Japanese Hostess Clubs

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses Anne Allison's book "Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club". The paper notes that the book examines the corporate practice in Japan of entertaining the "salarymen" in the sexualized environment of hostess clubs and that the book's theme contributes to the anthropological and sociological literature on the construction of gender and sexuality, as well as Japanese corporate culture. The paper comments that the story line introduces the readers to a dimension of Japanese white-collar male workers' lives hardly ever considered seriously even by Japanese scholars themselves. The paper recommends this book for courses on Japanese studies, gender and sexuality, anthropology, sociology and for scholars interested in culture and the workplace.

From the Paper:

"Nightwork is an ethnography on the production of masculinity and the corporate Japanese elite. As a participant observer, Allison spent four months in 1981 working as a hostess to learn what goes on in a hostess bar, and why. The setting is a high-class club in Roppongi, Tokyo, where Japanese men go to relax and unwind with their corporate colleagues. In this book, Allison investigates the conflation between work and entertainment among Japanese salarymen. She analyzes how the masculinist behaviors practiced at the hostess clubs strengthen internal and external corporate relations. Specifically, Nightwork explores how Japanese cultural and ideological structures shape and support these behaviors."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Beynon, J. (2002). Masculinities and culture. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
• Dasgupta, R. (2003). Creating Corporate Warriors: The "salaryman" and masculinity in Japan. In K. Louie and M. Low (Eds.), Asian Masculinities: The Meaning and Practice of Manhood in China and Japan 118-136. New York: Routledge.
• Haviland, W. A. (2004). Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.

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