Anthropology

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http://hdl.handle.net/10066/343

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Browsing Anthropology by Author "Costley, Krysten"

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    The Normal Shobai: A Recreation of the Housewife and Salaryman in the Deviant World of Hosts and Hostesses
    (2013) Costley, Krysten; Gillette, Maris
    My thesis examines the recent phenomenon of host and hostess work and the portrayal of these men and women in popular media. The sources I will be using are newspapers articles, blogs, documentary films, and anime/manga which feature either hosts or hostesses as subjects. Using common tropes found in each source, I analyze in separate chapters their appearance, construction of gender and the use of emotional labor. Each section will build upon a parallel structure between hosts and salarymen, and hostesses and housewives which became increasingly apparent throughout this research. I will argue that the socially and economically constructed salaryman/housewife paradigm is internalized in hosts and hostesses leading to its reproduction in the club’s social scene and economic interactions. Additionally, these interactions lead to the creation of the fantasy world hosts and hostesses are meant to build for their clients. However, I argue that this fantasy world is not as displaced from conventional Japanese society as it has been implied to be because of the connection hosts and hostesses have with their traditional counterparts, salarymen and housewives. As I observed thus far, scholars have yet to examine hosts and hostesses together. By doing so, I am able to observe the Japanese perception of gender as well as the significance of this profession in the Japanese imagination.