At least this reviewer in Hong Kong seemed to like my book. Even though I can`t add the piece to my list of "shameless self-promotion" links because you need a used name and password for the site...
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In
Japan, where formality and rigid social mores rule everyday life,
everyone has their place, especially when it comes to commercial
affairs of the heart and flesh. There are geisha, hostesses and whores
and they are not to be confused. The
white-faced geisha are career professionals, often starting their
training after secondary school or university. They study poise and
delicacy, practise traditional arts and play instruments such as the three-stringed shamisen.
They don't do sex. Prostitution, at the other end of the scale, also
has its hierarchies, with soap houses, sexual play-acting and image
bars aplenty. Nightclub hostesses fall somewhere between geisha and
whores. Although nowhere near as mysterious and traditional as geisha,
they don't sell sex either. They tease. It
was in this world that American, 20-something East Asian studies
student Lea Jacobson, fluent in Japanese, landed in 2003 to teach
English. With a history of depression, eating disorders and self-harm,
she was unprepared for the straitjacketing imposed by the rigid
culture. Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, shows her coming unstuck almost from the beginning. From
a background of safely confiding in shrinks, she doesn't think twice
about telling a Japanese doctor she is scared of flying and needs
medication to overcome it. Bad mistake. The doctor tells her employer
she was on drugs in the US and is "abnormal" in a society where
normality is more important than sushi, and she is fired. Incensed
at the lack of confidentiality but stubborn and courageous in equal
proportion, Jacobson decides to work as a hostess, landing a job at The
Palace on Tokyo's Ginza strip. Although hostessing doesn't involve sex
in the coitus sense, its aim is to keep men "panting", as Jacobson puts
it, with rituals a few rungs down from those of the geisha. "We had to
attract regular customers by pretending to have relationships with
them, to be in love with them," she writes. The game involves
satisfying whims, from flirting and flattery to hot towels and plenty
of alcohol. Teaming
up with Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Filipinas and at least one
Japanese hostess, Jacobson learns the ropes under the guidance of a
mamasan who rules with military ruthlessness: "It was a most terrifying
scene on nights when Mama Destiny would pace back and forth in front of
the waiting table ... as if she was a drill sergeant or a prison
guard," Jacobson writes of her early hostessing experience. "At times,
when she ordered us to change our dresses, shoes, or headpieces, her
criticisms were immensely lacking in compassion or tact, employing
phrases like, `Those shoes are ugly,' `Your dress is dirty' or `Your
hair looks like a prostitute's." Jacobson
finds herself a hit with the men who visit to "relax" expensively
because there are few Americans working as hostesses. And it is in the
explanation of why there are so few that we receive the best insight
into the east-west cultural divide. Jacobson explains that not only
would most Americans find it "hard to believe that there is no sex or
touching involved in this kind of work", but that "ours is not a
culture of obedience ... most American women are not used to playing
such subservient roles". But,
sex or not, sinking into a world of fantasy and alcohol is not without
its risks and Jacobson, who, we learn quickly, is ever the rebel,
breaks the house rules and goes out of the city on a dohan - an
arranged date - with a man clearly besotted by her, home-made pepper
spray in her handbag just in case. "Looking back, my self-preservation
instincts could have been more intact," she writes, the dangers of
hostessing brought home by the murder of British hostess Lucie
Blackman, who in 2000 had been working in a Tokyo bar. Part
travel book, part memoir, this is an entertaining, well-written book
with a streak of dark humour. Witness Jacobson describing the automated
room-key machines in Tokyo love hotels: "Some say that one day the
machine might display pictures of potential sex partners as well. This
is not science fiction, my readers; mechanical sex is the logical
result when the human condition mates with advanced capitalism."
St Martin's Press, HK$200 ****
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