A Tokyo Hostess Club and Cultural Differences
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This study will examine Anne Allison's Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club. The study will focus on the ways the book portrays cultural differences between Japan and the United States, especially aspects of gender and power. The study will include consideration of the construction of personhood in the three arenas of work, home and club. Allison does not deal directly with the cultural realities of the United States in these arenas, and, therefore, references to those realities will be based on the cultural observations of the writer. However, the author is quite clear in her conclusions about Japanese culture. Her approach is Marxist, so she concludes, correctly, that economics are at the root of the issues explored. Big business and government (through corporate tax breaks for entertainment for workers) work together to encourage club-going: "Its principle is to entertain workers and clients at some place away from work . . . as a means of strengthening work or business relations" (9). Two other basic facts stand out in her research. First, Japanese culture is male-oriented, with woman cast in the role of service-provider for male client and/or husband. We read, for example, that "Hostess clubs, with their emphasis on service by women, exist primarily to personalize the working relations of Japanese men" (57). Third, the world of men is heavily hierarchical, reflected in both business and entertainment arenas. Although the mal
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poration (for men) or in the home (for the wives and mothers) or in the club (for hostesses). The Japanese individual gains personhood and identity not from individual achievement (as in the United States) but as part of the institutional team. This division gives greater power to the man in the work arena, and greater power to the woman in the domestic arena, although man's work is viewed as more important.
As a Marxist, Allison correctly concludes that this subsuming of individual identity and achievement results in alienation for all Japanese, whether men or women. However, ironically, Allison also concludes that women ultimately have more independence because their domestic roles are not terminated suddenly, as men's roles are when their work lives end: "Once he is no longer working and making the money to exchange for and justify these various dependencies [on hostess and wife], he is in a weakened and socially vulnerable position" (197).
Bibliography
Allison, Anne. Nightwork. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
This study will examine Edward Deming Andrews' The People Called Shakers, focusing on the Shaker society's limitations in the arenas of property, gender and work which are used to construct the ideal
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Approximate Word count = 1591
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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