03-08-2025
Concept cafes explode in popularity in Japan
By Michael Hoffman
The world bursts at the seams with fun, pleasure, joy. It may not look that way but it's so. Cares banished, time transcended, laughter resounding, champagne corks popping, clothes flying open (not quite off), anime music throbbing and in the whirlpool bath in the center of the room a bikini-clad young woman completes the picture of wild, joyous abandon. Shame on those of us not of the party! We could be. We too are invited.
It's as near as the nearest 'concept café' – konkafe in Japanese – very near indeed if Spa (July 29-Aug 5) is right in estimating their number in Tokyo alone (vagueness of definition makes a precise count impossible) at 1,400.
What is it about pleasure, though, that debauches it almost at birth? Does it contain the seeds of its own corruption? Is it peculiarly vulnerable to infectious invasion? Spa recalls with nostalgia the innocence of the first konkafes. They were 'maid cafés' (meido kissa), born with the century, circa 2001.
This was the heyday of the otaku, Japan's Peter Pans, chronologically adult boys and girls whose lives were more virtual than real, whose social and sexual relationships were with manga and anime characters. Maid cafés were their Neverland, spreading outward from Tokyo's Akihabara, capital of virtual and electronic Japan. The maids, waitress-hostesses in maid costumes, were (seemed at least, which here amounts to the same thing) anime characters themselves, with their pink bows, lace frills, high socks and winsome smiles. The pop culture site Magical Trip offers this description:
'Stepping into a maid café feels like wandering into another world You're greeted with an energetic 'Welcome home, Master!' and instantly released from everyday life… Just this form of address ('master,' 'princess') makes you feel like a special existence… The atmosphere inside is also noteworthy. The gorgeous and cute decorations make you feel like you've stepped into an anime world.'
There's nothing new under the sun, at least nothing that isn't as old as it is new. Replace the word 'maid' with asobi-onna (women of pleasure) and suddenly we're back 1000 years in time. They didn't call it 'anime' then, but they may almost as well have, and if the fantasy unfolded on boats instead of cafes, what of that?
'By the end of the 10th century,' explains historian Janet Goodwin in 'Selling Songs and Smiles,' 'asobi-onna had developed their distinctive practice of using small boats to stage entertainment for men at ports' on rivers near Kyoto.
She quotes a courtier named Oe Yukitoki (955-1010): 'The younger women melt men's hearts with rouge and powder and songs and smiles, while the older women give themselves the jobs of carrying the parasols and poling the boats… A tryst on a boat on the waves equals a lifetime of delightful encounters.' Wouldn't he have felt right at home at a maid café?
If only it could have stayed that way! Impossible. Success invites imitation, imitation proliferation, proliferation novelty, novelty diversification, diversification competition, competition pressure, pressure expansion of services demanded and offered – and before you know it, the maids aren't 'serving' any more, they're 'servicing,' with all the wrinkles and ramifications that suggests. It's that kind of world, we're that kind of species.
Seven hundred years after Oe the scene had evolved into the urban licensed pleasure quarters, of which the 17th century novelist and (sic) priest Asai Ryoi (1612-91) wrote, 'By her nature a courtesan is a woman who… dresses up and adorns herself, and so is quite alluring… Her charming willowy tresses, her face lovely as cherry blossom, her eyebrows with mascara recalling the deep green treetops of the distant mountains… And how lovely when she moves, swaying back and forth; truly she could easily be mistaken for the living incarnation of the Amida Buddha! When compared with this creature, a man's wife can hardly seem more than a salted fish long past its prime!'
To return to the sordid present: 'It's a glutted market,' a 20-something konkafe operator tells Spa, 'and competition for customers is hot so that more and more 'services' have to be offered' – more fetishes catered to, some of which Spa describes but we need not, lest the imagination atrophy.
Struggling to keep things under some semblance of control is the Adult Entertainment Business Law. Revisions to it went into effect last month, tightening controls and driving numerous establishments into bankruptcy – partly owing, Spa hears, to operators mischievously alerting police to competitors' alleged violations. Others don the protective mantle of konkafe innocence, obscuring their real identity as hostess bars, girls bars, kyabakurabu (cabaret-nightclubs) and suchlike 'soapland' ero-entertainment venues. Boundaries blur, lines are crossed, anything can happen and much does.
One of the law's aims is to keep minors out. Underage staff and underage clients bedevil the industry. More distasteful still is the hiring and exploitation of girls with development disorders and mental illnesses. 'No wrist cuts,' reads a sign Spa hears of posted publicly in one konkafe – the macabre and the erotic as kissing cousins.
This too the magazine hears from one konkafe operator: 'So many women want to work in konkafes.' (Why? one wonders in passing? Because it beats office work? Because it's pseudo-showbiz?)
'The inevitable result,' the operator continues, 'is a 'cast' of mixed good actors and bad. It's a problem. Among them are young women with development disabilities. The other day (one of our girls) was followed home by a stalker. She had no sense of danger. She told us later, much pleased at the coincidence, 'Near my house I met a regular customer' – while I, listening to her, broke into a cold sweat.' No harm done, apparently – but it's a predatory world, and defenselessness is terrifying.
© Japan Today
