Thaindian News

By Lars Nicolaysen
Tokyo, Jan 20 (DPA) At the entrance to a Tokyo fashion boutique a tall Japanese man holds open the doors for the shop’s female customers. The young man is tall, well-built and handsome, sports black hair cut in the latest fashion, perfect skin, a cool look and is always impeccably polite. Just like the ladies like it.

Japan’s businesses are well aware of that fact. While in the past, pretty young women were tasked with reeling in the customers, an ever increasing number of those good-looking “ikemen”, as those hunks are called in Japanese, join the ranks of the business eye-candy.

“We get new orders all the time,” said Masami Morita, vice-president of Okake Untenshu, a chauffeur service. His Tokyo-based company, which has many female clients, started in November to provide exceptionally good-looking drivers for its customers, he told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

Okake Untenshu’s 300 registered drivers had to undergo a strict selection process, he said. The company now employs six ikemen, but plans to increase that number to 20, due to popular demand.

The ikemen trend reflects the changing structures of Japan’s economy. Some 60 percent of its gross domestic product is created in the service sector, which may be famous for the exceptional politeness of its numerous salesgirls and its fantastic customer service approach, but is not known for turning out profits.

The sector’s profitability has been obstructed by producers controlling distribution all the way to department stores and supermarkets, said Martin Schulz, an economist at the Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo.

Focussed customer-orientation that went beyond the expected general politeness never happened. Each time the country entered an economic crisis, restructuring efforts only led to better distribution networks and lower costs, Schulz said.

Japan’s businesses rarely tried to improve their marketing strategies or customer focus.

This pattern is changing, especially as younger customers are less interested in the products turned out by Japan’s established industries, such as cars, television sets or refrigerators.

Merchandise quality alone is not enough; customers of today expect more, particularly service.

Department stores offer their own product lines, restaurants are keen to have their signature style, and design and marketing gains newfound importance.

At the same time, the latest downturn marked Japanese women, who enter the workforce in increasing numbers, as the key consumer group to lift the country out of its economic misery.

This is where the ikemen come in, to offer that something extra that the female customer demands.

The word itself is a relatively new creation, stemming from youth slang in Osaka, where “iketeru” means “cool”. By adding the English word “men”, which in Japanese can also mean “face”, the term ikemen for cool, good-looking guys was born.

But beauty is not everything for becoming a successful ikemen, who also needs to be well-groomed, well-mannered, smell nice and be able to express himself, all factors of extreme importance to Japan’s ladies.

“Women hate it if someone looks down on them,” Morita said.

“I used the service once ahead of an important meeting and I really felt comfortable,” said a client of Morita’s service. “Since then, I occasionally order (an ikemen driver). And I am very proud when a good-looking driver opens the door for me,” the businesswoman added.

The trend is gaining momentum: there are culture classes run by handsome teachers; in cafes and bars, regular customers come from far away to be served by “their” ikemen.

Mika Ohi, 26, is a regular at a bar in Tokyo’s hip district of Ikebukuro. She goes there because of Shinji, the 27-year-old owner.

“I come here at least twice a week,” she said. “Shinji is looking so good and really knows a lot about cocktails. And, he is so sweet,” she said.

“You know, women often are in different moods, but Shinji is such a good listener and always smiles at me. That cheers me up,” Mika said.