Precarious stepping stones: Transnational Japanese hostesses in London and their labour, career and gendered migration

This paper examines the personal and structural elements that lead Japanese women to work in hostess clubs in London. For various reasons, single Japanese women go abroad to places such as London, Los Angeles, and Southeast Asia, and work as hostesses (drinking and conversation companions) entertaining mainly Asian men in gentlemen’s clubs. These women – gaikyaba or transnational Japanese hostesses – are a subject from the “Global North” largely overlooked in surveys of global intimate labour. This study focuses on Japanese hostesses in London, analysing their motivations, social context, and what the work means to them. I conducted interviews and participant observation as a hostess at Club London. I found two main factors influencing their choice of hostess work: first, a lack of social and language capital, which leads them to sell femininity, Japaneseness, and communication as strategic resources; and second, the global diversification of intimate work. Both aspects facilitate their migration as both a gendered and gendering process, creating a distinctive “privileged but precarious” situation in neoliberal social contexts. This paper argues that Japanese hostesses use such work as a stepping stone to personal goals, while these jobs and strategies eventually push them back to “their own place”, which they had originally decided to leave. This case study challenges the idea that global reproductive and intimate labour is driven mainly by economic disparities between nations. Instead, it highlights how gender inequality and internalised gender norms in women’s home countries can also push them into global intimate labour markets.