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Tokyo Hosts: a world of glamor and despair

5 days ago
People who have had a hard life and don’t have anywhere to go often come to Kabukicho. I am one of them. Our job is to sell happiness to girls, having them dream that someday, they can marry the host that they love. But it is like Mickey Mouse. It doesn’t exist. But if you go to Disneyland, people will think Mickey Mouse is real… 

Tokyo host’s candid testimonial.



Another Tokyo host shares that 

80% of the host’s job is lying. If I’m very honest, then I shouldn’t be a host.


Kabukicho red light district in Tokyo with more than 300 host clubs.

All that glitters is not gold

The glitzy, glamorous and insidious aspects of Japan’s host clubs are well documented in national and international press as well in a prolific variety of documentaries and confessions from the hosts themselves available on YouTube. From clubs charging clients ¥6,000 (around $40) for a bottle of Perrier sparkling water, ¥3 million yen ($20,000) for an expensive brand alcohol, to hosts at some of these glitziest host clubs spending ¥60,000 (around $400) on haircuts to maintain their image, it is a world where the chase for ever higher profits lands both the host and the client in a tangled web of deceit, darkness and death, both spiritually and physically.  


Young girls and women that fall in love with these hosts are easily manipulated to work in the sex industry in order to financially support the host.  Some hosts even directly traffic the girls.


As a ZOE volunteer I first encountered this side of Japan’s host club industry through a prayer walk in Tokyo’s red-light in February 2023. The over 300 host clubs and large billboards with the faces of hosts clamoring to be the top earning host of their particular club was overwhelming in an area well known as the host club epicenter of this large red-light district.


Host clubs in Japan

A glimpse into despair

Then one spring day, I stepped into a small, run-down apartment that had recently been vacated by several hosts, and I began to understand the reality of the life of Tokyo hosts, one that is marked by deception and despair. The cramped living space was eye-opening into the private lives of Tokyo hosts. Five hosts had lived here, bunk-beds filling the studio apartment. The spiritual heaviness still lingered in the air. 


There is a complex array of factors that are often overlooked in the life of a host

  • Hosts live in a false world where the nature of their job means that they adopt a false identity to appeal to their female clients. The host’s real self is submerged as they are literally ‘sold’ and taken over by the demands of their host club brand

  • Long working hours (some work 7 days a week), little sleep and heavy drinking, an integral part of the job description, leads many hosts into unhealthy lifestyles

  • The salary of a host is often dependent on how much their clients spend. The bill for the expensive alcohol purchases goes on a tab and if the client cannot pay, the money is deducted from the host’s low base salary. One Tokyo host shares that in the cases where the customer cannot pay, his salary is ‘minus ¥50,000’ (about $500 would get deducted from his monthly salary)

  • The host’s real self is submerged as they are sold and taken over by the demands of the brand 

  • Many hosts do not know how to trust or the real meaning of love which only comes from knowing God, in whose image they are created. Like their clients, they desperately seek true love, but in all the wrong places

  • Hosts who have shared their stories openly, speak of how they cannot show their true feelings, even if on the inside they are emotionally broken


‘Maybe if I wasn’t a host, my girlfriend would still be here’

A Tokyo host in search of love shares on a YouTube documentary that he lost his former girlfriend to suicide. She had spent a lot of money specifically on him at his host club, racking up huge debts that eventually the girl’s mother came to pay off. She had wanted him to quit the host world but he was not ready to. In the end the young lady took her life. 

‘Maybe if I was not a host, she would still be here,’ he reflects wistfully on the documentary about his life. 


The host’s current girlfriend, whose name in kanji is similar to the girlfriend he lost to suicide, doesn’t want to introduce him to her parents because of the shame and prejudice surrounding his job as a host. She too wants him to leave behind the host life. 

‘How much longer can I work as a host?’ he asks his current girlfriend.

‘Two years,’ she replies.

‘Two years? It’s too little. I want to dedicate my life to this,’ he responds. 


The life of Tokyo hosts is characterized by complexity, the lure to ‘get rich quick’ in a world of lies and heartbreak, mingled with the search for significance, love and belonging. A path that promises glitz and gold, but in the end leads to emptiness and destruction, both for the host and client. 


Pray with us that the Lord would raise up men of God with a heart to reach Tokyo’s hosts, who are also ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ in the image of God our Creator (Psalm 139).


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