Fine, I can admit that certain sociological concepts are handy. Emotional labor is part of most service industry occupations and often gendered. Reviews on Yelp rate poorly for grumpy waitresses. We expect “service with a smile.” Even if I am technically just buying a shot of whisky, I’m semi-consciously wanting to buy an improved mood. “Make me feel better” is also part of the transaction. “Make me feel insignificant” is not. When I worked retail, my chatty helpfulness was surprisingly often mistaken for flirtation— my being nice to you is suddenly transformed into my being interested in you.
The documentary The Great Happiness Space lets us look into a gender-reversed version of emotional labor. The fancy-haired hosts at Stylish Club Rakkyo entice the post-work crowd with “Do you want to play for an hour. Are you tired from work?” and then once the women* are upstairs, “heal them with sweet conversation.” “I have to compliment girls all the time, it’s quite stressful.”
On the customers’ part, they are under few illusions but seem bespelled nonetheless, dropping anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a few drinks to $5000 and up for a series of champagne calls where all the hosts swarm around one woman. “Since I have such a great time, I don’t feel like I’m wasting my money… Yes I’m satisfied. Even it’s happiness I bought with money.”
* Many of the host club customers work in the nightlife industry at cabarets or hostess clubs or as prostitutes. “And I regret having sold my body again. But when I get paid, I think I can get anything I want. I can buy anything. But I think really hard about how to spend the money. And I think I really want to smile… So I decide to take the money to Rakkyo.” Another woman who works at a soap land said, “Even though the general public looks down us, we’re their livelihood, so the hosts don’t look down on us. I think that’s why we all go to the clubs.”
