Behind the Scenes of Kabukicho Hosts Share Exhausted Faces in Live Streams

We have previously discussed the benefits of plastic surgery in host clubs in this series of articles. While more and more men and women are starting night jobs to earn money for plastic surgery, the bottleneck of plastic surgery in the hospitality industry is the DT (downtime) period until the scars and swelling go down after the procedure. How do men and women in night jobs, who are not paid unless they make a sale, spend their time?

“Seriously, I stay at home. For the past year, I’ve probably only had sex or had plastic surgery.

Makiko (pseudonym, 28) makes a living mainly by working as a prostitute and by working as a prostitute for her father.

After earning enough money for plastic surgery and immediate living expenses, I go in for surgery. When the surgery is over, I go back to work. There is no end to plastic surgery, and after a little bit of work, I find something else I want to do. I look at my face every day, look at beauty information, look for a job where I can earn money, and during the time I’m on ……DT, I spend my time relaxing and keeping in touch with my clients.”

While many girls take a complete break from the business, the hosts are even more commercially minded.

I mainly shoot for TikTok and YouTube.

Yukito (pseudonym, 26) underwent a major plastic surgery in Korea last year. With her clean-cut contours, she has become a successful model.

When I dare to show my flat face during DT, the gap between my face and normal face makes it easy for people to jump on my videos. So I take videos with the feeling that they are delicious rather than embarrassing. I get a lot of questions about plastic surgery during live-streaming, so I feel that there are many people who are interested in it even though they don’t have the courage to do it themselves.

It is not uncommon for hosts like Yukito to openly show their plastic surgery procedures to the public. Some hosts even sell LINE stamps with photos of themselves undergoing DT. The more flat and different you are from your current self, the easier it is to sublimate your face as entertainment.

There are also hosts who come to work during DT. Zen (25), who belongs to “TOP DANDY V (Five),” is a host who currently sells 100 million yen a year, but he says that he has continued to take risks in order to sell well.

He says, “I did a champagne tower for one of my events while wearing a cast on my nose. The first time I served a customer, I served him after the cast was removed. I have already established a relationship with my customers, and they see what’s inside me, so even if my face is swollen from the surgery and I can’t drink, it doesn’t affect me too much. I have more confidence in my customer service since I had the surgery.

They say, “I’m charging 10 million for my body. I also bought a 12 million yen watch and a 9 million yen Birkin, so if I include clothes and accessories, I walk around with a total of 50 million yen every day. Even if I have a bad day, I can think, ‘Well, I’m walking around with 50 million yen.

In the past, plastic surgery was done quietly and hidden as much as possible, but such a concept does not exist in today’s Kabukicho. Rather, people often have a positive image of the people in Kabukicho: “I earn enough money to pay for plastic surgery,” “I can invest in myself,” and “I have improved myself and am successful.

Kabukicho is filled with successful role models who have actually improved their appearance through plastic surgery. Therefore, there are many women and hosts who have no complex about their appearance and have no interest in plastic surgery before coming to Kabukicho, but who have problems when they meet successful seniors or customers who are strict about their appearance, and who begin to have plastic surgery.

This is the kind of thinking that is unique to a city where lookism and capitalism are inextricably linked.

From the February 16, 2024 issue of FRIDAY