well-built and handsome Japanese man holds open the doors

At the entrance to a Tokyo fashion boutique a tall, well-built and handsome Japanese man holds open the doors for the shop's female customers. The man 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.

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.

During the latest downturn Japanese women entered the workforce in increasing numbers and is 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.