A Demimonde Scrutinized After a Disappearance

A modern geisha's vanishing exposes a risky way of life.

By Howard W. French

　TOKYO, Sept. 28 -- Although she's still only 22, Veronica Solano thinks that she has got the world pretty much figured out.

　With easy self-assurance each night she deploys a dazzling smile and a form to entice men to spend hundreds of dollars to enjoy her company at the Flamingo Bar, a dark and smoky nightclub where she works. And by all accounts, since arriving in Japan from her native Costa Rica four years ago, she has been a smashing success.

　By now, this four-year veteran of Japan's hostess club scene says she is scarcely troubled by the stereotype that the Japanese businessmen flock to this bar and dozens of others like it in Roppongi, one of Tokyo's largest entertainment districts, because of their abiding fantasy about sex with a Western woman.

　"They ask for sex all the time, but that happens wherever I go outside, too," said Ms. Solano, who said that regular visitors to the Flamingo Bar have plied her with countless gifts, from luxury handbags to expensive jewelry in pursuit of their quest. "It's just a game, and as long as you know how to play it right, there's no problem."

　Such thinking has long held sway among the would-be models, aspiring dancers and other footloose adventurers who have flocked here in response to promises of recruiters or plain word-of-mouth stories about the easy money to be made in the hostess business.

　But the hostess clubs have been under a harsh spotlight since the sudden disappearance in early July of Lucie Blackman, a 22-year-old former British Airways flight attendant who came here to live the hostess life -- a burgeoning demimonde of gangsters and women who often end up flirting with prostitution.

　For months now, her case has absorbed the attentions of the British press, whose reporters have flocked here en masse to write luridly about a business that employs hundreds of thousands of women in Japan. The majority are Japanese. But there are also tens of thousands of Asians who have been smuggled into the country as virtual slaves, according to international human rights groups, and perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 Westerners.

　In fact, Ms. Blackman's case garnered so much attention in England that the British prime minister, Tony Blair, inquired about the investigation into her disappearance with his Japanese counterpart, Yoshiro Mori, during a recent visit here, and in early September, Britain's lord chancellor, Lord Irvine, met with Japanese police officials here to encourage them to continue investigating a case in which there have been plenty of rumors -- of abduction by a cult, rape and murder taped for a "snuff" film, or more prosaically, death in a dispute over sex -- but few true leads.

　The Japanese, who waited several days from the time of Ms. Blackman's reported disappearance before they made inquiries at Casanova, the club where she worked, have provided little information about the case in recent weeks, insisting defensively, as one spokesman said, "this could happen in any country."

　In fact, the Blackman case highlights what some experts and many of the hostesses themselves say is a feature that sets Japanese society apart from much of the West: for this country's freewheeling males, paying for sex and other entertainment by women is as common as dropping coins in a pachinko parlor, and carries just about as much stigma -- which is to say virtually none.

　Japanese sociologists say this reality is a result of a complex cultural history, and is reinforced by the heavy crowding and sprawl of Tokyo. For centuries, while Japan was under feudal rule, regional warlords were required by the shogun to have their families reside in the capital, while the lords themselves traveled back and forth to their domains on lengthy pilgrimages.

　With lords separated from their spouses for long stretches, a culture of geisha and concubines flourished, and along with it, so did the idea that paying for sex and the company of women was normal. In modern Tokyo, with tiny houses and long commutes being the norm, receiving guests at home is impractical, and men instead stay out on the town, typically with their co-workers.

　Hostess bars, and sex-oriented massage parlors, known as soaplands, have proliferated to entertain them. Indeed, where hostess bars at least are concerned, many Japanese companies pick up the tab for their male employees' nights on the town.

　"This is a society where there is no couple culture, where male and female enjoy themselves together," said Yumiko Ehara, a professor of sociology at Tokyo Municipal University.

　"While mother and children wait at home patiently, the men are allowed to enjoy themselves alone," she said. "Many housewives are frustrated about this. But the husbands would not tell their wives about going to soaplands, and in the case of hostess bars, this is a company matter, and women don't feel that they can interfere."

　Ms. Ehara said that according to one recent academic survey, more than 50 percent of the male respondents acknowledged having paid for sex.

　With his slicked-back hair and open collar, Shinichi Watanabe, the president of the Flamingo Bar and a clutch of related entertainment businesses, offered a simpler explanation with just a touch of hyperbole. As a dancer did a striptease in the background on a stage ringed with men in neckties, he said: "Every Japanese man would go if he had the money. You get to sit next to a beautiful woman and get entertained."

　Shortly before midnight, as Mr. Watanabe's club began filling up with customers, Linda, a 24-year-old from Norway, laughingly described her job as one of the world's easiest. Then when the name of Lucie Blackman came up -- they had worked together -- Linda paused to consider the monotony of constant come-ons and her ritualized evasions, and the wearying, ever-present, if minute, feeling of risk.

　"This job is like theater: It's a game, and to convince the customer to keep coming back you've just got to maintain an act," she said. "But some clubs get very pushy. They tell you to sit closer and closer to the men. They tell you to let them touch you a bit. Then there's a lot of pressure to date the customers."

　She continued: "That's the kind of place I worked at with Lucie. And if you think too much about money, you begin going out with customers you've only met once. You begin taking big risks."

Opposing View (Letter written in response to the article "A Demimonde Scrutinized after a Disappearance")