Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club [Paperback]

Anne Allison (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226014878 | ISBN-13: 978-0226014876 | Publication Date: May 28, 1994 | Edition: 1

In Nightwork, Anne Allison opens a window onto Japanese corporate culture and gender identities. Allison performed the ritualized tasks of a hostess in one of Tokyo's many "hostess clubs": pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, and making flattering or titillating conversation with the businessmen who came there on company expense accounts. Her book critically examines how such establishments create bonds among white-collar men and forge a masculine identity that suits the needs of their corporations.

Allison describes in detail a typical company outing to such a club—what the men do, how they interact with the hostesses, the role the hostess is expected to play, and the extent to which all of this involves "play" rather than "work." Unlike previous books on Japanese nightlife, Allison's ethnography of one specific hostess club (here referred to as Bijo) views the general phenomenon from the eyes of a woman, hostess, and feminist anthropologist.

Observing that clubs like Bijo further a kind of masculinity dependent on the gestures and labors of women, Allison seeks to uncover connections between such behavior and other social, economic, sexual, and gendered relations. She argues that Japanese corporate nightlife enables and institutionalizes a particular form of ritualized male dominance: in paying for this entertainment, Japanese corporations not only give their male workers a self-image as phallic man, but also develop relationships to work that are unconditional and unbreakable. This is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in gender roles or in contemporary Japanese society.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Japanese companies pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to hostess clubs that provide certain employees a release from job tensions. Here hostesses perform ritualized tasks--lighting cigarettes, pouring drinks, conversing in a stylized flirtatious manner--and while there is an erotic charge, the sex is implied, not performed. Duke University cultural anthropologist Allison's account of the four months she spent as a hostess at Bijo, a high-class Tokyo hostess club, is the first written description, in English or Japanese, devoted wholly to these after-work hangouts for corporate, white-collar sarariiman ("salaryman," an English/Japanese linguistic concoction). Allison has not written a voyeur's account, but a soundly researched study that provides substantial insights into the meanings of work and play for the Japanese. Whatever else they may do, the hostesses' first duty is to emphasize the client's strengths and his status as a desirable male, which, Allison argues, helps create the ideal sarariiman , one committed first and foremost to his job. Allison interviewed not only the hostesses and other Bijo staffers, but also wives of the men who frequent the club, club neophytes, managers of other hostess clubs, Japanese sociologists, journalists and others. Unlike previous books on Japanese nightlife, Allison's ethnography views Japanese night life from the eyes of a woman and feminist anthropologist. If the writing is occasionally dryly academic, Nightwork nonetheless provides valuable, thought-provoking reading for those interested in Japan, contemporary society or in gender roles.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

A fascinating look at the Japanese hostess club culture, where businessmen go to "feel like a man." The clubs are lavish or glitzy, depending on their quality and cost, but the focus is always the same for the men: to be entertained, cajoled, and flirted with by a young, attractive woman. Sex? Not necessarily. While flirting is open and expected, and intimate touching is not unknown, the purpose of these clubs is to offer an atmosphere where masculinity is "collectively realized and ritualized." Allison argues that this activity reinforces certain ideas of male dominance which so define the Japanese corporate world. Scholarly but never pedantic, the book is further bolstered by the author's own experience as a hostess. A penetrating look at a slice of Japanese business life. Brian McCombie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226014878
• ISBN-13: 978-0226014876
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Massage Parlors of the Ego, September 9, 2006

By 

Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (Paperback)

For many years, Japan's hardworking salarymen (men working in middle and large size companies engaged in various businesses) have repaired to special clubs after hours to drink and be entertained by women of a demi-monde. Geishas worked in this way in their day, but now, the traditional aspects of Japanese culture that were personified in the geisha are outmoded. The salarymen want ( or at least get) a more modern style woman. What goes on in such clubs ? What is the relationship of businesses to the clubs ? How do such clubs fit into the overall picture of Japanese culture ? Anne Allison became a hostess in one club for some months back in the 1980s. She didn't hide the fact that she was an anthropologist, but was accepted as a hostess anyway. The result is this most interesting and well-written book which answers all three questions very ably. Not only is the description of the research engrossing, but the author contests or agrees with the views of Japanese sociologists very capably. It is a very good idea to discuss what Japanese intellectuals think about hostess clubs, though most such people disparaged her research plan and thought that she would learn nothing. People like myself, who have not read such Japanese academics as Aida, Tada, Minami, Nakane, Ishikawa, Wagatsuma, or Yoda, but are interested in their arguments, will find the subsequent discussion most fascinating. Allison also weaves in some arguments from such theoreticians as Barthes and Lacan, but does not engage in the jargon which mars their work.

Hostess clubs, while seeming an innocuous, if titillating part of Japanese culture, turn out to be a nexus where attitudes and expectations about work, play, sex, gender roles, identity and money come together. The ethnographic descriptions of behavior and conversations in the club make fascinating reading. By making `play' an extension of `work', by cutting the salarymen off from family life, the companies, she says, are able to maximize the work they get from their employees. She challenges the naturalness of working late at night by `playing' at a club, though Japanese sociologists claim that it IS natural because Japanese think of themselves as forever part of a group, especially the work group. Paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for short periods of drinking and mostly insubstantial chat with hostesses, Japanese companies believe that their business deals are enhanced and that human relations among bosses and workers are improved. Allison argues that in addition hostess clubs function as a place where men's egos (but nothing else) are massaged by the attentive, flattering behavior of the hostesses. She explores the relationship of Japanese salarymen with mothers and wives and concludes that "whatever men say they need, think they're doing, and justify as necessary `for work' in the demi-monde is effected symbolically and ritualistically through women and the sexuality they represent"; the sexuality they almost never exercise in fact.
This is an ethnography of modern Japan, far removed from Embree's "Suye Mura" or Beardsley, Hall and Ward's "Village Japan"---the ethnographies of yesteryear. If you are teaching a course on Japanese culture or society, if you're a graduate student in Japanese studies, or if you are interested in gender and role formation in any society, this book is a must, so well-organized and clearly-written.

27 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not very good as anthropology, or a description of Japan, June 24, 2003

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DCpostdoc "DCpostdoc" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (Paperback)

I read this book during research for an anthropology paper on women's labor in Japan, and was very un-impressed for the following reasons:

1)The description of the role of hostess clubs is not particularly accurate. Having been dragged to hostess clubs by Japanese (and American) colleagues, I know that Allison's attempt to generalize based on her experiences is deceptive. (I am not defending the hostess club- I did not think much of the establishments I attended.)

2) Allison remarkably seems to pretend in her writing that the fact that she was a western anthropology student in a previously all-Japanese club (before Westerners became common in hostess bars) did not affect the club, or the validity of her observations.

3) Much of the theorizing in the book is downright demeaning to the Japanese, suggesting that they engage only in play to simulate work, or that many marriages are simply a wife replacing the mother.

I don't think this book has aged well, and I think there are much better starting points for learning about Japan, Japanese sexuality, or the sex industry in Japan.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful look into the lived experiences of Japanese businessmen, July 13, 2007

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N. Gastelum-Daley "AnthroUCSD" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (Paperback)

The book does a great job showing the ways that Japanese businessmen spend their time. The greatest aspect of this book is it's intimacy. Allison unpacks what is truly taking place in these hostess clubs-corporate masculinity, fascinating relationships, and complex gender roles. The book is a "must read" and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading rich ethnographic work.