The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

Went into reading this article expecting it to be a one-off, rental boyfriend type deal (that kind of trope is used very frequently in movies/tv shows/manga there), but this way way deeper than I expected. I'm pretty mind blown at how far they are taking this fake/real replacements. Pretty close to some dystopian scifi actually.

>If the client never reveals the truth, I must continue the role indefinitely. If the daughter gets married, I have to act as a father in that wedding, and then I have to be the grandfather. So, I always ask every client, “Are you prepared to sustain this lie?” It’s the most significant problem our company has.

>Morin: You’re offering a more perfect form of reality?

>Yuichi: More ideal. More clean.

This is so Truman Show esque.

> There was one case of a man in his 60s. His wife died, and he wanted to order another copy of her. We provided that.

This was incredibly poignant to me.

Japanese society can be incredibly restrictive in its social circles; it's too simple for me to imagine a guy in his 60s with few friends, few opportunities to make more friends, and then his only friend and long-time partner dies. It's too easy to imagine how lost and desperate he might be, why he might want this kind of service to create a fake reality to live in.

Some people might read this and think "wow, twisted that people can sell this kind of thing in Japan," but as someone who's lived here for a while, I think "wow, twisted that Japanese society forces people to feel like they need this kind of thing."

I struggle to find any kind of up side to the fact that society enables this kind of service, or rather, that this kind of service is even made necessary. Does anyone else see one?

Edit: To go into a bit more detail, my problems with society enabling this kind of service are really:

1. Social expectations and pressure

2. Lack of mental health care/counseling/options and awareness

It's pretty hard to just up and make friends in Japan. People generally stick to social/activity circles, but even then, you have boundaries.

For example, if you have a golfing group, you guys may go out for drinks but that would be that. You'd almost (key word) never go over to someone else's house, or go see movies together, or any of that -- they're your "golf people."

But that's assuming that you do have a golf group or whatever. A large number of people just go through life with their friends from elementary, junior high, or high school... and then their friends from college. Then friends from the workplace, if you make any beyond the level of "drinks after work."

I know a lot of people who have "drinking friends" from various adult social circles, but their only "real" friends (in the Western sense of people you can chat to about almost anything, do almost anything with, etc.) are a tiny handful of people they've known since junior high or high school.

Loneliness is a huge problem in Japan.

Is this the world that we're creating in modern life?

Will men from the workplace drift into your lifelong pals? My cousin was there last winter and was making some solid headway into a social circle, but ended up disgracing himself in a comedy of errors involving tequila and a runaway golf cart. He's back now and boasts to me that he has a way with the Japanese but I think he's always fudged up the truth some.