“French Maid” Shops
Help Japanese Make Friends!
Boyé Lafayette De Mente
Coffee shops were among the first new businesses to appear wholesale in Japan following the end of the Pacific War in 1945. By 1950 there were dozens of thousands of them, with the larger ones featuring such themes as Russian Cossacks, fashion shows, art galleries, etc., with the waiters and waitresses dressed in the appropriate attire.
The shops were a runaway success for several reasons. First, because there were no other public places where large numbers of people could go for coffee and light snacks—and they were heated in the winter…and by the mid-1950s air-conditioned in the summer!
And second, company offices at that time were generally not heated in winter or air-conditioned in the summer, and most of them did not have private offices for managers and executives or special rooms for business meetings—resulting in hundreds of thousands managers and employees holding their meetings in the new coffee shops.
By the mid-1960s the overall number of coffee shops in Japan had increased but the foreign-culture-theme approach had virtually disappeared.
Now the theme approach has made a comeback, featuring a “French maid” theme not only in coffee shops but also in casinos, karaoke bars and souvenir shops. This new phenomenon first appeared in Tokyo’s famed Akihabara “Electric Town” discount and wholesale shopping district, which attracts several million Japanese and foreign tourists annually.
The petite, cute “French maids” in the various shops wear short-skirted uniforms that include aprons, socks that come just above the knees, and stylized bow ties.
Japanese professors (who specialize in commenting on social behavior of every kind) say this new phenomenon is a spin-off from the custom of young girls to make the uniforms of their favorite animation characters , wear the costumes on holidays and weekends, and gather at popular meeting places to show them off.
Other professors say the real reason for the proliferation of the “French maid” concept in coffee shops, karaoke bars and casinos is that they encourage the usually reticent Japanese to begin conversations with strangers, and come out of their “shells.”
These profs say that the Japanese have become great at communicating via email and text-messaging but that they are still reluctant to engage strangers in instant conversations and make friends the way Americans and other Westerners do.
“French maids” in karaoke bars sing along with patrons and take requests—at ¥500 a pop!
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Copyright © 2007 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente. To see a list and description of 40-plus books on Japan by the author, go to http://www.phoenixbookspublishers.com/.
