Host clubs, where young male staff "pamper and flatter" female guests, are "booming" in Japan.
Some 21,000 male hosts work at 900 of these lucrative establishments, but opaque prices for drinks and a "slippery debt system" have attracted the attention of the authorities, said Unseen Japan, and one business has already been closed.
Host clubs are the alternative version of hostess clubs, where female staff offer drinks and flirtatious attention to male customers. The first host club opened in the 1960s, mostly serving as a dance hall for "rich matrons and widows". Although they were initially seen as a "fringe, sleazy business", that "stigma has faded".
On 20 May the Tokyo Metropolitan Public Safety Commission closed the doors to LOVE, a host club in Kabukicho. The host was arrested and accused of facilitating the prostitution of his female customer after driving her into a debt of 10 million yen (£58, 980) using the sale-on-credit system.
The system, called "urikakekin", sees a host offer to shoulder customers’ vast fees for drinks and services sold on credit. But the tab "adds up", said Unseen Japan, forcing some customers into prostitution to pay up their debts.
Although the payment system isn't illegal under current law, a "national outcry over abuses" has led politicians to propose additional restrictions on the businesses, with the industry "scrambling to promise it'll self-regulate", according to Unseen Japan.
Meanwhile, Thomas Baudinette, an anthropologist at Macquarie University, said host clubs were another symbol of the fact that, for many Japanese people, "intimacy can only be accessed through commoditised forms". | 
