Suzuki Suzumi: Hostesses in Japan Aren’t Paid to be Harassed

It’s been several weeks since reports surfaced that Kabuki and TV actor Kagawa Teruyuki (99.9%, Hanzawa Naoki) sexually harassed and even assaulted a hostess in a high-end Ginza cabaret club.

Kagawa tried to brush off the incident – but it didn’t work. He’s been losing acting and commercial gigs left and right, thanks in part to a live on-air “apology” that never even mentioned his victim.

As usual, people (mostly men) have come out of the woodwork to defend Kagawa. The most prominent is probably 2-chan founder Hiroyuki, who said that women shouldn’t work in Japan’s mizushoubai (水商売) world if they can’t handle sexual harassment.

Author Suzuki Suzumi (鈴木涼美) isn’t having any of that.

Suzuki is a graduate of Keio University and a former staff writer for the Nikkei. She’s a novelist whose first novelette, Gifted, was a candidate for Japan’s coveted Akutagawa Prize.

Suzuki is also a former hostess and Japanese adult video star. Indeed, her master’s thesis at Keio was on Japan’s AV world. (She later turned it into a book.) And she draws on her experience to talk about why this assumption is not only offensive, but fundamentally contradicts the way the cabaret club world in Japan works.

Note: This article may contain graphic descriptions of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

The unspoken rules of cabaret

Suzuki starts off her piece referencing a 1987 incident in Ikebukuro. I can’t find other references to this online, so I’ll have to go with her account. A sex worker met with a customer who engaged in hardcore BDSM/knife play without her consent. At some point, she wrestled the knife away from him and killed him.

In court, she pleaded self-defense. But the court decided that, since she was a prostitute, she’d put herself in danger due to her choice of profession. Or, as Suzuki summarizes it: “Getting raped is part of the job, right?”

Despite this ruling, says Suzuki, Japan’s sex and nightlife industry didn’t become a hotbed of murder. Quite the contrary. And this, she says, is where people like Hiroyuki deviate from reality.

The remainder of this article is for members of Unseen Japan who contribute at the $1 or above level. Want to read? Subscribe now! (Significant discounts available for yearly subscriptions)