Friday, Aug 29, 2008
The art of making men come back for more is a delicate one that mama-sans nurture in young hostesses. Third in a series.
Jun 20, 2001 | After my bad experiences in the sleazy hostess clubs of Roppongi and Shinjuku, I was ready to give up. English teaching was starting to look alarmingly good, but my South American boyfriend disagreed. "You should try it one more time. You were born to do it -- at least for a little while," he said, stating what I knew, deep down, to be true. It wasn't a compliment but a fact: I was born to hawk fictional devotion, transforming my insecurities into fatal charms. (For his part, he had spent enough years in Japan to know that bizarre employment like this was part of the territory, and to appreciate that the "true" love of a hostess shouldn't waste his time being jealous of her customers.)
So I answered an ad in Tokyo Classifieds, an English-language weekly, that took me to the Akasaka district. Apparently I was extremely lucky: Verdor, an exclusive members-only hostess club famous for being staffed strictly by foreign girls, hardly ever advertised. For recruits it relied on the pickings of talent scouts and the attractive friends of employees. Midori, the club's owner and "mama-san," took one look at me and immediately began explaining the club's complicated system of salary and bonuses.
"Excuse me, but does that mean I have the job?" I asked, somewhat confused at how easy it had been. "Oh, sure," Midori smiled. For a while I thought it was my Japanese skills and my offbeat style of dress -- akin to Midori's own -- that won me the job.
Soon, however, I realized that Midori, a clever businesswoman, often took a chance on girls who seemed reasonably attractive and intelligent, even if they didn't have their own customers. (In the hostessing business, having your own customers is like having a Harvard MBA.) If the new girls didn't work out -- that is, if they didn't bewitch enough men during the first week or two -- she was just as ruthless about firing them.
Verdor has been around for 20 years and continues to flourish as countless other hostess clubs close their doors, victims of the struggling Japanese economy and the slashing of corporate expense accounts. One reason for Verdor's success is its mama-san, Midori. Traditionally, all hostess bars had a mama-san -- often, but not always, the club's owner, a woman who was part nurturer, part impresario -- to keep things running smoothly between the women and the customers. Women come and go, customers too, but the mama-san, often a former hostess herself, understands the business and the hearts of men as few people do.
At Verdor, Midori was the much beloved star. Customers from 15 years back came to marvel at her Cirque du Soleil-style outfits and her husky voice before turning to the hostesses. Her voice was so low and her style so wild that a common rumor among her less loyal customers was that she'd undergone a sex change.
Despite this, there was something about Midori that was as comfortable as the rest of her was unconventional. Mama-sans have to have a nurturing personality. Although they are expected to be stylish and classy, they are almost as desexualized as wives in Japanese society. Men come to the mama-san for coziness and a touch of panache, and to her hostesses for titillation.
With me, as with the other girls, Midori was kind but somewhat distant; she left me alone to do my job as long as I was making her money. And I was. But it's tricky: Of course the mama-san wants her hostesses to be successful, since her own income depends on it, but she doesn't want them to be too successful.
The relationship between my friend Anna and her mama-san, Toni (at another high-class club), is a good case in point. Toni was an exotic-looking former hostess from Spain who had recently been named the mama-san -- but not the owner -- at Anna's club. This tenuous position of power made Toni nervous, even though she had been incredibly successful during her 10-year career as a hostess. Because of her anxieties about success as a mama-san, and as an aging woman in the business, she latched onto Anna, who was kind and loyal -- a rarity among hostesses. "You're the only person I can trust," Toni repeatedly told her.
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