Call Boy
娼年
Discussed in the Journal
JournalThe Word Was Built for Somebody ElseJournalYou Can Read the Service Off the Booking FormStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A bored student becomes a call boy for women; each client teaches him a different shape of female desire.
Ryo Morinaka is a twenty-year-old student at a top university who rarely goes to lectures, tends bar at night and finds women, and sex, boring: a tedious exercise with fixed steps, he says. One night his friend Shinya, now a host, brings in an older woman, Shizuka Mido, who leaves her card with a note that she will wait for Ryo after his shift. At her flat she has him sleep with Sakura, a young woman born deaf, while she watches. Then Shizuka lays down five thousand yen, Sakura adds five thousand more, and Shizuka declares that he has passed, just. She runs a members-only club that sells men to women. Ryo joins.
The work opens him up. He learns to listen before he touches. Hiromi, a regular, at first only wants to talk in a café. The elegant Itsuki turns out to long to be watched as she urinates, and Ryo is the one who asks. A housewife is hurt that her husband no longer sees her as a woman. Izumikawa, who uses a wheelchair, wants a film made of Ryo with his wife, Noriko. A woman of seventy-one talks about her late husband and her ageing body. Ryo joins the VIP list beside Azuma, a masochist who shows him his scars. Shinya and Ryo's classmate Megumi find out and turn on him, but he will not stop. When he rivals Azuma as the club's star, Shizuka offers him anything he wants; he asks for her, and she calmly refuses. Then a booking comes in. It is Megumi. Afterwards she tells him he belongs to a different world from hers.
Shizuka tells Ryo her story: she was a prostitute, fell in love with a client, had his child, Sakura, and is living with HIV. Ryo asks to sleep with Sakura again in front of her, a second test, and she agrees. Then the club is raided and Shizuka is arrested. Before that she had looked into Ryo's mother, who died suddenly when he was a boy, and through Sakura he learns the truth: his mother also sold sex, and had been with a client on the day she collapsed. Ryo accepts it. At the end the club has reopened around Sakura, and Ryo is still at work.
Starring
Tori Matsuzakaas Ryo Morinaka
A bored twenty-year-old student and barman who becomes a call boy and learns, client by client, what women actually want.
Ryo Morinaka’s story
Ryo, twenty, skips lectures, tends bar and calls sex a tedious exercise with fixed steps. Tested with Sakura while Shizuka watches, he is pronounced a bare pass and joins her club. Client by client he learns to listen before he touches: a woman who only wants to talk, a housewife her husband no longer sees as a woman, a woman of seventy-one. When Shinya and his classmate Megumi condemn him, he will not stop. Rising to rival Azuma, he asks Shizuka for herself, and she calmly refuses. Megumi books him, and afterwards tells him he belongs to a different world. He asks to be tested with Sakura again. After Shizuka's arrest he learns through Sakura that his mother, who died suddenly when he was a boy, also sold sex. He accepts it, and stays in the work.
Sei Matobuas Shizuka Mido
The composed owner of a members-only club that sells men to women, a former prostitute living with HIV.
Shizuka Mido’s story
Shizuka runs a members-only club that sells men to women. She leaves Ryo her card at the bar, picks him up after his shift in her red car, has him sleep with Sakura while she watches, lays down five thousand yen and calls it a bare pass. She has a suit made for him, has him photographed, and watches him become one of her best. When he asks for her as his reward, she calmly refuses. Then she tells him her story: she sold sex herself, fell in love with a client, had his child, Sakura, and is living with HIV. She grants Ryo's request to be tested with Sakura again. Before her club is raided and she is arrested, she has traced Ryo's mother through her old connections, and what she found reaches him through Sakura.
Ami Tomiteas Sakura
Shizuka's daughter, born deaf, who tests Ryo on his first night and later keeps the club going.
Yuki Sakuraias Megumi Shirosaki
Ryo's university classmate, who condemns his work and then books him as a client herself.
Kenta Izukaas Azuma Hirato
The club's star call boy, a masochist whose clients hurt him, who predicts Ryo's success and befriends him.
Kyoko Enamias Elderly woman
A seventy-one-year-old client who talks to Ryo about her late husband and her ageing body before asking for what she wants.
Why it matters
Call Boy turns the usual direction of paid sex around. The women are the clients and the young man is the one for sale, and the film cares less about what he does than about what he learns by listening. The issues are female desire in its many shapes, loneliness, disability and age, sex work and its stigma, and a mother's secret that makes the son's path look less like a fall than an inheritance. Daisuke Miura, who had staged Ira Ishida's novel with Tori Matsuzaka in 2016, filmed it with the same star. Released in April 2018 on seventy-three screens with an R18+ rating, it drew mainly women, passed 300 million yen by its sixth week, and prompted what was billed as Japan's first women-only cheering screening of an R18+ film. It was Kyoko Enami's last film. It asks whether serving another person's desire can be a form of care, and what it costs the one who gives.