Ginza hostesses shocked by court ruling that they are “equal to prostitutes”

The Asahi Shimbun has an interesting translated story following up on the “controversial court ruling that equates a bar hostess having sex with a customer to prostitution”.

We reported on this in May, when a judge said a hostess mama-san was simply doing makura eigyo (“pillow business”) by sleeping with a client.

Lawyers specializing in divorce and adultery cases, private detectives who investigate cases of adultery and hostesses in the Ginza, where the defendant operates her establishment, all voiced concern. They said the ruling, by Judge Masamitsu Shiseki of the Tokyo District Court, challenges norms and ethics in their respective industries.

A 71-year-old veteran hostess who runs her own bar in the Ginza said that it is “upsetting” for the court to prematurely decide that a hostess sleeps with a patron purely for business reasons.

“As a woman, I sometimes cannot help from falling in love with a customer, although I know he has a wife and children,” she said.

She said she likes to spend “fun” time with her client outside her bar, but at the same time, she seeks to keep him patronizing her establishment. It is “too fuzzy” to draw a clear line between relationships for love and for money, she said.

Even laywers are weighing in over the judge’s April 2014 ruling that sexual relations with a client, a company president, over seven years did not “damage a peaceful marital life” and was “only for business, like in cases of prostitution”.

“The ruling is highly questionable since it concluded that a relationship that lasted as long as seven years is ‘only for business,’ ” said lawyer Yuto Tamura, who has represented clients in adultery cases.

In rejecting the wife’s claim, Shiseki said that the defendant agreed to have a sexual relationship with her client to keep his patronage, just like prostitutes sleep with their johns for money.

Even if the wife is appalled by the act, it does not constitute a legal offense, because the husband’s relationship with the hostess does not damage their peaceful marital life, he said.

The judge also said that it was a “commonly known fact” that many hostesses have sex with their customers to retain their patronage, and that customers indirectly pay for their sexual services from the payments they make at the bars.

Well said! Of course everyone knows. But no one tells.

Actually, during the trial the defendant even denied sex had taken place, while the plaintiff argued that the hostess’s actions constituted adultery.

The judge, however, had a totally different interpretation. As Michael Corleone said: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”

The article also looks at the perspective of private detective agencies, which are quite large in Japan and make most of their money from spouses hiring them to check up on unfaithful partners.

One agency “investigates around 1,000 cases annually in which clients suspect their partners of engaging in adultery, and hostesses account for 20-30% of the partners in adultery cases”. Wow, so hostesses really know how to seduce!

“If the ruling makes it difficult to demand compensation from hostesses, many clients will stop seeking our assistance to prove their claims. It can reduce our business opportunities.”

…was how the agency spokesman put it.

Even a hostess is skeptical about sleeping with a customer for seven years purely for business motives.

“I don’t think the hostess would maintain the relationship for seven years without romantic feelings for the customer,” one 32-year-old hostess commented, who also thinks that the mama-san has “lost” the case in many ways. While she did not have to pay compensation to the wife, she has been “disgraced” by the suit.

“I think she can no longer make a living in the Ginza, and in that sense, she lost more than what she would have had to pay in the trial.”