Takeshi Aida

Takeshi Aida, owner and president of the Ai host-club chain, turns the host club from a nightlife business into a case study in managed intimacy: customers come not only for attractive men, but for attention, conversation, and the feeling of an uncomplicated romance. His career carried him from sales and failed ventures into hosting and, ultimately, a small empire. He presents Ai as the responsible alternative to unlicensed clubs that, in his account, can become instruments of organized crime and exploitation.

Identity and Background

At fifty-nine, Aida had a carefully composed appearance: a tight-curled perm, a thin moustache, photochromatic oval glasses, and an expensive suit. His charm, the narrator observes, made people feel comfortable. That ease was part of his manner, but his story also shows a career built through repeated changes of direction.

Aida was born in Niigata Prefecture, the sixth of nine brothers. At twenty, he left for the city and became a salesman for a bed company, where he rose to the top of the sales staff. He next started a crime-prevention-goods business, which went bankrupt, and then opened a wig business. The latter brought him into contact with an economy organized around women customers and led to his first host-club job.

From Host to Club Owner

Aida’s first host position was followed by successive moves: after a year, another club hired him away, and a couple of years later the city’s largest club did the same. His progress suggests that he had developed the qualities the business rewarded, though the account does not reduce his success to appearance alone. Recognizing hosting as his vocation, he founded Ai, which became a leading standard for host clubs.

He later expanded beyond a single club into a small network of host clubs, pubs, and bars. Ai became such a fixture of Kabukicho nightlife that it appeared on a bus tour for middle-aged women visiting from the countryside. By the time Aida hired the narrator for a night’s work, he employed about three hundred men across five clubs. His reach extended into business commentary as well: Aida had written a management book, while his wife had written about the pleasures and difficulties of being married to a professional host.

His Account of the Host Club

Aida described the work as more than dancing or selling drinks. In his account, many women came because they were lonely, could not find someone at work to talk with, or wanted a listener, sympathy, or advice about a boyfriend. Others wanted entertainment: witty conversation, jokes, talk about television, or a partner for ballroom dancing. He argued that the most popular hosts were not necessarily the best-looking; success depended on listening, entertaining, offering counsel, and knowing when to pour a customer’s drink.

That service also reverses an everyday social expectation. In the drinking etiquette described around Aida’s explanation, women were ordinarily expected to serve men, while younger or lower-ranking people poured for their seniors. In a host club, men attend to women instead. The reversal helps explain the appeal Aida identifies: a customer is fussed over and treated as the center of attention. He characterized the arrangement as a simulated romance—an evening of companionship without the demands or uncertainty of a conventional relationship. Some customers, he acknowledged, paid to sustain the fantasy of a sexual relationship with a desirable host; for many others, the attraction was the attention itself.

Business Practices and Boundaries

Aida’s account placed financial limits alongside emotional service. He said a good host needed to understand what a customer could afford and must not drive her into bankruptcy or financial distress, which would create trouble for everyone involved. He contrasted that principle with newer clubs that used young, attractive men and very low advertised drink prices to draw customers, including women who were already drunk. In his description, the resulting debt could bring loan sharks into the picture, and some of the worst establishments functioned as fronts for organized crime.

He presented Ai as different because it had operated for a long time, kept accurate accounts, paid taxes, and registered with the police. In Aida’s view, those practices made the chain less vulnerable to extortion. Unlicensed clubs, by contrast, could be blackmailed and converted into profitable operations for the yakuza. He distinguished such businesses from genuine host clubs: their purpose, he said, was to turn customers into sex workers or debt slaves. These are Aida’s claims about an industry he knew firsthand, and the contrast reveals how he defined responsible ownership: intimacy could be sold as entertainment, but customers’ financial security and freedom set limits on what a club should do.