Bar Flower
by Lea Jacobson
St Martin's Press, HK$200
In Japan, where formality and rigid social mores rule everyday life, everyone has their place, especially when it comes to commercial affairs of the heart and flesh. There are geisha, hostesses and whores and they are not to be confused.
The white-faced geisha are career professionals, often starting their training after secondary school or university. They study poise and delicacy, practise traditional arts and play instruments such as the three-stringed shamisen. They don't do sex. Prostitution, at the other end of the scale, also has its hierarchies, with soap houses, sexual play-acting and image bars aplenty. Nightclub hostesses fall somewhere between geisha and whores. Although nowhere near as mysterious and traditional as geisha, they don't sell sex either. They tease.
It was in this world that American, 20-something East Asian studies student Lea Jacobson, fluent in Japanese, landed in 2003 to teach English. With a history of depression, eating disorders and self-harm, she was unprepared for the straitjacketing imposed by the rigid culture. Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess, shows her coming unstuck almost from the beginning.