Passport Vietnam Book

The author is an anthropologist who even worked as a hostess in a club in Tokyo and this is what convinced me to read the book. It was much less fun that I anticipated and would be much better if it was twice as short. It actually seems like a forcefully stretched academic essay, just to make it long enough for a book: the same questions and answers are repeated over and over again, reformulated in a thousand ways and drowning the really good stuff.

The best parts are the anecdotal episodes when Allison describes real situations from the hostess club: how hostesses interact with clients, the customer's stupid jokes about breasts and penises and so on. Some are really funny, others actually insightful.

Allison also has moments when she engages in truly interesting analysis, mostly drawing on the writing of others. For example, she shows how the absence of fathers, the excessive care of mothers, the need to study intensely for university or job exams, makes young Japanese somewhat socially and sexually dysfunctional. Their dedication to work makes it hard for them to engage in complex relationship with women, as they are used to being serviced and taken care of by their moms like babies even in their twenties. Thus, it is easier for them to satisfy their sexual and ego needs by paying hostesses and prostitutes, which service them without the need for mutual personal engagement with each other. The same goes for relationships with their wives: the salarymen (sarariimen) bring home paychecks and the wives take care of the children and the house, as if being contracted to this.

Allison's conclusions are also surprinsingly satisfying: Japanese companies pay for the entertainment of their employees in hostess clubs because this helps erase the line between work and pleasure or play. Professional life mixes with the personal life to the extent that workers remain workers even outside their offices. Practically, if the boss says they will later go to a hostess club, the worker will work several extra hours. This will keep him away from home and estrange him from his family. The worker gets used to the routine and, in time, company-paid entertainment in hostess clubs becomes for him the only and true source of relaxation. This extension of his workday becomes the realm of pleasure, where almost anything is allowed, while home and family become alien, not something he looks to return to. Such a worker will always be willing to work extra hours instead of returning home, as work becomes his true home.

The topic of the book is really interesting and it would be really cool if it was an essay 100 pages shorter. As it is, the reader has to go through a lot of deadwood, so much that you may question whether it is worthy. I'm not sure.