Mama-san's babies
By SARAH DALE
The hostess, I learned, was the modern equivalent
of the geisha, a centuries-old and highly venerated profession that
attracts Japanese girls like a vocation. Geishas are the embodi-
ment
of that enduring Japanese icon: feminine perfection. They exist to serve
men and preserve the traditional arts such as singing, dancing and playing
classical instruments like the shamisen.
Her modern counterpart, the bar hostess, has
exchanged silk kimonos for cocktail dresses, and the shamisen for a
karaoke box. She is considerably less expensive than her predecessor yet
she shares the same values: to be the feminine ideal, to entertain, to
listen, to be serious, to dazzle with her wit and charm. It is not
considered a demeaning job. Certainly no sexual favours are expected —
just mild flirtation, perhaps a glimmering eroticism. Many Japanese girls
claim to be proud to serve men in this way and be recognized for their
"skills". The pursuit of this feminine ideal is revered in Japan
like an art form.
Hostess bars, I learned, abound in their thousands
in Japan. Each bar has a manageress, always called "Mama-san",
who will set the particular, and distinctive character of her
establishment. Western girls, particularly of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed
variety, are considered a special treat and a myriad bars boast them like
a range of exotic fruit. I was enchanted. This would be much more fun than
writs and wills and I set out for Tokyo in search of a dissolute life.
As soon as I arrived I found myself a room in a
cheap hostel known as a "Gaijin House". These are always
full of foreigners working as hostesses or English teachers who usually
have good job hunting tips to offer. "Just walk into bars on spec and
ask for work", they told me. So that same night I staggered out in a
haze of jet lag, to the hostess Mecca: "the Ginza". It was
impossible to decipher what was and was not a bar, so I took pot luck. My
enthusi- astic smile and carefully articulated "hostess" was met
each time with a horrified hiss of "gaijin", arms
arranged into a cross in front of the face and a closed door. Clearly
crossbones meant "no" and "gaijin", I realized,
was Japanese for foreigner. Literally, it means "outside
person". It was the first Japanese word I learned.
Perhaps I kept walking into private parties that
night or perhaps I was just damned ugly. I didn't understand and I didn't
find work. I crawled away from the Ginza and headed back to the
"outside person's" house. By Monday morning I was freshly
resolved. I scoured the ex-pats' newspaper, The Japan Times, and found
several bars advertising for Western girls to work as hostesses. I made
some calls, had an interview and got a job at a bar called San Michel in
Akasaka-Mitsuke. Not quite the Ginza but nevertheless a thriving business
district.
All dolled up in a silk dress I'd had run up
cheaply in Bangkok, I tottered off on high heels to my new life. On
entering the bar I was immediately faced with a full-length portrait of Mama-san
reclining in a cocktail dress that she had thrown on. Mama was a
middle-aged lady, petite, shrew-like and a bit tawdry. She had been born
in Japan but was third-generation Korean and so still considered gaijin.
Starting life herself as a bar hostess she had saved enough money by
whatever means and started her own enterprise. She spoke no English and
used "Boy" as her interpreter. Boy was a girl - or at least that
was the consensus of opinion — and her job was to greet customers, bring
drinks to the table, and fire hostesses.
Mama called me her baby, plucked a hair out
of my chin and barked at me to sit. A posse of women gathered round, all
sporting that ubiquitous silk dress. There was Danielle, a skinny American
with flaming red hair. She had just graduated and was hostessing to repay
college loans. Anna and Femka, two marvellously tall Dutch girls saving
for another season of going gaga in Goa. Sophia, a sexy Swede, with an
unrealized dream to be a model and legs that undulated from beneath her
skirts, and Domarra, an Italian linguist perfecting her Japanese.
Completing the group was a loud fat woman from Manchester, whom I got the
distinct impression I had been chosen to replace. All these gorgeous girls
and then us two.
Our guests arrived. A group of Japanese salarymen,
that is businessmen, on a corporate razzle. Prohibitively expensive for
the individual, hostess bars are mostly frequented by salarymen on the
obligatory evening out with the boss. The company foots the bill and all
the salaryman has to do is drink himself into oblivion and remain there
until his boss says he can leave.
We jumped to attention and in concert squealed: "Irrashaimasse",
meaning welcome. High heels scurrying, we fetched whisky and water,
glasses and ice, bowls of sweets and hot wet flannels . . .
The flannels, "oshibori", were
for the guests to wipe their hands with, a Japanese ritual unfailingly
observed before eating or drinking. Mama pointed to where each of us
should sit and the party began.
Assiduously we catered to their every need; we
topped up drinks and clinked ice cubes in glasses, we lit their
cigarettes, and intermittently, unwrapped a sweet to delicately pop into a
guest's mouth.
The usual questions and small talk commenced. You
know, the subjects that always surface when people don't know each others'
language very well. Then gradually as the whisky unlocked our guests'
tongues and inhibitions took flight the conversation became increasingly
bawdy. Each hostess's innuendo was met with admiring guffaws from the
guests while more serious comment was politely listened to and ignored.
We were perfect young ladies. Never so inelegant
as to cross our legs, lean back in our seats, bite our nails or play with
our hair. Never so rude as to divert our attention for a second, our
admiring gaze for an instant from these latter day Samurai who,
weary from another day fighting for Japan's economic miracle, would look
to us adoring gaijin girlies to ease away their tensions.
Departures from this strictly observed code of etiquette were met with a
public shriek from Mama and a whispered interpretation from Boy.
Domarra felt that hostessing was the perfect
opportunity to practise the Japanese language and exchange cultures. I
found there was a limit to how much you could discuss with a middle-aged
Japanese man who has worked for Mitsubishi all his life, cannot speak a
word of English and is four sheets to the wind. The salarymen I met were
more interested in exchanging saliva. Like little boys they would giggle
and tell me their hobby was "girl-hunting". Tentatively they
would try to touch our legs but the gentlest of reproaches, such as a
clucking no, a surprised giggle and a firm push or a wiggle of the hips
and a motherly slap, was enough to bring an immediate retraction and a
resumption of that blank expression, as if nothing had ever happened.
Femka believed in preventative measures and employed the beguiling tactic
of "lovingly" clinging onto her guest's hands so that she knew
exactly where they were. Mama was approving. This was a "decent"
bar. We were all her babies. The only thing we were to massage was ego.
The art of hostessing we learned was mere
coquetry. Never yes, never no, but a tantalizing maybe. To our guests it
was the stuff of dreams. It kept them coming for months.
For me the evening's climax was certainly before
the guests' arrival. We would sit around swapping travellers' tales and
talking about our lives back home and what we planned to do next. There
was a strong sense of togetherness and we rallied each other along. I
don't think any of us could quite capture the reality of the job we were
doing. Our bizarre placement seemed more and more hysterical.
Our guests frequently asked us to sing karaoke.
These requests were met each time with some moments of feigned modesty, as
was required by Mama-san, and then a rather undignified scramble for the
microphone as we each sought a three-minute retreat from wandering palms
and inane conversation. Microphone firmly in hand I yelled out
"Sonny" and everyone danced. The guests were at their wooden
best and the girls were not much better. No one had their heart in it, no
one had the beat and a domino of glances passed through us. I remember it
like a framed picture.
San Michel closed at a quarter to midnight.
Depending on the caprice of their boss, the salarymen would either stagger
hiccuping to another bar or to their homes for a few hours' sleep before
doing it all again the next day. After bowing to our guests the other
girls and I would leave the bar. Once around the corner we threw off our
heels, and like a fleet of Cinderellas ran in stockinged feet through the
streets of Tokyo for our last trains home.
I suppose what really got to me about hostessing
was that I had put a price on my freedom. Ordinarily, when faced with a
slobbering old man with a red face and a preoccupation with asking
"How big is your boyfriend's dick?" one might shout some abuse,
turn away, and leave. In this situation, however, I had relinquished such
rights; I had sold them to Mama-san. It was mental prostitution.
So I decided to "empower" myself.
Throwing away such girlish things as make-up, high heels and Bic razors I
claimed back my sanity and decided to be myself. Openly flouting the rules
of decorum, I recklessly crossed my legs, deliberately leaned back in my
seat; heedless, I unwrapped those sweets and popped them, horror of
horrors, into my own mouth. Most offensive of all I offered opinions,
disagreed, argued, behaved just like the owner of a pair of Doc Marten
boots should. I played the raconteur and clowned around, but in my own way
and not in the freeze-dried, vacuum-packed fashion they expected.
Curiously they responded with laughter and fascination. Perhaps they were
bemused to see this in a woman.
Something would just not let me quit. I suppose I
was curious to see how long I could last being me: two weeks basically,
and Boy was sent to fire me. She gave me a big hug and my wages up to
date; £50 for each night I turned up and an inexplicable £15 deduction
for the use of toilet paper!
A lot more money than this can be earned! The
sleazier the bar, the more Japanese you speak, the longer you've been
around and, of course, the longer your legs, the higher the rates. You can
double, triple this basic with tips earned for anything from being wined,
dined or complimented to singing a soulful ballad or performing an exotic
belly dance. The job can be as risqué as you want it to be and
consequently you can earn as much money as you like. A woman able to
handle the masquerade and approach the whole affair as some peculiar brand
of performance art can make a killing. I got my fifty quid for just
turning up!
With the hostessing mystique shattered, I found
myself a job as an English teacher, which is an option open to anybody
with a degree and English as their native language. Within weeks I was
wearing a suit again, even carrying a briefcase. I had been sucked back
into respect- ability despite myself.
I later met up with Anna, one of the Dutch girls
and she told me that she had been fired a few days after me. It seemed
Mama thought she smelt. Anna didn't care. She shrugged and told me,
"Nobody care zat I smell in India. Oh well, tonight I go for job as
bunny girl." Mama-sans do hire and fire indiscriminately, but there
is always another hostess job just around the corner. Femka, meanwhile,
was doing famously holding court to a string of admirers. Somehow she was
able to slip on the mask more comfortably than I, the deodorant more
successfully than Anna. Danielle like me took a teaching job and no doubt
Domarra is there to this day, exchanging cultures.
The loud fat one from Manchester left a few days
after I arrived. Hostess with the Mostest, she had been at San Michel the
longest. Six months of hostessing had made her enough money to do an
overland trip to Israel. On her last night she gave a sonorous rendition
of My Way on the karaoke and then gave me all her old clothes in exchange
for a packet of condoms.
About ten months later, when I was living in a
different part of Japan, I was waiting for a train and spotted Sophia
pasted up on a billboard — all legs, she was modelling shoes. She had
realized her dream.
The women I met who hostessed throughout their
stay developed a jaundiced view of the country. I could see how this could
happen; working at night and sleeping in the day meant that it was easy to
miss some of the fragments that make up Japan. As a teacher and through
living with a Japanese family I saw women treated in a different way.
Marriages, which are often arranged, are an economic necessity. The family
is like a small business, producing the next generation of mothers and
salarymen. In the most sinister privatization of all, the chemistry in
human relationships seems to have been disentangled, set apart and sold as
a service. Instead of relaxing at home with their families, Japanese
salarymen go out in droves to relax with strangers. When I was teaching,
my students bowed and called me "sensei" [Editor: revered or
learned one; teacher] in hushed tones. This was refreshing after the
hostess bar, but eventually the rigid formality seemed almost ridiculous
— it had a sterility about it. Accustomed to living in a melting pot of
emotions and responses it was difficult to find my role.
I'm glad I had a short stint at hostessing. It
gave me first-hand experience of an aspect of Japan that is often missed
by travellers. I was surprised to see how deeply rooted and unshakeable
were my principles. My need to be appreciated for everything I am as a
woman, rather than just one feminine façade, was more intense than I had
ever really known. Hostessing helped me to work out what I don't want with
my life.
©Sarah Dale 2004 All rights reserved
This page last updated 2008-06-16
Eyes on Japan compiled and edited by
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