A Japanese gigolo happily smiles and talks to female customers in a nightclub in Kabukicho.
`I like the feeling of my heart fluttering,` Nitta said.
In this country with a lot of mojo (Japanese slang term for normal women who don’t like to have sex with men), many wealthy Japanese women are spending money to hire escorts in exchange for an evening of flirting.
Nitta is a businessman, 27 years old, from Nagoya.
People richer than Nitta can waste $100,000 a night, letting a group of smooth talkative boys sit and stroke their egos.
The number of Japanese women who are rich and successful, but are bored with old-fashioned love and romance, and want to find a place where they can be pampered to the fullest, is increasing day by day.
`I spend money to buy time, not men,` Nitta explained.
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These women are of all ages, from young women in their 20s to women in their 60s. They splurge on luxury gifts for their flight attendants, such as diamond-encrusted watches, luxury cars, and even houses.
`When I was 20 years old, a customer gave me a Porsche,` said Sho Takami, a former gigolo in Japan.
`It’s a job that requires 24 hours continuously,` the 43-year-old man said.
`The important thing is to make the customer feel like this is an opportunity for love. Finally, you have to tactfully take her to a nightclub to splurge,` Takami explained.
The male nightclub business has become a $10 billion industry in Japan, with 800 establishments across the country.
Two Japanese gigolos advertise a nightclub.
Courtesans are compared to male geishas.
`A gigolo’s job is to comfort the ladies’ hearts,` Takami said.
Supply and demand relationship
Japanese gigolos, with their long, well-groomed hair and tight clothes, are often criticized as taking advantage of women’s emotions.
`It’s the customers who are spending money to buy love,` Ken Ichijo, a former gigolo, said with a shrug.
`Our job is to sell dreams, to lie that we love them in exchange for money,` the 38-year-old man said.
Ichijo calls it the supply and demand relationship.
`Boys exist to fill the loneliness in a person’s life,` he said.
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In recent years, this business has gradually erased its previous bad impression due to strict regulations on opening hours, police inspections are more frequent and fewer and fewer mafias are involved in the industry.
`Sex is not part of a gigolo’s service package,` he said.
Japan’s declining birth rate is blamed on a social trend called `herbivorous boys` – a term for men who do not like love or sex, but just want to immerse themselves in their own world.
However, in clubs like Top Dandy, sex life is rich and open.
`The flight attendants here are very gentle and understand women’s needs,` Suzuki said, waiting for a 27-year-old man wearing leopard pants to light the cigarette in her hand.
