Overview

In Nightwork, Anne Allison opens a window onto Japanese corporate culture and gender identities. Allison performed the ritualized tasks of a hostess in one of Tokyo's many ""hostess clubs"": pouring drinks, lighting cigarettes, and making flattering or titillating conversation with the businessmen who came there on company expense accounts. Her book critically examines how such establishments create bonds among white-collar men and forge a masculine identity that suits the needs of their corporations. Allison describes in detail a typical company outing to such a club—what the men do, how they interact with the hostesses, the role the hostess is expected to play, and the extent to which all of this involves ""play"" rather than ""work."" Unlike previous books on Japanese nightlife, Allison's ethnography of one specific hostess club (here referred to as Bijo) views the general phenomenon from the eyes of a woman, hostess, and feminist anthropologist. Observing that clubs like Bijo further a kind of masculinity dependent on the gestures and labors of women, Allison seeks to uncover connections between such behavior and other social, economic, sexual, and gendered relations. She argues that Japanese corporate nightlife enables and institutionalizes a particular form of ritualized male dominance: in paying for this entertainment, Japanese corporations not only give their male workers a self-image as phallic man, but also develop relationships to work that are unconditional and unbreakable. This is a book that will appeal to anyone interested in gender roles or in contemporary Japanese society.

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9780226014876

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An assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, Allison worked as a hostess in a Tokyo club, where she examined how the rituals of a hostess define gender identities in Japan. Allison combines feminism with Asian studies in her examination of night work. Japanese corporations bond their white-collar workers to the company with after-hours drinking sessions that employees are expected to attend - and their wives to allow. Allison partially criticizes her subjects, who justify these sessions as part of their culture. As she digs into their points of view, she tells us, My goal here is to lay out the cultural ideas that support corporate entertainment by framing and legitimizing it as cultural custom. As far as possible, she lets the voices of Japanese speak for themselves. Men often come to these bondings straight from work, tired, uptight, and insecure. As part of the corporate life, bonding is work, even though it is made to seem like nonwork. The hostess's job is to create a warm, pleasant atmosphere and lively discussion. Even so, she can also be insulted, ignored, and walked away from [and] 'put in her place' by the men for whom she's lighting cigarettes, pouring drinks, and instigating conversation. She is lectured, her appearance is evaluated and criticized, her body is ogled and pawed.... Allison describes the Japanese take on the meaning and place of work; the family and home; male play with money, women, and sex; male rituals of masculinity; and the ways in which white-collar workers are impotent. After retirement, deprived of the money for expensive booze and hostesses, the poor male finds himself in a reverse role, ruled by the absolute master of domestic space, his wife. Serious anthropology but also much like a long night out, expenses paid. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Anne Allison is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University.

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