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The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#171

Post by edgarvaldes »

eighthnate wrote: post #98
stickfigure wrote: post #14

Can someone confirm that this is real? It reads like (dismal) satire.

Almost everything the media writes about japan is exaggerated clickbait. This is true of all "exotic" cultures ( china, india, middle east, africa, mexico, etc ) but for some reason, it's especially true of japan. It's a form of cultural/racial fetishism. Other countries do that with us too. Foreigners think that all americans carry guns, wave flags and settle disputes with a duel. The media latches on to a fringe su…

Are we (Mexico) exotic for the USA? Honest question.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#173

Post by echion »

_aldr wrote: post #159
ugfgibcvg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why this is being downvoted.

Personally, it's the "Her mother is a lazy, dishonest bitch who bought a fake father rather than finding a real one for her daughter." part of the comment. It's very strong language that I don't think is deserved and it makes it sound like finding a new father would be easy. There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan.

> There's a well documented reason why there are a lot of single men in Japan.

What is that reason? (Serious question)

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#174

Post by freeflight »

hkmurakami wrote: post #2

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 dau…

> Pretty close to some dystopian scifi actually.

But it's not really that surprising, as much as I love Japan, the way they've commoditized casual social interactions has always been downright scary to me.

Hostess club culture might be the most obvious example, but it's only the most well known atop a whole mountain of service industry which revolves around people paying for casual social interactions, which imho belong among basic human needs.

The notoriously strict Japanese social hierarchy probably played a part in the widespread establishment of such practices: Can't show any weakness among social peers, so people rather isolate themselves and even keep their casual social interactions on a "professional level". This also removes the need to keep up with peer pressure in a very dense and very socially competitive environment, just outsource all the venting to a service worker.

I fear in a not so far-flung future this will become more common outside of Japan because high population density probably also played a role in the establishment of these strict social hierarchies and all their resulting woes.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#175

Post by Eliezer »

fnwx17 wrote: post #97

top notch journalism, I couldn't stop until I read the entire article, not skipping any paragraph. the whole thing is just an interview/dialogue, but it's incredibly captivating also, you could make three separate movies on existentialism just with ideas from the article. lastly - the interviewee, he must have such strong philosophical dilemmas

It is in fact a suspiciously perfect interview with a man who specializes in giving optimized impressions.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#176

Post by danudey »

ugfgibcvg wrote: post #155
bjourne wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfulness is important, yes, but so is outcome. And if this woman after ten or twenty years, when she is well-adjusted with a career and family of her own, finds out the truth, would she be angry with her mother - or thank her? Given the amount of adopted kids that have been lied to, and later found out, she'll be absolutely fur…

I don’t understand why this is being downvoted.

Because the problem isn't that the woman doesn't have a husband, the problem is that society is shitty to kids who don't have a father. That's the problem the woman is solving.

The comment above is implying that the woman is "a lazy, dishonest bitch" for not going and finding a boyfriend or husband so that the girl won't be bullied at school, which is a pretty clueless thing to say. The idea that a family needs a father in order to have any worth or be treated with any respect is the cause of the problem in the first place, and this comment is just reinforcing that ignorant and incorrect position.

In other words, the reason the woman needs to hire someone in the first place to keep her daughter safe is because of people like the person who posted that comment.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#177

Post by nemothekid »

musage wrote: post #73
sho wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically mentions the positive outcome of the arrangement - the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped, and she has the father figure she obviously needs at this critical part of her development. And from all appearances he is genuinely doing his best to be that. It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfu…

> the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped What makes you think that wouldn't have happened over time by itself? What's the message here, bullying someone for having lost her father is okay, not having a father is not okay? That's normalizing people being bullied for being humans. It's normalizing not allowing a widow to find another lover who at least may have an act…

You are dissatisfied at the situations - we all are. We all understand that society is getting more isolated. However you deflected the question "righteous crusaders for truth, if this girl was put in front of you, would you tell her?" with a completely unrelated question.

Society has never been perfect, and it's a very tall order to say that an individual had the agency to build one where this situation would not have incurred in the first place. A single man cannot undo decades of societal decay.

In this situation, you have the agency of one person, to (try) improve the life of another's. If you were the widow, how long do you think you would have to search and deal with various male figures before you finally found the right guy? If you were Yuichi, do you take up this case and try to live honestly with the daughter forever and abandon your old life? Or you can, as you seem to be arguing, do nothing and hopefully the daughter deals with bullying. Those are your options. It isn't fair to the daughter to say "these people who tried to help you are wrong, what they should have done is solve Japan's suicide problem."

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#178

Post by icebraining »

bjourne wrote: post #99
sho wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article specifically mentions the positive outcome of the arrangement - the young woman's confidence has improved, destructive behaviour stopped, bullying stopped, and she has the father figure she obviously needs at this critical part of her development. And from all appearances he is genuinely doing his best to be that. It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfu…

> It's very hard for me to condemn this when the outcome seems so inarguably positive. Truthfulness is important, yes, but so is outcome. And if this woman after ten or twenty years, when she is well-adjusted with a career and family of her own, finds out the truth, would she be angry with her mother - or thank her? Given the amount of adopted kids that have been lied to, and later found out, she'll be absolutely fur…

I don't disagree that this is dishonest behavior, as a son I'd prefer the bullying to discovering this. That said, your cavalier attitude about how she should just "find a real father" is not appropriate either. If she was battered, as the answer implies, it's completely expectable that she has trust issues with starting any new relationship, let alone bringing someone into her daughter's life.

Japan may be full of single men, and I'm sure many are wonderful people, but she already failed once in her judgment, so how can she trust herself not do to it again? Is it laziness to avoid swimming after you've almost drowned before?

Plus, you're actually reinforcing her position, by treating "a father" as something you just go out and get, like a car. What if she simply doesn't want to be intimate with anyone? How many single men are prepared to be a father without being a husband?

What you're essentially saying is that you agree that she should hire a father for her daughter, only that she should pay with her body instead of her money.

Re: The Booming Japanese Rent-A-Friend Business

#180

Post by danudey »

Eliezer wrote: post #170
tyingq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but it's just terrible. The mother is paying $200/month for a service that could disappear at any moment. The daughter thinks the rental is her real father. That's highly likely to unravel sometime in her life time. Certainly at his funeral...he is using a fake name and personna.

Presumably if her mom is about to run out of money, she pays for a final session where the dad gets hit by a car and has a funeral, right?

If it costs $18,000 USD for a wedding, I wonder what it would cost for a funeral. Likely more than $200.
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