Nightcap

Author: Nitta Youka
Imprint: Hanaoto
Publisher: Houbunsha
ISBN: 4-8322-8i38-0

Reviewed by Jeanne

This episode occupied a few pages in vol 1, but now we see the beginning of the relationship in detail. There's one significant change. Vol 1 Takaaki had no particular problems looking for work as a host. He's a child of the mizu shoubai- the water trade of hostesses and barkeeps and so on. His mother ran a couple of clubs up in Kanazawa, which is an old town on the other side of the island from Tokyo, and so naturally he turns to the business he knows when his mother goes bankrupt after being taken in by an unscrupulous lover.

Not here. Iwaki finds the grubby kid sleeping next to his car in Shinjuku to keep warm, lectures him about getting a job- 'Around here they'll hire anyone no matter what his background'- and between impatience and kindness hands the boy his coat to wear. Kid throws it back in his face cause he'd rather be naked than take something from a dirty (spits) host. Of course, a few days later kid shows up at the club as per the original, begging for work, having perhaps taken Iwaki's words to heart. Iwaki lends him the money to dress properly, kid gets an interview and is hired, and thus begins his life as a host.

After this are spoilers. Beware.

We find out that his mother is not only a hostess, his father whom he never knew was a host. With a good line and no doubt a pretty face, and his mother believed him and was left with the baby. And now Mom's been taken in again by another pretty face and lost all her clubs. Our kid, whose name in fact is Kato, seems to be looking for some ideal kind of father figure and seems to think he's found him in Iwaki. Iwaki takes him home, puts him up perfectly chastely in his bed, and gives him his 'Genji' name, the name he'll use in the business- Takaaki Ryou.

Takaaki soon has his ideals and his idealization of Iwaki put to the test. Iwaki has no ideals at all, and no principles that I can see either beyond the 'me first' ones. He's 27 and has been a host for eight years, and has had it with women who think they can buy his love for money. He squeezes them for all they're worth, because that to him is what the business is about. Takaaki doesn't want to think that his ideal man is the same as the selfish shit who swindled his mother. Iwaki tries pounding what he thinks is common sense into Takaaki, and Takaaki responds by becoming even more idealistic. 'If it's true that all hosts live off of women just to satisfy their own desires- if it's true there aren't any hosts who would never make a woman cry, never disgrace themselves, then I think there ought to be. And if you aren't that kind of man, well then, I *will* be!"

Oddly enough, the clash between Takaaki's professional ideals and Iwaki's jaded cynicism about the job is the heart of their relationship and of the manga. Not just a side issue to the emotional relationship, but the actual basis of it. Each wants the other to be different from what he is, but- dangerously- Iwaki has the greater personal stake in it. He can't stand Takaaki remaining true to his principles. He *needs* the guy to be like himself, a cold professional. And when reasoning with Takaaki doesn't work ('You're never going to lie, you're going to make all your clients love you, and somehow you're going to make them *all* happy? How many clients will you have- one?') he immediately goes to the next line of attack- seduction. He *says* he's training Takaaki in the arts of softening up a woman- 'You're not sexy at all. Here, (sitting down on the couch) try seducing me.' What he gets instead is a sincere and impassioned avowal of Takaaki's feelings for him. Which he chooses to laugh off as 'technique' on Takaaki's part. "You're a natural." Foiled at his first try to wean Takaaki from his natural honesty, he turns to the straightforwardly physical, where Takaaki is no match for him. Iwaki watches Takaaki red-faced and nearly fainting from his kiss, and promises to turn him into a first-rate host- of his own type.

What Takaaki is doing to some degree and Iwaki even more, is playing the game of host and client in their own lives. Each is searching for an illusion. Each is saying what their clients say to them- 'Be what I want you to be.' Takaaki's ideals save him from bitterness that the wonderful Iwaki, with whom he's clearly in love, is a cold-eyed user of people. But Iwaki's need for Takaaki to be Iwaki's notion of the perfect host- an Iwaki clone- brings tragedy. When he finds that Takaaki *isn't taking presents* from his female clients, he feels totally betrayed, personally and professionally and every other way. He sets out to destroy the unsuspecting Takaaki, and he does it the way a host would. He uses all his charm and authority and seductiveness, to do to Takaaki's mother's son what that long-ago fancy-man did to his mother. As to whether he succeeds...

I must say that though the story is fascinating for the Japanese-language reader, it may not do much for the picture reader. It consists of Iwaki and Takaaki arguing face-to-face a lot of the time. And by me, Takaaki is much more kakkou ii (cool, neat, spiff) in his 26-year-old version in the early volumes than as the blushing, yelling and terribly sincere teenager we see here. But there's one really neat minor character who will show up in other volumes- Eriko-mama, one of the top hostess bar owners in Shinjuku, a formidable woman who scares everyone and who was once a friend of Takaaki's mother. Eriko embodies the traditional down-to-earth attitudes of the mizu shoubai woman, situated on a practical middle ground halfway between Takaaki's ideals and Iwaki's narcissism and cynicism. You feel solid ground beneath your feet whenever she's around. Yappari, host clubs or no host clubs, the water trade is really a women's world.

The final story is another side story in the When a Man... series. It tells how a high-school boy called Ishii, who appears in vol 2, got into the hosting business through his involvement with another boy called Tokiwa (our Kenzaki) who hosts part-time at the new club Iwaki opens after leaving Schnapps. Tokiwa takes Ishii to meet Iwaki and that's the end of it for Ishii. "He's so gorgeous... and you can sense his manly self-confidence..." Sigh. I wish I found Iwaki as overwhelmingly attractive as everyone else in the manga does, cause to me he still looks like Harry the Rat.