Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  Aida was more than willing to talk about the host club business.

  “Host clubs used to be places where women came to dance with attractive young men. Now many women come here because they’re lonely. They can’t meet a nice guy at work. They want someone who will talk to them, listen to them. They want a shoulder to cry on, someone to sympathize with them. They want the human touch. Some will even ask for advice about how to handle their boorish boyfriends. But some just want a guy to dance with—they like ballroom dancing. Women like hosts who can make them laugh, who can say witty things about what’s going on or talk about the latest television shows. The most popular hosts are not necessarily the best-looking guys. A good host is a good listener, entertainer, and counselor and knows when to pour a lady’s drink.”

  Now, the fact that in these clubs men pour drinks for women is noteworthy. In Japanese society, when socially boozing, you never pour your own drinks. Inferiors or younger people are expected to pour drinks for their superiors and elders. The unspoken rule is when women are present, they are always expected to serve the men. So if you are a Japanese woman, having men serve you and look after your needs is a thrill.

  “But part of being a good host is knowing how much your client can afford to spend. You can’t bankrupt the customer. You can’t push her into financial difficulties. That would create a lot of trouble—for everybody. The new host clubs, they use young, cute guys to lure the customers into the clubs. They set the bar low, promising the customer drinks for as cheap as five thousand yen [about $50]. They let anyone into the clubs, even women who are drunk. Easy marks. The women end up owing. That’s when loan sharks come in. The really bad clubs are basically a front for organized crime.

  “Ai has been in business a long time. We keep accurate accounts, we pay our taxes, and we are registered with the police so the yakuza can’t extort anything out of us. The new host clubs, even if they don’t start out as scams, because they are unlicensed, they are vulnerable. They’re easily blackmailed and can quickly be turned into moneymakers for the yakuza. The host clubs run by the yakuza, they’re not host clubs at all; they’re pimp clubs. Their goal is to make customers into hookers or debt slaves.

  “Why are host clubs so popular? Because of the men—handsome, charming men who know what women want. They’re the reason. Some of the women fancy themselves rich playboys—playgirls, I guess. They want to sleep with the host, and they’ll pay to keep that fantasy alive. They’re no different from the men who go to hostess clubs and drop a load of cash; they have a dream that they’re going to have sex with this object of everybody’s desires.

  “But for most women, we offer them the perfect date. They can spend an evening being fussed over by a good-looking guy without any of the hassle of a relationship. The host is available whenever she wants; she’s never stood up. It’s a simulated romance, which some women like. Sort of like virtual love.”

  A very elegant woman in her late forties, wearing a black dress, came over to sit next to Aida while we were talking. She removed a cigarette from her purse quietly, and no sooner had the cigarette grazed her lip than Aida was lighting it for her with a bright red chrome Zippo. He introduced me to her, and she offered me her hand, which I, not knowing what to do, kissed. Aida gave me a broad smile of approval.

  We made small talk while Aida retrieved drinks for us from the bar. I was surprised he didn’t order one of the unoccupied hosts to do it; maybe he was trying to impress upon me the importance of being a good host.

  I will be honest. I envisioned myself walking into the host club and beautiful women gathering around me while I lit their cigarettes and made them feel desirable. I figured they’d be fascinated by my gaijin charm and my mastery of the nuances of the Japanese language. I’d entertain them with stories of my career, and they’d listen, fascinated, begging for my business card and secretly desiring my body. In reality, I was more or less ignored. Obviously, the women coming to a host club are looking for an attractive Japanese man, not a goofy Jewish-American in an expensive suit.

  I did pour drinks for a Filipino hostess, I did listen to a housewife complain about her husband while I kept lighting her cigarettes, which she smoked in rapid succession, and I did have a hostly encounter. But I ended up spending more time chatting with other hosts while on their coffee break.

  Kazu, age twenty-nine, formerly worked for a pharmaceutical company. “In one sense,” he told me, “you’re appealing to their motherly instinct. You treat them like a queen, and if they like you, they make you their favorite, their number one host.

  “I love this job. I’m raking in six hundred thousand yen [about $6,000] a month, and that doesn’t include the presents I get. One woman bought me this gold-plated Rolex on my wrist. I think the wife of a banker, who is totally into me, is going to buy me a car for my birthday. You want to let the customers know your birthday way in advance because it’s like bonus time if you work at a company. I prefer cash, but usually they give you expensive designer gifts. I pawn some stuff, but things like clothes and watches, well, they expect you to wear them.

  “This woman, Mariko, is the president of a firm that makes men’s underwear—funny if you think about it because most of her clients are gay and she’s paying me to pour her drinks. She gave me a Patek Philippe for my birthday. Expensive as hell but a horribly gaudy diamond-studded thing. She doesn’t know anything about watches, only how much they cost. I bought a rip-off in Hong Kong and pawned the original. If she shows up, I slip on the fake watch.

  “But I don’t feel like I’m exploiting her—or any of these women. I’m fulfilling their fantasy. It’s like having an affair with me, even if we’re not sleeping together. They feel happy if I’m happy. If everyone is happy, no one is exploited. There’s no pretense. They understand that I’m their friend only until their money runs out.”

  Hikaru, twenty-five, born in Kobe, had been a host since he was eighteen. At six feet three, he was very tall for a Japanese man. He was quite a specimen: he had the glow of someone who’d just come out of a tanning salon, his nails were manicured, his teeth were perfect and white, and his suit probably cost my monthly salary.

  Maybe he was getting bored with the job, because he wanted to know all about my life as a reporter, even asking if one could be a journalist without a college education. But obviously he wasn’t suffering as a host, where looks were important and he looked good. “Sometimes,” he said, “the thing to do is to find an actor you resemble and then basically do an impression of the guy. You make the customer feel like she is with a celebrity.

  “But most of the time I say that I’m a graduate student in law at Tokyo University and I’m just hosting to pay the tuition. It makes the customer feel like she’s contributing to society, not just to my wallet. Maybe she fantasizes about someday being able to tell her friends about a famous lawyer who used to be a host and she was his favorite customer.

  “You have to compliment women skillfully. You can’t just throw around generic lines. You don’t want to say things that make them feel old. You tell a woman that her skin is flawless. The back of her neck is so erotic. You love the way her face dimples up when she smiles. If she has freckles, you ask her if she’s part Caucasian. Some women like to be thought of as looking international. If you make the compliments unique to them, their eyes light up. I think that all women have their charms; you just have to look for them and recognize them.

  “I prefer women in their thirties. You can have a conversation with them. If you have someone who is very funny and cracks a lot of jokes, it’s good to talk about something serious. And vice versa. It shows you appreciate her hidden, other side.

  “You have to be able to talk to customers about almost anything, even where they should send their kids to school. So I subscribe to four women’s magazines to make sure I know what kinds of concerns they have. They also like to talk about television programs, but since I don’t have time to watch TV I stay current by reading TV guides.

&
nbsp; “In this business, though, looks are the main thing. I know I have to look desirable. I go to the gym four times a week. I do weight training and aerobics, and I swim to keep myself slim and fit. Women don’t like muscle-bound men. They like a tennis player physique. I use skin care products and a warm towel before shaving to make sure my skin looks smooth. Some men look good with a little stubble; I’m not one of them. Women compliment me on my skin and my looks all the time.

  “I make about a million yen [roughly $10,000] a month. That’s a lot, but there are a lot of costs. You have to live in a nice apartment, you always have to dress stylishly, you have to buy gifts for the clients. That’s all out of your pocket, and you can’t be cheap about the gifts either. Sometimes it feels like the more clients you have, the less money you make. Still, I manage to save about four hundred thousand yen [$4,000] a month, which is more than a lot of people earn, so I can’t complain.

  “The bad thing is that my parents hate that I do this, even if I don’t plan on doing it forever. You don’t have a personal life. Every day is like summer vacation, except that you really don’t have the freedom. You spend most of your free time waiting on customers in one way or another; sometimes you go shopping with a customer, sometimes you go to a resort with her.

  “It’s hard to have a girlfriend, too. Girls don’t like to date a guy who works as a host. I think I can understand that. How is she going to know if what I say is for real or an act? Sometimes I don’t know the difference. Even if I’m with a girl I really like, I sometimes find myself trying to play the angles, trying to manipulate her.”

  Our conversation was interrupted as a client of Hikaru’s entered the club. He rose to greet her, a dazzling, genuine smile on his face. Michiko, who was wearing a green dress, had her hair pulled back and secured with a black velvet hair band. She was elegant and composed.

  Hikaru introduced me to her, and after we exchanged the usual greetings and she determined that I appeared to have some command of Japanese, she asked if I had a cigarette. I offered her what I had and then, a little shakily, lit it for her. She inhaled and closed her eyes, leaning back in the sofa. She was quiet for about ten seconds. Hikaru winked at me.

  As Michiko opened her eyes, she exclaimed, “The taste is so sweet. The smell is almost like incense. Where are they from?”

  “Indonesia,” I replied. “They’re Indonesian clove cigarettes.”

  “I like them. Are you Indonesian?”

  “American. I have a face that’s hard to place.”

  “It’s a nice face.”

  “Nowhere near as nice as yours.”

  This shameless compliment caused Michiko to giggle and Hikaru to raise an eyebrow at me and smile.

  As Michiko brought the cigarette to her lips again, I went on. “You have lovely hands. Your fingers are so long and lithe. They look delicate but strong. Do you play the piano?”

  At this, Michiko burst into laughter and slapped Hikaru on the knees. “Your friend is very perceptive. Did you tell him?” she asked.

  Hikaru shook his head and made comical denials.

  The ice broken, Michiko, Hikaru, and I chatted for a while (Hikaru really was good at his job), and then Michiko left for the evening. It was almost four in the morning, and the place was filling up. The new crowd seemed to be mostly hostesses who had just gotten off work; all were dressed to the nines, many were fairly inebriated, a few were loud. I wouldn’t think that this would be where a hostess would want to head after hours, but then again, if you thought about it, it made sense.

  I should have stayed for the after-five crowd, but I had a day job. As I was gathering my things, Hikaru asked if I wouldn’t mind leaving the rest of my cigarettes. “Of course,” I said, then asked, “How’d I do?”

  His response: “You have a charm, but you really are a geek. You want to talk more about yourself than you want to listen to others, but you tell interesting stories, so I’m not sure that’s a minus. You’re also memorable and mildly amusing, and that’s a plus. The clove cigarettes are a nice touch. They smell good and they’re different, and they are one more thing that makes you memorable. I may start smoking them myself.”

  He added that if I ever got tired of journalism I might have a fallback as a host. I laughed and thanked him and looked around to say sayonara to Aida.

  Aida handed me a couple of coupons and urged me to come back anytime with some female colleagues. I myself didn’t return, but my colleagues apparently had a fine time.

  • • •

  Almost ten years later, Kabukicho isn’t quite like it used to be, but it is still a pretty shady place. The promise of encounters, danger, adventure, and erotic fulfillment is readily available if you just know which door on which floor in which building to knock on. Underneath all that, however, is the stink of isolation.

  Tokyo is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, yet—or maybe because of it—there are so many people who have no one to confide in, no one to trust or burden with their secrets, worries, or disappointments.

  There is, admittedly, the underlying game that’s the lure (but where is it not?): is this evening of sympathy and champagne going to lead to sexual intercourse? Be that as it may, what the clubs are really fueled by is alienation, boredom, and loneliness.

  The rates are not unreasonable, but the costs in human terms are incredibly high.

  Whatever Happened to Lucie Blackman?

  I had to make a call to Tim Blackman, in Britain. I’d promised I would.

  He wanted to know what had happened to his daughter Lucie as soon as I did. Mr. Blackman had so alienated the Tokyo Metropolitan Police in his quest to find her that he was the last person they would talk to about anything. They knew that anything they told him would be told to the press, and they didn’t like it. He realized they weren’t going to keep him up to date. He wanted to hear from someone he knew, rather than read about it in the paper. I’d promised that when there was definite news I would call and tell him, day or night, anytime. This was the time.

  Lucie Blackman, his oldest daughter, had gone missing on July 1, 2000. I didn’t know it then, but the case would be a pivotal moment in my career. There was a whole world of sleaze and sexual exploitation beneath the veneer of Japan’s happy-go-lucky, in-your-face sex industry that I didn’t know anything about. The words “human trafficking” weren’t in my vocabulary or even in my realm of awareness. It would be years after this case that I finally made sense of what I would see while looking for Lucie.

  Lucie, a British national, came to Japan on May 4, 2000. She had been working as a stewardess for British Airways part-time, but her best friend, Louise Phillips, had convinced her that there were good times to be had and good money to be made by coming to Japan and working as a hostess. Lucie had piled up some debts in Britain and the stewardess gig was leaving her feeling constantly tired because of her problems dealing with jet lag. A “paid vacation” or “working holiday” sounded good to her.

  Louise’s sister had spent a few years in Japan working as a hostess; she knew the tricks of the trade and the profit potential. Lucie and Louise arrived in Japan together on tourist visas and promptly found lodging in a dodgy gaijin house—an apartment building where the majority of the residents were foreigners, the deposits were low, and the usual honorarium to the landlord, “key money,” wasn’t required. The checks on visas were almost nonexistent.

  Legally, you cannot work in Japan on a tourist visa. In reality, at the time it was generally tolerated by the authorities. Most foreign girls working as hostesses in Japan then were made to understand, after a few weeks, that they were working illegally because that way the management could use it as leverage in salary negotiations and anything else that came up.

  Tall and blond, Lucie was an amazingly attractive woman. She and Louise headed for Roppongi. Roppongi, which literally means “Six Trees,” has long been the gathering place where foreigners in Japan and Japanese who want to mingle with foreigners meet, merg
e, and mate. In the bubbly late eighties, it was a high-dollar area with elaborate discos that charged $30 just to get in the door and had rigid dress codes as well. However, when the bubble crashed, so did the doors keeping out the riffraff, and gradually the area was taken over by cheaper hostess pubs, small nightclubs, sexual massage parlors, prostitution bars, after-hour bars where drugs were readily available, and huge clubs catering to the pond scum of the foreign population with cheap booze and no entrance fees. The classy clubs had moved toward Nishi-Azabu, leaving the old Roppongi to stew in its juices.

  Some nameless Japanese neophyte of English had nicknamed Roppongi “High-Touch Town.” The emblem is engraved into the wall of a concrete overpass that runs over Roppongi Crossing. It is in many ways similar to Kabukicho but seedier and full of gaijin: thus, the “Gaijin Kabukicho.” The Azabu police had long since lost interest in cleaning the area up because if there were any crimes going on there, the victims were mostly foreigners. When Lucie arrived, the area was really just beginning to turn from seedy to sleazy.

  • • •

  By the ninth, Lucie and Louise were both working at Casablanca, a hostess club, just catty-corner to Seventh Heaven, Roppongi’s first foreign female strip bar. There were nine other girls working at the club at the time, all of them blond except Louise. Their pay was 5,000 yen, roughly $50 an hour. The pay was supplemented by drinkbacks1* as well as specific requests for an individual.

  Three weeks later, on July 1, Lucie called Louise from Shibuya, telling her, “I’m meeting a customer from the club, and he’s going to buy me a cell phone. I’m so excited.” In the evening she called Louise again to tell her that she was on the way home, but she never made it,