Finally got around to watching “The Great Happiness Space” today, and I highly recommend that you check it out if you’re interested in learning about host clubs. The documentary is about one of the more successful host clubs in Osaka. There are interviews with the owner, the hosts, and the clientele.
Spoiler alert if you don’t know anything about host clubs: the majority of clients in a host club are women who work in the sex industry themselves, be they hostesses, strippers, prostitutes, or anything in between. These women go to host clubs, multiple ones, for a kind of emotional validation, the film suggests. They go because they can talk to the hosts honestly about their jobs, and the hosts won’t judge them for their line of work.
In Japan, the emphasis of host clubs seems to be on the emotional fulfillment of the women rather than the physical. This confuses me greatly, because on the one hand, I can understand these women wanting to speak candidly with a man who can really understand them — but on the other hand, there is that whole line of reasoning that you can’t bullshit a bullshitter. The whole world of host and client is twisted and convoluted to me, which of course makes for a fascinating documentary.
I have a very limited knowledge of host clubs in Korea, but from what I do know, the clientele is very similar. The motivations, however, seem to be different.
While I was in Korea, I lived in an incredibly sleazy area of town where flyers for host and hostess clubs were thrown around in the streets and even taped to the doors of apartments — and that was the least aggressive marketing strategy these places would employ. (Nothing makes you feel classier than when bouncers are advertising massage parlors by knocking on the doors and windows of the cab you’re currently sharing with the guy you’re bringing back to your apartment. Oh yeah.) I saw one of these advertisements on the street for a host club, and I saved it to show Eager and have him translate.
The advertisement had a bunch of hearts all over it, of course, as well as pictures of several attractive men. They seemed to go for the same style as the Japanese hosts (a bunch of pictures and a good interview here) but with less bleach, thank god. The advertisement stated that the host clubs offered handsome men, funny men, stylish men, rich men, and special men. All kinds of men!
Eager teased me about the fact that I’d kept the flyer and how that meant I wanted to go. I told him I didn’t, but I think we all know that was a lie. Once he’d had his fun with that, I asked him more questions about host clubs. He seems to have an interest in male sex workers. Not in a sexual way, just that he seems to be intrigued by the industry. We once had a date in Gangnam near one of the model bars, and he was really excited that we could peek inside from the elevator. We couldn’t see much, but there was a lot of hooping and hollering and general noises of merriment coming from inside, which has only made me want to go all the more. Anyway, he explained to me that most clients in Korean host clubs are female sex workers as well. From the way he described it, however, it seems like their reasons for going are a bit more insidious. What he said was that these women go and ask the hosts to do incredibly degrading things while paying them top dollar. In Korea, according to what Eager told me, the motivations for women to go to host clubs seems to be as a kind of vengeance or a big “fuck you” to men in general.
Now, I could be entirely wrong about this since I’m getting this information from Eager, and god only knows where he got his information from. Unfortunately there isn’t a whole lot out there about these establishments in Korea. Here’s hoping the group of us can go and report back to you with more accurate information, haha.
In the meantime, check out “The Great Happiness Space.” If you have Netflix, you can watch it instantly. If not, I’m sure it’s out there on the Internet. We all know the Internet has a fetish for all things Japanese.
This film is what started the obsession for me. I saw it about three years ago, before any thought of living in Asia had ever occurred to me.
Contrary to how I might carry on, I don’t have any surface interest in host clubs. Meaning, the idea of going and paying for male attention doesn’t really appeal to me. Which isn’t to say that I judge it — I support the sex industry as a completely valid and respectable option (so long as it’s done in a both physically and psychologically healthy manner, which obviously is far from a simple assertion — I know that, but this isn’t really the time or place to get into that). But then, the thing about host clubs is that they aren’t exactly the sex industry. I guess the argument could be made that whorehouses aren’t either, however.
Anyway. I’m interested in the people who are involved in this industry, on both sides. The motivations and the outcomes, and what it says, in a very bald form, about human nature. There’s a moment in this film that brings me nearly to tears every single time I watch it, where one of the hosts has basically a complete meltdown at the end of the night. He’s obviously drunk and exhausted. He looks directly into the camera and gives a monologue:
“They have a lot of money but so few are content with their lives. People come to Osaka to make it. They can’t find the time or the space to be acknowledged. So they come together. They are willing to spend a lot of money in order to find any fulfillment. They want to fall in love, they want to feel needed, and they all come to this space. Everyone is searching for their own space. They want to feel important. They want somebody to love them. Because they want people to understand them, they come to places like this. So the money they pay is all worthwhile. That explains why there are places like this and people like me get paid and the same reason our store became such a top hit.”
Here, he starts to break down and cry.
“People are not so strong, especially alone. People are lonely and sad. But they are wonderful and shining. They have warm hearts. People come to the big city, to host clubs as space to rest their hearts. Even though the value of what we sell is $10, we sell it for $100. That’s definitely expensive. But they still say ‘thank you’ when they walk out the door. I think those people are wonderful. Everyday, I do my best for people who appreciate what I do.”
That was the moment I was hooked on the idea of seeing what these places and the people inside them are like. Because as much as people like to condemn the sex industry as seedy and empty and full of the worst parts of humanity, I think there’s something that’s just more honest that goes on there, that we’re all a part of in some way, whether we want to admit it or not.
