Japan is waging war on "host clubs" -- where men entertain women willing to pay for romance, but authorities and industry insiders say customers have long been scammed and saddled with debt ...

Tokyo (CNN) — Yu felt a rush of excitement as she walked into his bar for the first time – eager to meet the charming young host she’d been following for years online.

At host clubs, attractive men known as hosts entertain female patrons, engaging them in "flirtatious conversations" over drinks and food at "sky-high" prices, said Japan Times.

Japan's host club industry, where women pay for romantic attention, has been criticised for exploitative practices. Some suggest the need for regulation, but current discussions oversimplify the ...

To understand the cult of the host, start with two statistics. More than 60% of Japanese women in their late 20s are unmarried, double the rate in the mid-1980s.

An American citizen says that she was nearly sold into indentured slavery after a sketchy Tinder date with a Japanese club host.

TOKYO -- Police forces across Japan have been instructed to strengthen their crackdowns on malicious "host clubs," where male companions entertain female patrons, amid the suspected involvement of ...

The Japanese government has launched a sweeping crackdown on the country’s “host club” industry, targeting business practices that allegedly trap women in spiralling debt and, in some cases ...

Culture, Health & Sexuality, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2018), pp. 1-13 (13 pages) In this article, I build on the notion of precarity to argue that Japanese host clubs are sites in which a particular kind of ...

By Jessie Yeung, Hanako Montgomery and Junko Ogura, CNN Tokyo (CNN) — Yu felt a rush of excitement as she walked into his bar for the first time – eager to meet the charming young host she’d ...

Host clubs, where young male staff "pamper and flatter" female guests, are "booming" in Japan. Some 21,000 male hosts work at 900 of these lucrative establishments but opaque prices for drinks and ...