Peaches, in all probability not her real name, is mixing a glass of cheap house whisky and water with a silver swizzle stick and chatting to the nightclub’s only customer. At eight in the evening it is still early for this cramped bar in Shinbashi, central Tokyo, where Japanese salarymen pay $50 an hour to drink and carouse with Filipina women. By midnight, its six or so tables will be full of red-faced men singing noisily into karaoke microphones and buying marked-up drinks for themselves and their younger companions.

Outfitted in a white dress slit to the thigh, Peaches speaks fluent English and Japanese and has completed three of four years of a business management degree. Now 29, she came to Japan several years ago as a singer. “I felt I should make a sacrifice for my family,” she says of her decision to quit university and come to Tokyo, from where she sent money back to help put her four sisters through school.