How to Hire Fake Friends and Family

Money in Japan can buy the appearance of love, and that appearance, according to a man who runs a business involving becoming other people, is everything.  Ishii Yuichi is a 36-year-old on call to be your best friend, your husband, your father, or even a groom at your wedding.

His 8-year-old company Family Romance, provides professional actors to fill any role in the personal lives of clients. With a staff of 800 or so actors, ranging from infants to the elderly, the organization prides itself on being able to provide a surrogate for almost any conceivable situation.

This business thrives in Japan because according to Ishii, “The Japanese are not expressing people.  There is a communication deficit.  In conversation, we do not express ourselves, our opinions, our emotions.  Others come first, before our own desires.  The family size is diminishing too as families used to be large.  There are more people who eat alone now.”

Ishii’s business theme, ‘more than real’ is a product claimed to bring about an experience that surpasses reality.  “More than real” according to Ishii means that, “There are less concerns.  There is less misunderstanding and conflict.  The clients can expect better results from a more perfect, more clean version of reality.

Ishii is a strong believer that the term, “real” is a misguided word.  “Take Facebook, for example, is that ‘real?’  Even if the people in the pictures haven’t been paid to be there, everything is still curated to such an extent that it hardly matters.

The ideology behind the business is that the world is an unfair place and, Family Romance, will bring balance to the injustice of it all.  “A woman with a boyfriend doesn’t need to hire a boyfriend.  A man with a father doesn’t need to hire a father.  It’s about bringing balance to society.”

There is something to be said about Ishii’s business filling the void where unbearable absences or perceived deficiencies occur in people’s lives.  Hiring out, a la carte, human interactions is becoming a new norm, and the demand is rapidly increasing.  “More people want to appear popular on social media.  We had a man recently who paid a huge sum just to fly with five employees to Las Vegas and take pictures for Facebook.”  Another case included, “A dying man who wanted to see his grandchild before his death.  His daughter was able to rent out an infant for that day so the dying man could eventually pass on peacefully.”

The driving force of the business is the idea to avoid the truth for in-the-moment happiness.  It is fully realized that happiness is not endless and the truth will have to come out some day, but that doesn’t mean that the in-the-moment, perceived happy reality isn’t without value.’  “I had a single-mother friend and she had a son.  He was trying to enter a private school but they denied him solely because he had no father.  In this instance, I posed as the boy’s father.”  In a similar situation, Ishii posed as the father of a 12-year-old girl who was being bullied at school because she didn’t have a dad.  “I’ve acted as the girl’s father, with the same name, ever since and I am the only father she has ever known for the past 8 years.”

The dilemma here is obviously that the girl does not know she is being lied to as the mother has rented out the ‘ideal father.’  “The mother wanted the father to be kind and never yell and able to deliver wise advice during the couple times per month that the father and daughter meet.”  The daughter has developed loving feelings and connection for the hired father and Ishii feels the weight of that responsibility.  “I feel the heaviness and responsibility everywhere I go.  In certain situations, I feel very sorry and guilty that I’m faking it.  Sometimes, I go home and wonder for myself, ‘is this, now, the real me, or the actor.  The overall feeling is very agonizing and unsettling.  It can be tough sometimes to be alone with my inner monologues.”

Confusion and unintended emotional connection also come to Ishii in the form of other jobs.  “There are cases where I have to be a groom for a family that pressures their lesbian daughter to marry.  Fifty of my employees make up the wedding party that interacts with the real family of the bride.  The situation makes me emotional as there are fifty fake people celebrating me.   These people know me and we are all in this together.  In can feel very real.”

Other jobs for Ishii entail taking on the identity of a salaryman who made a mistake.  He flails on the ground and bows profusely, shaking all over (as is the serious ‘I’m sorry’ custom in Japan) while the man who made the mistake is standing next to the boss who is verbally abusing Ishii.  “I’m thinking all along, I’m innocent!  And I want to point at and uncover the actual culprit.  It is extremely uncomfortable.”

 

More popular jobs for Ishii entail being hired out as a boyfriend for women.  “Those clients are usually older ladies in their 50s but now many of them are actually in their 30s.  Generally, the women just want to have fun with a younger man and feel young again.  For the younger ones, women hire me out because they typically feel that in a real relationship, you’re slowly building trust and it takes years to create a strong connection.  For most of them, it’s a lot of hassle and disappointment.  Five years could go bye and then they change or break up with you!  It’s proving easier to just schedule two hours per week to interact with an ideal boyfriend.  There’s no conflict, no jealousy, no bad habits.  Everything is perfect.”  As a result, Ishii has internalized this to mean that caring for a significant other in his own life feels like work.  His work in his fake families and friends are hard enough to manage and take all his time and energy.

 

Personally, Ishii’s favorite role is playing the caring father.  “I play with the kids, even when I’m tired.  It’s very tough when you’re exhausted, but you still show up, and you try to create happiness.  That’s the kind of father I admire.”  Despite feeling such jubilation at certain such roles, Ishii has become resigned to not really wanting anything for his own life.  “There is nothing more that I want.  I’ve met so many clients.  I’ve played so many roles.  By doing my job, their dreams have come true.  In that way, my dreams have come true as well.  I feel fulfilled, just being needed.”

(This was a summation of a full article which can be found at https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/paying-for-fake-friends-and-family/545060/)