Pop Culture Tuesdays VIII

Please excuse the Pop Culture hiatus; things got a little crazy leaving for, and arriving in Tokyo.

But I’m back now, and I promise to make up for it, as today’s topic is a topic near and dear to my heart:

The Host!

Although Hosts and Host Clubs are really more of a Sociological phenomenon than a Pop Culture phenomenon, Host Clubs are actually becoming much more mainstream, and some Hosts are actually minor celebrities.

I mean, with hair like this:


Can you be surprised that some become national celebrities?

Anyway, for those of you unfortunate enough to be ignorant of the Host Club scene, let me show you the shiny, big-haired, creepy-head-tilted posed light.

You see, it all began in the land of milk and honey known as Kubuki-cho, Tokyo. It was here, in the 1960’s that bored, rich, undersexed women spoke with their husbands’ money and demanded attention from strangers. These women just needed someone to talk to, to feel like an attractive woman again. Nevermind the fact that these guys who are way out of some middle-aged housewife’s league are getting paid to compliment her.

So the Host is essentially a friend/date/etc for sale. Officially, the Host does not offer sex, and most Hosts do try to avoid having sex with their clients as they claim that by having sex with a client the client will have achieved her ‘goal’, and the Host becomes useless. Whether the Hosts actually have sex with their clients is not really important, what is much more interesting is the fact that the Hosts have basically become objects and the romantic relationship is just another commodity.

For one of my final Sociology projects in college I did a formal presentation and report on the Host Club phenomenon, so this is a rare post where I actually feel like I know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I won’t bore you with specifics, but I basically took the position that Hosts (and their clients) must both understand the ‘rules of the game’ in order for the illusion of romance to be successful and for the commodity to be sold. In this way, both the host and client are ‘selling’ something. Obviously the hosts are selling their time, and the women are trying to sell themselves as being worthy of the hosts’ attention.

I also examined the way in which the Host has become a caricature of masculinity, and has basically adopted certain exaggerated characteristics which have somehow been determined to be masculine.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Host Clubs have turned something as intangible as romance into a very tangible commodity with a very real set of codified rules which govern it. If I had to choose just one ritual surrounding the Host Club to show to beginners and say, “Here, this sums up Host Clubs, this is what it’s about.”, it would be the Host Menu.

The Host Menu is a book with headshots of all of the hosts of a particular club, and when a new client walks in, she chooses her host based solely on his picture in this menu.

And if you take some time to reflect on all of the social rules and assumptions which are thrown out of the window because of that menu, then I think that is a good starting point for understanding the fucked up fun that is the Host Club.

I could write pages on Host Clubs, but I’ll stop here, but if this introduction has piqued your interest, here are some ways to get your Host Club fix:

The Great Happiness Space: A field-research-type documentary of a Host Club in Osaka. Here is the link to the trailer: Here!.

And a link to the movie’s site: Here!.

Finally, a Host Club site: Here!.

It’s in Japanese, but it’s not really a problem, and you can use Google translate anyway. Mainly useful for its eye candy.


Now go! Immerse yourself in the sleaze!