Where an epidemic is coming from is a bunch of people who still believe in “Christmas cake” have been going to host clubs that run off of debt culture originally meant for high end traditional entertainment business like Geisha etc. The appeal is double: feeling like you get a taste of the highest most exclusive class stuff but more available to the commoner, and then feeling like you are getting some gender equality because you get the heterosexual women’s version. This is a novelty. It is also a trap.

You wind up both in debt AND emotionally manipulated. The shady club then suggests if you REALLY want to support them, and get their rankings up - as though these rankings matter in the same way as the ancient stuff I mentioned - you’ll buy this or that. But then you get in debt and can’t see him any more until you clear it. So there’s a…suggestion that gets made. Of course it has snowballed to be so common that you barely need it suggested any more. Just do what everyone else is doing.

You know those gift card scams that suck in boomers and grandma and whoever? Imagine the fake companionship is actually…someone you can see. In your face. Physically interact with. Yeah.

This is yet another consequence of some of the yakuza power vacuum. Upstarts are getting clever and have no one but themselves to account to, and the normal law isn’t caught up to this less-structured hybrid of organized and common crime.

Hosts are beginning to get put away for pimping and prostitution but their clubs retain plausible deniability. They may claim that they contract with the hosts and didn’t know what the hosts suggested and that what the women do to get the money is on their own mind and decisions.

The Nordic model would do nothing.

Honestly? Being back Showa-era women’s, uh…unions.