By Clare Campbell
Last updated at 8:13 AM on 04th August 2009
Seeking money and excitement, Lucie Blackman left her home in Kent in May 2000 to find work in Tokyo as a nightclub hostess.
In the second part of an authoritative and groundbreaking book charting the life and death of the 21-year-old, we explain how she was instructed in the art of targeting wealthy customers. She was soon earning £1,500 a week - but other girls made more.
When one customer suggested Lucie boost her earnings by going to his apartment for a drink, she agreed, thinking it would be safe.
In fact, it would turn out to be the biggest mistake of her life...
Lucie Blackman and her best friend Louise Phillips stepped off the Virgin Atlantic flight from London at Tokyo’s Narita Airport on May 4, 2000. As former air stewardesses, they navigated their entry into this new world with the confidence of seasoned travellers.
They were tourists here to see the sights of fabulous Japan. Of course they were. The immigration inspector looked dispassionately at them before wearily stamping each passport. They were in.
Telling lies had been part of the crazy plan from the moment Louise had first thought of it.
There had been no discounted flight tickets courtesy of their former employer, British Airways - despite what Lucie had told her father. There was no ‘aunt’ of Louise’s to provide them with accommodation and nor would they be working legally, as they’d also assured Lucie’s dad.
Both of them were on tourist visas, like every other would-be gaijin (Western) bar hostess. They found somewhere to rent pretty quickly, a hostel sandwiched between the headquarters of the Japanese Communist Party Central Committee and an electricity substation. The price - 30,000 yen (£190) a month for a six-tatami room (six rush mats’ worth of floor space, about ten square metres). There were no carpets or soft furnishings, just a futon to sleep on and communal kitchen and bathroom. Even for seen-it-all Lucie, it was a shock. Pay all this money and what do you get?
They’d need a mobile phone, of course, but decided to rent one to share between them. Tokyo prices were jawdropping and Lucie’s credit card was already maxed out.
She needed money, and quickly, but that really was not going to be a problem.
Everything Lucie had ever heard or read about Tokyo seemed to be true. The city was vast, teeming, a megalopolis of 40 million. The way people held themselves was different; their body language as they swooped and manoeuvred like huge flocks of starlings. Wherever you went there was the crowd. An intense, crackling energy drove the city day and night.
Once they had settled in at the hostel, Lucie and Louise headed for Roppongi. Lucie knew all about it, or thought she did - Tokyo’s glittering, expensive, shiny entertainment district, the ‘favourite haunt of young Japanese and expats out for a night on the tiles’, as the guidebook blandly described it.
There was more to it than that, though. Roppongi was a legend among BA cabin crew. A place for hard-partiers, not backpackers, it had for decades been caught in that weird cultural hinterland of America-worship with a uniquely Japanese twist.
Roppongi was where Japanese men went to be entertained by gaijin girls and where Japanese women, who dressed up like schoolgirls tottering on stack heels, went to find gaijin boyfriends (it was a much commented-on phenomenon that nerdy gaijin men could date stunning Japanese girls. Being a foreigner of any sort in Japan was like being famous).
For a 21-year-old blonde from Sevenoaks who spoke no Japanese, finding work in Roppongi was not going to be a problem. The weekly freesheet for gaijin, Tokyo Classified, was full of ads: ‘Fun, exciting Club J F in Roppongi,’ wanted ‘genki (lively) girls who can entertain and like to enjoy themselves. Y2500 (£16) an hour plus tips. Call. We’re waiting.’
Club Climax was looking for ‘female dancers, hostesses, scouts, etc. Proper visa required’. That was a problem. So how about ‘Casablanca, now hiring Western hostesses. Very nice and friendly atmosphere Y3000-6000 (£20- £40) per hour plus bonus. Great business clientele’. No mention of visas there - and they were offering good money. Casablanca was the place.
Lucie and Louise glammed up and made their way to the club’s entrance with its tuxedoed doorman. He let them in without a word.
The manager, Tetsuo Nishi, eyed them professionally. These two were cool. He’d encountered their type many times before. Neither had work visas but what did that matter - they’d be gone in three months. Mama-san (the den mother) nodded her assent. They were hired.
The girls had struck lucky with Casablanca. It was one of the most popular (with Japanese men) clubs featuring foreign hostesses.
The place was comparatively small, done up like an over-upholstered living room, with black leather couches and dinky little tables, each just big enough for a bottle of whisky, a bottle of soda water and an ice bucket - with the obligatory karaoke system parked in one corner.
Chloe (not her real name), who was working at the club when Lucie and Louise showed up, remembered it clearly: ‘It was so bizarre, and so funny - that strange room with Ricky, the Filipino entertainer, launching into a desperate chorus of Do The Locomotion, while we sat laughing in the Doggy Box, a low sofa by the bar where we girls sat waiting for the men to pick us.
‘All the management told me when I started there was to “create a party atmosphere”.’
As new arrivals, Lucie and Louise were eyed with a certain suspicion by the other Casablanca girls. ‘New girls always stood out and were very popular with the customers,’ recalled Chloe.
‘I chatted to Louise first, who seemed very relaxed and in charge of herself. Then later she brought Lucie over. She was very different to Louise. She struck me as defensive, but at the same time very competitive.’
Lucie began on the nursery slopes of club work, as a kyaku-hiki (‘customerpuller’),handing out flyers in the streets, snuggling up to every drunk man walking by, trying to get him through the door with the strength of her bubbly personality. She hated it. ‘I feel like a prostitute standing on the corner,’ she told Louise.
After a few days, she was pulled inside by the mama-san to begin work properly as a hostess. Was she going to have a hostess name? Some girls called themselves things like ‘Passion’ or ‘Flame’. She’d stick with Lucie.
It would be printed on a business card with her personal mobile number (she’d certainly have to get one of those) and email address. Customers expected that.
There were plenty of dos and don’ts to learn. Girls were to be in their seats in
the Doggy Box by 7.30pm. When beckoned to a table with customers, hostesses were not allowed ‘private conversation’; indeed, chatting in any language besides Japanese or English was forbidden.
Make a mistake, break something, turn up late, and they would be fined. Habitual leg-crossing (considered especially vulgar) could mean being fired. Casablanca was tacky, with its sozzled manager and Ricky’s singing. But it was also one of
the most above-board establishments in Roppongi.
For the most part, it treated its girls well. There were places, it was said, where girls had their passports taken off them, where their pay was docked for putting on weight, where cocaine and methamphetamine were relentlessly pushed as surefire ways of
staying slim.
In the same building as Casablanca was Seventh Heaven, Tokyo’s largest strip club (‘with over 30 gorgeous exotic dancers, the majority from America’), but that was something else altogether. Stripping was not expected of Lucie and Louise.
Clothes were important, not bare flesh - a flash of cleavage or leg maybe, but not much more. Casablanca had its own dress code expressed in uncertain English: ‘Skirts should either be a miniskirt or a long skirt. Shoes should cover the ankle and have heels with a minimum height of three centimetres or higher.
‘T-shirts, pants, cardigans, sweaters and sandals are prohibited. Violations will lead to a disallowable of work for that day (hint: party dresses are OK). If you have questions, ask a member of the staff or an experienced hostess.’
The nightly ritual was as follows: as clients arrived, girls in the Doggy Box would say ‘irashimas’ [‘welcome’] and smile. Once a customer was seated, Tetsuo Nishi or, if he was too drunk (which was quite often), Tahara, the head waiter, would lead a girl over to him and introduce her.
Her first task was to make a small bow and smilingly exchange meishii, business cards. That little sliver of Japanese protocol was as important in a hostess bar as it was in a corporate boardroom.
One girl who worked with Lucie at Casablanca explained: ‘What you needed most of all was energy. The whole business was totally, mind-numbingly exhausting. You had to take something - drink or drugs - just to keep you going.
‘Alcohol was the easiest, and your tolerance grew the longer you were in Tokyo. I thought nothing of doing ten or 12 tequila shots before going out to dinner.’
Keeping the drink moving was vital. Behind the bar were bottles of Scotch belonging to regular customers. When one of them arrived, a waiter would bring his bottle to the table and the hostesses would attempt to pour it all, so he would have to buy another.
Some girls would go shot for shot with a customer. Unsurprisingly, they found it hard to stay sober.
There were no ‘members’ at Casablanca. Customers came and went as their fancies changed. There were single guys and married guys, rich and not so rich, reasonable-looking and ugly.
But who were they? The businesscard ritual told its own story. A Casablanca hostess kept her collection in a wallet, a time capsule of her Roppongi nights.
There was a retired senior officer with the Self Defence Force (the Japanese army) who was now head of a large company, lots of investment bankers, some advertising guys, oil exploration executives, a brace of Mitsubishi salarymen.
Plus some Westerners - a Californian wind-farm promoter and the owner of a Donegal wool mill on a sales mission (the Japanese liked tweed).
Often, there would be gaggles of men, noisy parties out on a settai (company outing) flushed with corporate solidarity.
But a keen hostess wasn’t interested in a group. She needed to find the single customer with big money to spend - the one who would keep coming back for more.
He would become the special target; she would sit next to him and do everything she could to enthral. A sempai (older mentor) would show her just how to do it: ‘You say: “Nomimono yoroshii desu ka?” [Would you like to buy me a drink?] If he already has a bottle you take ice like this, pour whisky like this, then water, stir together . . .
‘You dance when asked, light his cigarettes and swap the ashtray as soon as one cigarette has been put out in it. You make sure there are always four cubes of ice in a customer’s mizuwari [whisky and water] and wipe off any condensation from the glass.
‘If the customer needs the toilet, show him where it is and wait for him with an oshiburi [warm towel] outside. Bow when he takes it.’
If a customer saw a girl he liked sitting at another table, he could ask for her. It was called shimei - ‘choosing’ or ‘request’ - and he had to pay more for the privilege.
There was an internal hierarchy at the club, with a number one girl who made the most money and various pretenders to the crown.
The top girl had regular customers asking for her by name. She would get money for each request and a percentage of the takings for that table.
She might ask other girls to join her in a little circle of giggling, simulated infatuation. They played her charming younger sisters. The top girl got an extra monthly cash bonus and her assistants would get a lesser slice of the cake, but at least they were out of the Doggy Box.
Keeping the conversation rolling and acting genki was what mattered. In an email to her sister, Sophie, at home, Lucie confided that she was earning the equivalent of £1,500 a week: ‘I can’t believe I am paid so much just to pretend I am listening to them.’
Much of the time, the conversation was staggeringly banal. Some customers liked to talk about golf, others droned on about work.
Some men got down to the sukebei (dirty) stuff immediately: ‘How many times have you had sex?’ ‘Your breasts are like melons.’ They would also make crude remarks about the prostitutes they’d had sex with. As the boozing wore on, hands sometimes began to wander. But physical contact - if it happened at all - was transitory.
As a girl from Casablanca explained: ‘Kissing was frowned upon in the club, as other customers might want to “request” you. Request was more money for you and more money for the club. So no kissing and it was wise never physically to look attached.’
Casablanca hostesses worked six days a week. But they could also be working outside the club if they had a dohan (literally ‘going with’) - a date in which they went to dinner or to play golf, perhaps, acting as a customer’s fantasy girlfriend.
This was the money-shot, the centre of the whole hostess business. After two dohans with a man he was ‘her’ customer, and then each time he came to the club, the hostess received a cut of whatever was spent at his table.
The clubs demanded at least four dohans a month and paid a bonus for more than 12. Some had mandatory competitions for the girls to get the most customers - and posted scores in the dressing rooms just to heighten the tension. The whole system was designed to incentivise by humiliation.
Almost six weeks after Lucie arrived in Tokyo, the dohan wall chart at Casablanca placed her about 11th out of 20 girls. She had thought she was tough, but her fragile confidence was taking a pounding.
She wrote in her diary: ‘I’ve had one dohan. Another stood me up. I mean, how s*** must you be for a dohan to stand you up? Louise gets men falling over themselves to request her (she’s just falling so well into it) making heaps of friends and as usual, wherever I am, I feel alone . . .’
But there was one guy who did seem interested in Lucie. He came alone and spoke English. He said he was a company director, some sort of property developer.
He had a house in the Tokyo suburbs, a big place with a garden, plus an apartment downtown and one out by the sea. He had a boat.
Lucie’s thoughts are easy to imagine. This one was too good to lose. She’d better keep this one to herself. Perhaps even from Louise. He was offering all sorts of stuff, if she’d just come to his fabulous apartment out by the coast.
It was a risk, but one worth taking. It would bounce her right up the dohan charts. How could she say no?
July 1 was a Saturday. Lucie had found herself a proper boyfriend - a U.S. marine called Scott Fraser. She and Louise were having a rare night off from Casablanca, and planned instead to meet Scott for the evening.
But first, Lucie said something vague to Louise about an arrangement she had made with a customer. Shortly after midday, she put on a black dress and silver necklace and packed a smart handbag. She was dressed as though she was going on a dohan. She’d be back in plenty of time for their night out, she told Louise.
Three times that afternoon, she rang, just to keep in touch. Then, at 7.17pm, she called again, saying: ‘I’ll be back in half an hour.’
Lucie phoned Scott a few minutes later with the same message. They were all going out together that night. To Roppongi. It was going to be fantastic.
But she never showed up. Something had gone terribly wrong .. .
■ Extracted from Tokyo Hostess: Inside The Shocking World Of Tokyo Nightclub Hostessing by Clare Campbell, to be published by Sphere on August 20 at £14.99. © 2009 Clare Campbell. To order a copy p&p free, call 0845 155 0720.
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