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 ...

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 ...