bob the moo Café Rakkyo is a host pub, where young men act as hosts to young women who pay them for their time. This can involve sex but a good host will keep that for as long as possible because often a customer will leave him and not come back once she has had everything he can offer. The hosts earn about US$10,000 – US$50,000 each month and are mostly young men. The owner of the Raffyo café is Issei, one of the most popular hosts out of his staff of twenty, acts as our way into this strange world of underground love and friendship.A supremely odd film this one, well, a film of a supremely odd world anyway. I cannot think of anything like it in the UK. Even with the sexes reversed, strip clubs and escorts are very much about money for sex or sexual favours, I can't think of services where women can hang around with men in clubs in the way I saw within this film. I think the film recognises this because it structures itself as a gentle way in to the world for the uninitiated. At first the film just explains it and lets us see the club, listen to the hosts and the girls who come for their company talking about love and longing. However the "twists" come once we understand as the film starts to push below the superficial workings of the club and get a bit more into the people who pay and get paid.Most of the girls we hear from seem to work in a similar industry as the male hosts and their reasons for going to the club seems to be as part of a healing process. The overwhelming impression is of how fake it all is and how empty the lives be. It put me in mind of the line from Common's most recent album where he talks about a stripper when he says "at first stripping seemed so empowering, Most every girl wanna do it now and then, But being meat every day is devouring" because you can see the emotional damage being done within this world where everything is purchased and a transaction – everyone seems to want the real thing but nobody has it. Some show the cracks but most have it hidden but it does come out – the film wisely keeps the signs of stress and damage till the end, again giving a strong structure.Overall a very good film about a very strange world. Being so remote from this sort of experience the film could have left me cold but the structure of the film makes it work really well and produces an interesting and quite emotional documentary.

paul2001sw-1 Sometimes one can feel that one already knows everything there is to know about the world; but sometimes a film, such as this craftily revealing documentary, provides insights into another culture that seem wholly alien and strange. The subject of 'The Great Happiness Space' is Japan's host bar scene, where women pay for the company of men. At first, this intrigues because of the reversal of the sexes compared to the normal client-prostitute relationship. Soon, one makes new observations: that the hosts are very much "pretty boys", not the heaving hulks of unadulterated masculinity that are often held up as the female ideal, at least in the west; and secondly, that the women themselves are young and attractive, a long way from the stereotype of the average man who pays for women's services. Nor do they resemble the stereotype of Japanese women, quiet and demure; in the bars, they are drunken ladettes, and indeed, their relationships with their hosts seem more like those of groupies to rock stars than of punters to whores. In fact, in accordance with common opinions about female desire, but in contrast to normal practice in the sex industry, physical contact, while it often happens, is not what the women pay for; indeed, the men try to avoid it, as what keeps their clients coming back is the eternally unfulfilled promise of love. In one sense, the hosts are performing a con-trick, by selling this promise; but one also thinks, surely the women are willingly deluded. But when one learns the fantastic sums that the clients pay for this privilege, this phenomenon suddenly no longer seems so benign. But how can they afford to pay so much? The answer is, circularly, that most of the clients (at least, the high-spending ones), are also sex workers. In some ways, this makes sense: it explains their affluence, their craving for cathartic recreation, their floating of social norms, and also, perhaps, their willingness to pay for love not sex; yet in another sense, it seems wholly bizarre that those who practice the arts of illusion on their own clients should nonetheless fall so completely for the deceptions of their hosts. They also seem a little too like "nice girls" to be prostitutes, until it is implied that many actually take up prostitution to feed their habit; a healthier habit, perhaps, then heroin and the other drugs that prostitutes are stereotypically addicted to; but, it seems, one just as compelling.There's something deeply sad about all this, and yet it never feels sordid: the mutually sustained illusion hides the shockingly expensive transaction that lies behind the party, and the dream. And the girls, though surely headed for a fall, seem strangely calm and contented with their delusions, while their playboy hosts are, in the final scene, shown exhausted and hung-over, physically and perhaps morally exhausted by their work. And relating this scene to anything western seems very hard, even though it has arisen in response to universal urges. Truly, we live in a strange, varied, and tragic world.

Chris_Docker The world of hosting is little known outside of Japan, that of glamorous host boys even less. Jake Clennell's mind-boggling documentary is so hypnotic that single young men may want to take notes, and those who are partnered do the same to learn better how to please the female psyche.The 'hosts' in any of ten exclusive clubs in Osaka only make money if they can be charming and engaging while selling champagne at $500 a bottle. Although there are maybe 100 host clubs, most of them provide female companions for light conversation, company, and laughter (not necessarily sex - which is generally provided from a number of different establishments). Issei, however, presides over a Cafe Rakkyo club, where glamorous host boys, not women, do the entertaining. They make beautiful young women laugh, smile and feel good about themselves - women who pay very handsomely for the pleasure. They party till they drop, women competing with each other for the host boys' attention by spending more money."For girls, we are products," says Issei. "We have fake love relationships," and he compares his job to that of Peter Pan, who took people to a world that doesn't exist. "We sell dreams - that's our job." We witness candid interviews with the host boys, including a new lad being interviewed for a job, and also a number of the good-looking young women who frequent the host bars. They confess to how they fall in love with Issei. He, in return, says how although he may have sex with the girls, he often tries not to if that's their aim, because afterwards they are more likely to 'dump him.' Some of these customers have been coming to the club for several years. They pay by the hour for the attention of one of the host boys at the 24hr party room, but he will often be in demand by several women at once. If a woman wants to speak to a host privately, there is a special chair at extra cost ($50). Issei earns about $50,000 a month. He says the thing that stops him earning more is that he cares about his clients and won't let them spend too much money just for the sake of it. He talks about 'healing' his customers Why do the girls come? "When I'm at a host club, I'm treated like a princess," says one. When they have been coming for a year or more, they often look to their chosen host for good advice. A girl never changes host within a club, so a long term 'relationship' of sorts develops. In this high-octane party atmosphere girls spend $1,000 or more in a single day. Issei says the highest was £40,000. "It's about how much girls want to financially worship me," he says. "He listens to me, he entertains me. That makes me really happy," she explains. We see some of the host boys out in the street persuading girls to come for a drink to the club. They have the charisma of TV personalities. The rapid fire conversation and banter is expertly aimed to make the girls smile and feel magnetically drawn to them. In a way it is quite selfless (if highly paid!) and Issei explains that if a host really develops personal needs towards a customer then he can't be effective as a host.One customer explains how she would be prepared to die for Issei. "To a certain extent, money can buy love," he tells the interviewer with a calm conviction that is slightly unnerving. Only later in the film do we find out more about the girls and how many of them play an equally dangerous game.The subject matter, the honesty and insight of the interviews, and the dervishlike way the winning lines are so hard to explain away, together with a very sure documentary hand that inserts no moral judgements, make The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief an unforgettable piece of film-making.

morgannyc-1 The best doc on underground Japanese culture I have seen. It was Refreshing to see an independent doc that held up technically for a Change, excellent camera operation and top notch editing and music. My Friends and myself spent the rest of the night discussing the strange And deep issues brought up by the characters in this film. The film is based around a gang of male hustlers -geisha boys in Osaka was at first a little unsure it seemed that the film had a heavy sense of art direction and a cinematic air that seemed a little incongruous with the harsh realities of the key characters lives, however as the film develops and new twists are revealed it becomes apparent that this is great documentary story telling in a classical tradition.I have never seen such frankness from this element of Japanese society. it was also nice to watch a foreign language doc made for an English speaking audience that did not rely on narration title cards or voice over. An entertaining film with a hidden depth! I would recommend you see this One if you get a chance.