JAPAN: Hostess’ Death Sheds Light on Entertainment Industry

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Feb 16 2001 (IPS) - Emmanuelle, a 32-year-old Filipino woman married to a Japanese and working as a bar hostess here, says she is envious of the enormous attention here given to the gruesome murder of a British fellow worker last week.

“I was really astonished,” says the woman, who has been a hostess for the past eight years. “If I was the one murdered, I am sure nobody in Japan, except my husband, would have even thought twice about it.”

Emmanuelle was referring to how the search for Lucie Blackman and the discovery of her dismembered body — her head was found encased in a concrete block — has been reported widely in local and international news in the past week.

The outrage of Blackman’s parents and the British government over Lucie’s murder prompted an apology from Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono, who offered his condolences to Britain on behalf of the Japanese public on Feb. 11.

Blackman had worked as a hostess in Roppongi, an upscale entertainment district in Tokyo. A rich Japanese businessman who has now been arrested for raping another western hostess is suspected of the murder.

Her death has put the spotlight on the lucrative hostess industry in Japan, one that brings in foreign women from places as varied as Colombia, Russia, Australia and Thailand.

Yayori Matsui, who has long campaigned for greater protection of Asian women working in Japan’s entertainment industry, recalled the funeral of a Filipino hostess who was beaten to death in 1992 by a Japanese gangster.

“I watched the dead woman’s mother weeping as she lovingly caressed the urn containing the ashes of her daughter that morning. Not a single report was filed on that case,” says Matsui.

Activists say that the working conditions of Asian and western hostesses are different.

For instance, compared to their western counterparts, hostesses from Asian countries are badly paid, overworked, and lack other means of social support, they say.

Keiko Otsu, director of HELP Asian Women’s Shelter, Japan’s officially recognised home for abused women, reports that the centre helps more than 100 women, mostly from Asia and more recently from Colombia, a year.

Otsu says Thai women comprise the overwhelming majority of these cases. All of the women the centre has helped have escaped grueling working conditions, low pay, and abuse at the hands of Japanese of Asian bar owners.

“When they arrive in Tokyo, they are told they must pay back a debt that is around 5 million yen (about 48,000 dollars). Their passports are taken and they are forced into prostitution. They cannot escape because they are treated like prisoners,” she explains.

Otsu says many women are forced to resort to providing sex to be able to reduce their debt. “Some of them manage to return everything they owe in a year by taking as many clients as they can. Then they manage to save to send back to their parents,” she explains.

Local media reports that western hostesses, especially women with blond hair, earn on average 5,000 dollars per month.

Emmanuelle says that in comparison, she makes about 250,000 yen (2,400 dollars) for working the 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift. “I know many of my colleagues are paid more for sex with clients. But I guess I am protected because I am married to a Japanese,” she says.

The hostess industry, according to Emmanuelle, does not necessarily mean sleeping with Japanese men.

The work involves plying men with drinks, singing karaoke, and keeping up the small talk with them. “The boss says the main thing is to make men feel they are important,” she explains seriously. “It is sometimes boring but not dangerous.”

Emmanuelle says she sends half her salary to her family back in the Philippines. The rest she spends on clothes or for household expenses.

Her husband, a truck driver, was the one who encouraged her to work in the bar because he is hardly at home, she says.

Otsu says many may think that Japan’s decade-old recession would dampen the entertainment industry — but in fact, it has hardly made a dent on it. “Women from poor Asian countries keep coming because there is a demand,” she stresses.

Indeed, counselors here are saying the Japanese government should provide more protection for women in the entertainment industry by giving proper visas for hostesses.

Majority in the entertainment industry work illegally after entering Japan on tourist visas or forged passports.

Filipinos, thousands of whom work in the entertainment industry here, can get entertainment visas before coming to Japan, but that is not the case with their Thai counterparts.

“As a result Thai women are more vulnerable to abuse from their employers because of their illegal status,” Otsu says.

In addition, explains Otsu, Asian women tend to tolerate bad working conditions much longer than western women because they are supporting their families back home.

Blackman, the slain British hostess, left her flight-attendant job with British Airways to work in Japan so that she could finance her travel plans across Asia faster, local reports say.

Matsui says she sees the entertainment industry remaining a well-entrenched part of the traditionally male-dominated Japanese society. Likewise, she says Japanese men’s attitude toward women forms the basis of abuse of hostesses in the country.

“Pornography floods the ordinary media, such as tabloids and weekly magazines. Posters of half-naked women are common even in public transport,” she explains.

Concludes Matsui: “It is acceptable in Japanese society to use women as sexual objects, an attitude that has not been challenged here.”