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This paper seeks to answer the given questions by analyzing the part of the book of Allison entitled “Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club,” where the author sought to “examine some aspect of Japan that was urban, modern and an effect of cultural, political, and economic relations.” Her focus on hostess clubs, which is one aspect of the Mizu Shoba (water business) Japanese urban nightlife, provokes some questions that must be answered in this paper.
The first of the questions are: In what ways does the hostess club, as a place, help to construct certain types of feminine and masculine subjectivities? In answer, it could be said that the hostess club, as depicted by Allison to be apparently an innocent, could be described or viewed as giving sexual pleasure to the Japanese men and perhaps women-hostesses as well. It could not be, however, taken as simply as a house of prostitutes where women are used unlimitedly by men. It could be rather be described as providing a good link to understanding the Japanese culture where their attitudes and expectations about work, including play and sex, as well as gender roles, identity, and money, come into the concert. The way that the author described the life inside the nightclubs tell of various descriptions of behavior and conversations inside the nightclub and bar that can enthrall a person who has the interest to find more of what are the meanings for what are these events of how Japanese as a society of people compare with other cultures.
The author portrays that the Japanese stay in nightclubs is motivated by a belief of their employers that such nightlife practice is good for work productivity when they go to work the next day. A visit to the club is therefore thought of as if making play’ to be an extension of work’ that is accomplished by cutting the salarymen away from family life. The practice speaks of the belief that life is not all work and that the mind needs relaxation to be able to perform better the following working day.
It is a fact that Allison subscribed from her interview of fellows hostesses since the author decided to assume the function, although she is an anthropologist, that the companies will be able to maximize the productivity of their employees by allowing these salarymen to enjoy the nightlife. By her theories, it may be an observer that Allison was already challenging the claim of the naturalness by Japanese sociologists of working late at night via playing’ at a club on the belief that Japanese consider themselves as definitely part of a group, or a workgroup. Many management writers subscribe to the idea that the Japanese talk about their work even getting out of regular hours from work. That is the reason why the Japanese were known to have been promoters for kaizen or continuous improvement. If one analysis further, it would seem such findings of management theorists are not totally baseless as Allison claimed in her book that these employers are paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for short periods of drinking and mostly insubstantial chat with hostesses. With the strong belief that of Japanese companies that their business deals are improved and that human relations among bosses and workers are made better, who could agree more than the known productivity of the Japanese people in many fields of human endeavor. From what as discussed so far, one could then see the masculine subjectivities being done.
Shifting, therefore, to the feminine subjectivities, Allison is telling her readers that the process for building the Japanese men’s egos in the clubs is done by the considerate, pleasing behavior of the hostesses. Allison, on the other hand, saw the relationship of Japanese salarymen with their mothers and wives and ended theorizing that whatever these express what they need, they believe they in do if only to justify as necessary for their work which occupies a very important of their culture. By their allowed going to clubs, there is symbolic and ritualistic meaning that two groups of women are created of different sexuality, the hostess performing the role of boosting the ego of these men and the wives of these men who are but to take care of the children and such should be accepted in the name of productivity and primacy of the works of these Japanese men.
An objective view of Allison’s depiction could be a good way to study feminism at certain points in time by looking at the relations between the sexes and the power of Politics and oppression.
Another question is: What is the role of ritual, language, and play? In answer, it could be said that the role of ritual, language and play based on Allison’s book is determined by their effects on human behavior. A ritual has a role in simplifying the conversion from one status to another throughout the life cycle of a person. In the case of Allison’s work where the author described how the social behavior of Japanese men is molded by the nightly events that happen as a form of relaxation and as a form of building the ego of men in the workplace. With the company-employers being made to spend for the tabs spent by the Japanese men, apart from if culture is created where it becomes a norm in Japanese society and which may not be the case in other cultures.
As to the role of languages, they could also detect the effects brought by their use. Language is meant for human communication, and it may differ from one person to that of other persons. It could be verbal or non-verbal, and it carries symbolic behavior from one person to another that may affect the development of culture. In the case of Allison’s work, the language spoken by companies adopting the benefits of nightlife for its employees necessarily communicates to other Japanese men that what they are doing is beneficial to their beliefs which may be a more productive lifestyle and better economic life for all.
Play for the Japanese in the book of Allison is the opposite of play, and that being outside work is a continuation of the plan for happier and more productive work the next day. By allowing their Japanese men to entertained and felt intimately related to the hostess or hostesses of clubs, the Japanese culture beliefs in the saying that it is not all work or that there should be some play where the mind must be made to relax.
Lastly, another question to be answered is: “How does her analysis differ from common sense and scholarly interpretations of these activities? Make sure to discuss and critique the theoretical and methodological frameworks employed by Allison.” In response, this paper posits that Allison’s analysis differs from common sense and scholarly interpretations of these activities in the area of how she approaches the subject matter. By being a hostess herself and experiencing what other women have experienced in the night work in Japan, her analysis is more empirical than theoretical. Read interview. Allison was more interested in being less normative. In an interview made by the author about her interest in the nightclubs in Japan, she claimed to have been intrigued when she was told by professors and friends in Japan that the Mizu shoubai was “NOT about Japanese culture.” This must be something very interesting because of her previous knowledge and discovery that there were quite a big number night clubs and also bars, particularly in Tokyo, Japan, that gratified specifically men.
Her own theoretical and methodological frameworks can only be appreciated in the context of what is the experience of who was there and what does it feel like to be emotionally involved. Other authors could just be very based on what was previously said and written. If Allison believed her professors and friends that the nightclubs are not part of Japanese culture, she would not have the chance to tell her story, so deep inside, that it came from her own mingling with the actual Japanese customers whose tabs are paid by their employers to entertain themselves in the clubs away from their families. Ordinary readers could not readily believe the author, but once will realize that Allison was an anthropologist who has no interest than the expose a big reality in the development of one’s culture; one could only come to agree eventually. It was even said that her work counters what has many people previously ideas about Japan that it is a well-ordered family-oriented society with no ostensible “underworld.”
Cultures evolved because of what groups of people believe and do, and in so doing, such group making may necessarily define their behavior which may be different from other cultures. Some cultures are understood via reading literature and using other author’s analyses of the work of others. Others may also be learned by experiencing the same. Still, others may be both understood from experiencing the same and by confirming or denying what others may have written. Allison, in her work, appeared to have done this last one, and her work was definitely not exactly the same which those who just understood the Japanese cultures through other means.
Works Cited
- Allison, Anne, Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club, Oxford University Press, 1994.
- Mascia-Lees, Frances and Nancy Johnson Black, Gender and Anthropology, Waveland Press, 2000.
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