This has been an issue for 20 years, but the Japanese police think it is more important to chase people who smoke a joint once in a while than cracking down on this type of stuff.
Why is this in “news” category? What’s new?
My wife worked with a girl who is still knee deep in this. Literally word for word the article is the same scam she’s in. She’s so deluded it’s insane.. she truly thinks he will someday marry her even though they have to meet at a love hotel at odd hours just to do normal relationship things and who the hell knows who comes moments after she leaves. I have no idea how she affords it.
Truly depressing.
This sounds like a stupider version of a tourist scam that was popular in Riga (and I assume elsewhere) some years ago.
A hot chick would approach you in a bar and get you to buy drinks for her, but the menu would have no prices listed. Later it turns out the drinks cost hundreds of euros and big mean looking security dudes hint that you better pay up.
It mostly ended when a law made it mandatory to show the prices and a special “tourism police” was made to deal with tourist scams specifically.
I can’t fathom the type of person who would knowingly get into a debt of thousands for what’s basically a date with someone they KNOW is working for the place.
I never thought I’d ever see an ouroboros made of prostitution, but here we are.
American college system forces women into sex work to pay off huge debts
30 comments
>Modelled on the hostess bars that came before them, host clubs offer women a place to drink expensive champagne and chat and flirt with young men hired for their looks and conversational ability. Sex is not on the menu, but it is not unusual for hosts and their customers to meet privately.
>Hidemori Gen, who runs a drop-in centre in Kabukichō, has seen a dramatic rise in women who have been forced into sex work to pay their host club tabs. He has had 300 consultations in the last five months alone, mostly from parents who are too embarrassed to talk to friends and family, and know the police won’t act because no crime has been committed.
>“We are talking about intelligent women with promising futures who become entrapped,” said Gen, 67, the founder of Nippon Kakekomidera [Japan refuge temple], a nonprofit that has been helping troubled youths in the neighbourhood since 2012. “Host clubs operate like cults. It’s a vicious business model that is no different from human trafficking. Host clubs are not selling champagne – they’re selling women’s bodies.”
What the fuck!?
The number of businesses that should be allowed to offer debt as an option should be kept as minimal as possible. If someone can’t pay cash upfront, then they should be declined. Allowing debt traps like this is a failure for a society, and the repercussions not outlawing them shouldn’t surprise anyone. Simply not allowing these clubs to offer the option of debt would pretty much solve this issue in an instant.
>Host clubs employ tried and tested tactics to lure women through their doors – and keep them coming back. An hour with unlimited alcohol on the first visit can cost as little as ¥2-3,000 (£11-16). The visit is followed by lighthearted, complimentary text messages from the hosts, who encourage the women to visit again. Sexual relationships are common, as are empty promises of marriage from the host.
>“The typical pattern is for the cost of an evening to rise 10 times on each occasion,” said Gen. “By their third visit, women who have been tricked into believing the host is romantically interested in them are charged ¥300,000, and on it goes. The club takes photos of their ID as a way of pressuring them into honouring their debts.”
Oh wow. Relationship dynamics must be radically different in Japan for this to work.
I can’t imagine such a scam working in the U.S.
Send Liam Neeson
thats literally the plot of my [favorite anime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouran_High_School_Host_Club) except theres no actual sex and its mostly a comedy.
I remember in Persona 5, one of the confidant’s friend almost trapped by said scheme, although in the end they managed to resolve the problem.
But it is truly reeling that they inserted actual social issue that actually happened in Japan, and I never thought it was real!
Kabukicho’s always been a bit rough around the edges but over the past 15 years odd it’s been relatively sanitised, however over the last like 2 years but particularly 2023 the whole ‘Toyoko kids’ thing has brought a weird amount of aggro to Kabukicho. You have a weird mix of down and outs and obviously teenage runaways many of whom are on the game, a few sketchy old and or fat blokes lurking around working up courage to walk over to one of them, and a bunch of private security guards there watching over them. The vibes are extremely ugly for Japan.
Edit: oh and also you have a bunch of shameless Instagram fuckers like drunkinjp out there giving out free booze, stoking the fires, and recording all sorts of it for clout.
Aight, we gonna need Kiryu soon.
It’s just like going to debt for OnlyFans, but banning it only results in people trying to go around the ban because the causes that drove them to that behavior are still there. Those women (and men, as the reverse exists too) need help.
Loneliness is an epidemic impacting not only men 🙁
Isn’t this quite well known?
I believe there’s the equivalent club for men with women as hosts. In Los Angeles at least, there are a few of these private clubs around (men patrons) as I learned from Los Angeles subreddit. While men may not be as susceptible to being a victim of sex trafficking, I’d imagine there’s serious recuppersions for not paying financial debts. Seriously fucked up for anyone entrapped by this.
Wow, this is something out of feudal Japan. Sheesh
Well… this article was very illuminating for me. I remember walking through Osaka being confused as fuck as to what these venues with the faces of these handsome idol-looking guys plastered all over them were actually for.
So. Those women are attending host clubs, get in debt in the bar, and then… prostitute themselves in a brothel nearby to pay a debt to a bar, instead of just telling the host club to go fuck itself and go drink for free in another one till they are banded everywhere? What would a bar do? Sue you? Event if there is some paperwork which i doubt, no court would accept it, worst case scenario you’d be ruled to pay a small fraction over a long period of time if a bunch of bars join up the effort and proof you have committed some kind of a fraud.
What the hell is wrong with them Japaneses?
I watched a video on an infamous scammer who developed a scamming system where she ripped men off for like millions of yen but she blew it all on Hosts. It was nuts, she was this super successful con artist but still living in a capsule room because she was spending all her scam money at a host club.
Didn’t everyone already know this? This is common knowledge.
This downplays this, but this shit was practically part of the plot of Yakuza:LAD
The power relations are not so simple because host clubs are “where women buy men”. Some Japanese feminists defend host clubs.
Why can’t women buy men when men can buy women? They argue that banning host clubs is patriarchal.
Nevertheless, the current situation, where people are even borrowing large amounts of money, is escalating too much in my opinion. I think the system of borrowing money is a quandary and should be regulated.
Looks like debt slavery is back again…
This is a well known thing and one of the female characters in the tv show Tokyo Vice falls in the same debt
For anyone who has played Persona 5:
This story is EXACTLY what Makoto’s Confidant/social link deals with.
If you didn’t understand the subtext when you played it, and thought Makoto was just being nosy/annoying to her friend because she didn’t like her friend’s “cool” boyfriend… well, now you know.
The game itself references a lot about Kabukicho night life. (For example, the NPCs who tell Joker about their “all-you-can-drink booze on the cheap” are touters trying to lure people into rippoff bars where the yakuza extort you into paying hundreds of dollars for ice cubes in your drink, and sometimes even drug you and steal your credit card. Knowing that, character reactions to the touters make a lot more sense.)
Do a bit of research on Kabukicho, and play it again. You realize stories like this article are exactly what the game comments about in its subtext.
Fascinating!
This has been an issue for 20 years, but the Japanese police think it is more important to chase people who smoke a joint once in a while than cracking down on this type of stuff.
Why is this in “news” category? What’s new?
My wife worked with a girl who is still knee deep in this. Literally word for word the article is the same scam she’s in. She’s so deluded it’s insane.. she truly thinks he will someday marry her even though they have to meet at a love hotel at odd hours just to do normal relationship things and who the hell knows who comes moments after she leaves. I have no idea how she affords it.
Truly depressing.
This sounds like a stupider version of a tourist scam that was popular in Riga (and I assume elsewhere) some years ago.
A hot chick would approach you in a bar and get you to buy drinks for her, but the menu would have no prices listed. Later it turns out the drinks cost hundreds of euros and big mean looking security dudes hint that you better pay up.
It mostly ended when a law made it mandatory to show the prices and a special “tourism police” was made to deal with tourist scams specifically.
I can’t fathom the type of person who would knowingly get into a debt of thousands for what’s basically a date with someone they KNOW is working for the place.
I never thought I’d ever see an ouroboros made of prostitution, but here we are.
American college system forces women into sex work to pay off huge debts
so slavery?