Since April, more than a dozen host club operators in Tokyo – each owning ... “I think there’s a problem with Japanese ...

The first host club opened in the 1960s ... becoming "an archetype within Japanese popular culture", said Thomas Baudinette, an anthropologist at Macquarie University. Their popularity is partly ...

Around 40 percent of the 35 suspects said they were selling their bodies to make money to visit host clubs or “con cafes,” where underground male idols work. About 10 percent of the women ...

The government approved a bill Friday to tighten regulations on host clubs, aiming to curb abusive practices that force female patrons into prostitution to pay off excessive debts. The bill will ...

A host’s flattering words were enough to enchant a Tokyo woman in her 20s. But it was a “kake” pay-later mechanism at the club that pushed her into heavy debt and eventual work in the sex ...