Sake to Me

Occidental pleasures for Japanese businessmen

THE management of this Japanese piano bar "wants models, preferably all-American blonde and blue-eyed types,'' says Geri, a longhaired, sweet-faced twentyone-year-old who has studied acting but aspires to be a cop. More to the point, hostesses should be able to weather singing and dancing with the clientele.

The Japanese piano bar, a watered-down American version of geisha-dom that has flowered in the past decade, is not so much secret as secreted. Dozens thrive in New York, where the financial action is, but they can be found in other major cities. Facades windowless and unassuming, these Far Eastern social saunas never advertise, relying instead on word of mouth among relocated businessmen to fill their slightly-larger-thanliving-room-size quarters each weeknight. American business associates might accompany the regulars; wives almost never do. Wheeling and dealing occurs, but conviviality and wooing rule.

"These men work from eight A M. until seven P.M., go out for dinner, then come to places like this until they close at two," marvels Geri, who has worked at the Yakuza for eight months. (The bar and all workers mentioned here are pseudonymous, by request.) Regulars enter the dimly lit main room and are escorted past the decorative rubber plants by a kimonoed mamasan. This middle-aged maitresse d' brings them an ice bucket, a water decanter, and their liquor—nearly always Chivas—which costs roughly sixty dollars a bottle. "It's even more expensive in Japan," explains Geri, "so they don't mind. ' ' If a bottle isn't finished, it is marked with the regular's name and stored in a closet until the next visit.

Champagne glasses of spicy pretzels and pickled doodads are the only food, yet the Chivas, a

$30-per-person cover charge, and fees for the cordials and the cordialities of attending hostesses can reward a table of four with a $300 tab. But it seems unlikely that the Yakuza will lure the chichi away from sushi.

"The men are just paying to re-create a dying Japanese tradition," says Geri. "In Japan, women train at serving men. They sit quietly at board meetings to cater to them. It's apart from anything sexual, but it does get to be degrading, and the younger generation is rebelling."

"Japanese men are not used to hanging out in bars trying to pick up women," says Cheryl, a soft-spoken Asian video artist-hairdresser-chain-smokerhostess recently arrived from England. "They're serious and uptight during the day; they need a place where they can loosen their ties, get drunk, sing songs, have a good time. ' '

Piano-bar workers, whose

ranks once included rock star Cyndi Lauper, are daytime dancers, artists, or drifters. They answer ads in the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Back Stage to play Western geisha for as much as ten dollars an hour. They wear makeup, high heels, and long gowns or miniskirts—never pants. A night's work entails applauding politely after each poker-faced executive takes his turn at the microphone, slow-stepping with patrons round the dance floor, keeping the glasses full, changing damp napkins, and talking small across the language barrier.

"Most of the time," says Cheryl, "you compliment their clothing, discuss your jewelry or daytime interests, or listen to their love life or business stories." Although Japanese coyness can cloy—Jenny, a Philippine dance teacher, quit the Yakuza last summer because she was "sick of being told 'I

love you' so often"— overt passes emerge only after many a Chivas. "And you can usually decline discreetly," says Geri, "but I have punched at least one guy on the dance floor. ' '

Only about a third of the women are Asian, according to Geri, and few receive any instructions from management. Patrons frequently complain that Americans don't know the proper art of being a hostess. Many newly hired hostesses are alienated enough by the Pacific overtures to quit within a week, Geri says; those who stay often find that when on dates with a boyfriend they catch themselves lighting his cigarette and cleaning up after him.

Most of the women profess little interest in dating Japanese men, but a few quietly seek out a sugar daddy to help with the rent or pay for fancy dinners. Fringe benefits can range from perfume to a piano to a trip to Japan to meet the customer's family. One actress-hostess reports that a businessman flew to L.A. solely to deliver her resume to his friend in TV advertising.

The Yakuza pays employees for the time they spend with a gentleman whom they later bring to the club, and, Jenny adds, "if you want to do something after hours, it's not discouraged, but the few who do have to be real discreet. ' '

Taking the job home can have its side effects. One hostess adopted Buddhism and redid her apartment with hand fans and silk-screened prints. Another experiences recurring nightmares in which men follow her home jabbering gibberish.

David Handelman