What I'm Reading About Japan

There's an exaggerated piece on otaku culture in the NY Times Magazine this week:

Nisan didn’t mean to fall in love with Nemutan. Their first encounter — at a comic-book convention that Nisan’s gaming friends dragged him to in Tokyo — was serendipitous. Nisan was wandering aimlessly around the crowded exhibition hall when he suddenly found himself staring into Nemutan’s bright blue eyes. In the beginning, they were just friends. Then, when Nisan got his driver’s license a few months later, he invited Nemutan for a ride around town in his beat-up Toyota. They went to a beach, not far from the home he shares with his parents in a suburb of Tokyo. It was the first of many road trips they would take together. As they got to know each other, they traveled hundreds of miles west — to Kyoto, Osaka and Nara, sleeping in his car or crashing on friends’ couches to save money. They took touristy pictures under cherry trees, frolicked like children on merry-go-rounds and slurped noodles on street corners. Now, after three years together, they are virtually inseparable. “I’ve experienced so many amazing things because of her,” Nisan told me, rubbing Nemutan’s leg warmly. “She has really changed my life.”

It gets the take down at Mutant Frog:

Seeing as it comes from America’s most prestigious and influential news outlet, the article has already been widely read (see here for a Japanese translation of a Korean-language summary), and reactions have ranged from uncritical acceptance of the reporting (wtf is wrong with Japan?!) to absolute incredulity (she just ripped off an Internet meme and borrowed from WaiWai so this “phenomenon” is completely overblown and is an example of the NYT exploiting Japan for cheap thrills).

Then there's a separate article in The NY Times claiming that hostessing has become respectable due to the economy-color me suspicious:

The women who pour drinks in Japan’s sleek gentlemen’s clubs were once shunned because their duties were considered immodest: lavishing adoring (albeit nonsexual) attention on men for a hefty fee.

But with that line of work, called hostessing, among the most lucrative jobs available to women and with the country neck-deep in a recession, hostess positions are increasingly coveted, and hostesses themselves are gaining respectability and even acclaim. Japan’s worst recession since World War II is changing mores.

“More women from a diversity of backgrounds are looking for hostess work,” said Kentaro Miura, who helps manage seven clubs in Kabuki-cho, Tokyo’s glittering red-light district. “There is less resistance to becoming a hostess. In fact, it’s seen as a glamorous job.”

But behind this trend is a less-than-glamorous reality. Employment opportunities for young women, especially those with no college education, are often limited to low-paying, dead-end jobs or temp positions.
Even before the economic downturn, almost 70 percent of women ages 20 to 24 worked jobs with few benefits and little job security, according to a government labor survey. The situation has worsened in the recession.

For that reason, a growing number of Japanese women seem to believe that work as a hostess, which can easily pay $100,000 a year, and as much as $300,000 for the biggest stars, makes economic sense.

Even part-time hostesses and those at the low end of the pay scale earn at least $20 an hour, almost twice the rate of most temp positions.

In a 2009 survey of 1,154 high school girls, by the Culture Studies Institute in Tokyo, hostessing ranked No. 12 out of the 40 most popular professions, ahead of public servant (18) and nurse (22).

Then there's this one from Japan Today translated from a Japanese weekly in which women are getting paid to do wifely duties like have sex or make lunch for their husbands:

What’s that you say? Wives charging their husbands for basic services --- like preparing a boxed lunch to take to the office or dispensing a haircut? Or when making love??

Well, think of them as business-to-business transactions, advises Aera (Aug 3).

“If it helps bring order to a chaotic household, something may change in husband-wife relationships as well,” observes a 42-year-old gent identified only as Kimura, who began paying his wife 400 yen to make him an “obento” to carry daily to the office. Considering he receives 50,000 per month for pocket money, taking his own lunch translates into daily savings of about 500 yen.

A 45-year-old chap named Kobayashi pays his better half to trim his hair. “You pay your barber 3,000 yen; I’ll do it for 1,000,” she proposed. Now, of two monthly trips to the barber shop for a total outlay of 6,000 yen, he now pays 2,000 yen and pockets the remaining 4,000.

Comments

[Patrick]

I felt a similar sense of trepidation about that NYTimes hostess article. I didn't read it, but felt like I didn't have to. As you point out, it's basically just yellow journalism (pun intended).