General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsLonely? No worries, just rent a relative.
But you'll have to travel to Japan first.
People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than youd expect.
By Elif Batuman
The head of one rental-relative company described the service as human affection expressed through the form of the family.
wo years ago, Kazushige Nishida, a Tokyo salaryman in his sixties, started renting a part-time wife and daughter. His real wife had recently died. Six months before that, their daughter, who was twenty-two, had left home after an argument and never returned.
I thought I was a strong person, Nishida told me, when we met one night in February, at a restaurant near a train station in the suburbs. But when you end up alone you feel very lonely. Tall and slightly stooped, Nishida was wearing a suit and a gray tie. He had a deep voice and a gentle, self-deprecating demeanor.
Of course, he said, he still went to work every day, in the sales division of a manufacturing company, and he had friends with whom he could go out for drinks or play golf. But at night he was completely alone. He thought he would feel better over time. Instead, he felt worse. He tried going to hostess clubs. Talking to the ladies was fun, but at the end of the night you were alone again, feeling stupid for having spent so much money.
Then he remembered a television program he had seen, about a company called Family Romance, one of a number of agencies in Japan that rent out replacement relatives. One client, an elderly woman, had spoken enthusiastically about going shopping with her rental grandchild. The grandchild was just a rental, but the woman was still really happy, Nishida recalled.
Nishida contacted Family Romance and placed an order for a wife and a daughter to join him for dinner. On the order form, he noted his daughters age, and his wifes physique: five feet tall and a little plump. The cost was forty thousand yen, about three hundred and seventy dollars. The first meeting took place at a café. The rental daughter was more fashionable than Nishidas real daughterhe used the English word sharpbut the wife immediately impressed him as an ordinary, generic middle-aged woman. He added, Unlike, for example, Ms. Matsumotohe nodded toward my interpreter, Chie Matsumotowho might look like a career woman. Chie, a journalist, teacher, and activist, who has spiky salt-and-pepper hair and wears plastic-framed glasses, laughed as she translated this qualification.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/japans-rent-a-family-industry?elqTrackId=b3fd6cf36d5442a98114b9cfc883e7a2&elq=c51cfb77e46e419590209d17cba2f381&elqaid=18936&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=8548
spooky3
(34,457 posts)Emotional attachments could follow and then there could be sadder outcomes.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)It's also strange, and potentially emotionally destructive, that some don't know, often for years, that a relative has been rented for them. If you read the whole article, you may remember the little girl whose mother rented her a father. That relationship went on until she turned 20. Meanwhile her mother had fallen in love with the actor and he had to firmly explain the boundaries to her.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)So many aspects of family life and issues in Japan were raised.
Absolutely fascinating.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)explaining this odd phenomenon.
Raine
(30,540 posts)I only read what was posted here but I'm bookmarking it so I can read the whole thing when I'm not so tired ... THANKS!
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I could see a lot of problems cropping up.
MoonRiver
(36,926 posts)The article indicated that the ones deceived are forgiving, but I'm not so sure that helps relationships in the long run.