GEISHA BOY

"I am the Willow Thword"

I am not the huge anime and manga (Japanese cartoons and comic books) fan that some are, much of it is just incomprehensible or silly trash. The art is so stylized and cartoonish it distracts at times, and the pacing goes from glacial to a speed that is impossible to watch or follow. I've watched a few in the past and I have noticed something about the way men are drawn in these comics.

There are five basic types of men in Japanese Animation:

• the bluff, older, military type who women fear and tend to be the bad guys.
• the elderly scientist who looks like he's 112 and is usually somewhat insane, but is often a fatherly type
  
• the big monkey-looking brute who is strong and tough but women mock or treat as a big brother
  
• the boyish hero who gets the girl and alternates from being very capable in a fight to utterly idiotic and cartoonish
• the androgynous fighter, who is amazingly powerful and deadly, but quiet and always has the women after him.

This last type is the most bizarre. It is a sort of Japanese version of the Clint Eastwood strong and silent, deadly in a fight sort. Yet instead of Eastwood's ominous whisper they speak with a lisping, effeminate voice (at least in the translations). They have long hair, delicate features, and are difficult to tell until some ways into the story whether or not they are a man or a woman - and sometimes they are both.

This was a puzzling aspect of Japanese culture to me, where such masculine types as the samurai and shogun were part of their past. Yet when I see this news story from CNN I begin to wonder if it isn't more representative of Japan than I had initially thought.

This isn't a date, though. It's business.

The woman, a successful executive, has joined a growing number of professional women in Japan are forking out $1,000 to $50,000 a night for male companionship.

They meet their "hosts" in hundreds of clubs that have sprung up around Tokyo - the industry says only compliments are exchanged. The women pay for a man to lavish them with undivided attention.

"There's nothing wrong with a woman paying to be entertained by a man," one female client says. "It's just another step in equality."

The "male geisha" is Yunosuke, he gets his hair done every day and claims that his women want him to look pretty. "I give women things that men normally don't do, like complimenting their appearance," says Yunosuke, suggesting that women don't get compliments from men in Japan. Here's what this paragon of masculinity and female affection looks like, the kind of man who earns $200,000 a year keeping wealthy women company:

Yet one has to wonder, what does a powerful, successful executive woman look like who has to pay $50,000 to get a night of companionship with this guy? I'm assuming that this is a man, the story says so. Japan is a very odd place, with women paying to date the Willow Sword here and men working on sex bots so they don't need women at all. Meanwhile you can go to a vending machine and get teenage girls' panties. Used panties. But this one has me scratching my head. Is there something about women I don't know, they want girlish looking ambiguous boys? What does this say about a culture, if anything?

*hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ for this story, where Ace says "How sad is it for us guys to realize that when a woman feels like spending $50,000 on the man of her dreams she spends it on a chick?"

Japan, Geisha Boy, Anime