Why Japanese Men Are Renting Fake Wives—The Disturbing Truth Behind Japan's Loneliest Industry

追加: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]When we think of Japan, our impression is usually one of rigorous discipline and repression or those inexplicable otaku subcultures. But in this magical country, there's a service that can completely shatter your worldview, family rental. This is nothing new in Japan. It's a mature industry that has been developing for over a decade.

[00:00:20]Although the Japanese government is too embarrassed to publish official statistics, there are dozens of companies in the market offering such services and business is booming.

[00:00:29]Currently at Family Romance, if you have the money, there's no one you can't rent. You can rent a father to attend your wedding. In the past, that non-existent honor could also be rented.

[00:00:40]You can rent a wife to bring home, especially to deal with those nagging parents who only know how to pressure you about marriage during the holidays.

[00:00:49]And if you feel your life has become too comfortable, you can even pay someone to scold you harshly, calling it stress relief. In this episode, we're going to expose this industry that sounds absurd but is even more absurd in practice. In the end, they not only deceived clients hungry for family affection, but also made fools of media outlets worldwide, staging an epic disaster of historical proportions. Hello, welcome to All Asian Dilemmas. Today, we bring you the truth behind family rental in Japan.

[00:01:19]If you worked at a rental company, what role would you most like to play? Leave a comment below to let everyone know.

[00:01:26]Let's first see how far Family Romance goes. Opening their official website, the price list looks like a McDonald's menu. First, the basic package, friend rental. If you want to go to karaoke but have no one to go with or want to go shopping but can't find anyone to take photos with, no problem. For about $80, you can rent a friend to accompany you for 3 hours.

[00:01:47]Next, the advanced package, family rental. Whether parents, brothers, or sisters, if you feel the scene needs more people, for about $130, you can gather four generations under one roof.

[00:01:59]Of course, the most impressive is the wedding proxy service. In Japan, if your wedding has too few guests, it's viewed as a social failure, the so-called public shame.

[00:02:09]If you don't have enough friends, or you're like that high school classmate who somehow never made any real friends, no problem. Pay for fake guests, about 100 to 130 dollars each. The service even has upgrades. If you pay an extra 50 dollars, this complete stranger uncle can take the stage and deliver an emotional speech, claiming to have watched you grow up, crying and wiping tears.

[00:02:34]With acting better than an Oscar winners.

[00:02:37]But we just want to ask, when they look back at the wedding video in the future, won't the bride and groom be so embarrassed they want to dig a hole and bury themselves? And if you don't even have a groom and just want to deceive your parents back in your hometown, telling them you're already married, they also offer a complete fake wedding package. Groom, guests, all included.

[00:02:57]For just about 33,000 dollars, you can stage an entire play to show your parents. Such filial devotion is truly moving, just a bit expensive. Besides these seemingly heartwarming services, there are heavier ones. For instance, the apology service. Suppose you cheated on your wife and got caught and don't know how to get out of it. You can pay around 130 dollars to rent an intimidating looking middle-aged man, pretending to be your direct boss or your stern father, making you to kneel before your betrayed wife and apologize.

[00:03:28]A true theatrical performance. But these are just appetizers.

[00:03:32]What really made this industry take off, and what gives chills when you think about it, are the real cases that follow.

[00:03:39]This is a classic case called the perfect lie.

[00:03:42]The protagonist is a man in his 60s living alone, named Nishida Kazushige.

[00:03:47]Mr. Nishida's situation is quite typical. His wife fell ill and passed away, and his only daughter after a fight left home and hasn't been in contact for several years. Every day returning from work, he only meets cold walls. So, he called Family Romance and placed a special order, rent a wife and rent a daughter. And he had very strict requirements for casting. You could tell he was a meticulous man.

[00:04:11]The wife couldn't be too pretty, and her height and body type should be similar to his deceased wife.

[00:04:17]As for the daughter, she should be in her 20s with a lively personality. His bill was for a family dinner, about $260.

[00:04:24]On the agreed day at 11:00 a.m., he was as nervous as a young man on his first date. He cooked at home personally, preparing a steaming okonomiyaki. The doorbell rang punctually, and when they entered, the actress's professionalism was evident. The rented wife skillfully hung her bag on the rack and even mimicked a characteristic gesture of the deceased wife, gently brushing back the hair behind her ear. Just that gesture nearly made Mr. Nishida cry on the spot.

[00:04:52]The daughter wasn't idle, either. She casually sat on the sofa, commenting on a TV show, lightly elbowing Nishida's ribs, acting playful. "Dad, look at this." That home, long devoid of warmth, was once again full of life. Although he knew very well that those two people smiling at him were strangers charging by the hour, that illusion of warmth was irresistible. Although that meal cost about $260, and he ate the food he cooked himself, the emotional value was enormous. Even more impressive, this rented daughter got so deep into the role during the conversation that she didn't just please the client. Like a real daughter, she said, "Papa Nishida, actually, my sister, Mr. Nishida's real daughter, must miss you, too. You should call her." See? That's professionalism. This conversation, which for ordinary people sounds normal, was huge encouragement for the lonely Mr. Nishida. After that, Nishida actually mustered the courage to contact his real daughter. Days later, returning from work, he discovered a bouquet of fresh flowers on the household Buddhist altar. His real daughter had come back. This case was later widely publicized by the media as the flagship of the family rental industry. But, hold off on the tissues.

[00:06:04]Remember, this was the star case presented to the media by the owner, Ishiya. And why was it a star case?

[00:06:10]We'll see later. After all, in this industry, the best actor isn't always the actor. Frequently, it's the boss himself. If Mr. Nishida's story was too warm and could make it seem like a charity, the next one is purely comedic.

[00:06:24]The famous Japanese website Rocket News 24 sent its reporter Yuki Yamada, a veteran single otaku, who had an almost religious fantasy about little sisters in otaku style. To fulfill this dream, he gritted his teeth and spent about $100. He rented a little sister to play with him for 3 hours. The meeting was set at the station. When a cute girl to him and sweetly said, "Onee-chan." We can imagine that Yamada's brain waves had already shot up to the top of Akihabara's TV tower. By industry rules, you generally can't take rented family members to private residences to prevent improper thoughts from clients. But, for filming purposes, they made an exception.

[00:07:05]Yamada was imagining as an anime his little sister looking at him with admiration, the two playing video games together. But, reality slapped him in the face. Upon entering, the rented little sister saw the scattered trash and messy bed, deeply frowned, and said, "Ooh, your room is disgusting. I don't even want to sit on the floor. A normal person would pay good money and feel humiliated, probably leaving a bad review." But, our Yamada was different.

[00:07:31]He was beaming inside. That look of disdain, those ruthless comments, this is the true essence of a little sister.

[00:07:38]How delicious. Seems this guy not only lacked affection, but had a certain masochistic streak. And so the two spent the afternoon playing video games and reading manga. But happy times are short. Three hours flew by, Cinderella's carriage turned back into a pumpkin. The three-hour little sister waved, said bye brother, and left without looking back.

[00:07:58]Yamada stood alone in the entrance lost in thought. The moment the door closed, Yamada didn't feel his dream had come true. On the contrary, he felt a devastating loss. He later wrote, saying goodbye was so painful. It would have been better never to have had a little sister at all. This is the side effect of rental services, the withdrawal effect. The happiness you buy with money is on credit. When the service ends, that doubled sense of emptiness comes for you with interest, hollowing you out completely. Since we touched on little sister, we must talk about that even larger and more surreal Japanese industry, girlfriend rental. First, this industry has an absolute iron rule. Any sexual contact is strictly prohibited unless you pay extra. No perverted thoughts, not even kissing on the mouth, at most holding hands. Dates must be in public places, no private booths whatsoever. In short, it's a transaction so pure that even kindergarten children would find it boring.

[00:08:54]You might ask, since you can't do this or that, then what do Japanese men spend hundreds of dollars on? What they want is the pure love experience and damned vanity. Professionals have shared stories about eccentric clients. One guy didn't go to dinner or the cinema, he went straight to the mall to buy men's shoes. Why? Because he thought a man buying shoes alone looked embarrassing.

[00:09:15]What will people think of me? So he rented a girl just to hear her say, "Wow, these shoes look perfect on you."

[00:09:21]For that one compliment, he spent hundreds of dollars. Another client rented a girlfriend to go to Disneyland and was silent the whole time. What did he want? He wanted to stand in line just to feel the superiority of look, I'm also someone who has a girlfriend to stand in line with me. For him, the girl only served to show off in front of single guys. That moment of vanity was worth the investment. Luxury platinum level girlfriends cost over $65 per hour, and you still have to queue and take a number. This kind of classic platonic transaction truly expresses vividly the humility and bone-deep loneliness of Japanese men. Everything we discussed before is at its core to save face or for entertainment commercial rental. But, in Japan, there's also a sister rental, which doesn't exist to give you pleasure, but to save lives. This service is specifically aimed at hikikomori, social recluses. You've probably heard of Japan's famous 8050 problem, a terminal illness of current Japanese society.

[00:10:20]80-year-old elderly parents still supporting 50-year-old children who live shut-in at home. These giant babies.

[00:10:27]These people are like ghosts living in the house, having cut all social ties, and not even wanting to see their own parents.

[00:10:34]This is where rented sisters come in.

[00:10:36]The representative figure in this field is named Komari, and she belongs to an NGO called New Star. Although called rented sister, her job isn't to play video games with you and call you onee-chan, so you can feel that otaku pleasure. Her job is more like an operation to treat autism. The process is extremely tough, even scary. There are several phases. First phase, letters. Sister Komari spends three consecutive months sliding handwritten letters under that locked door. Whether or not there's a response, she keeps writing in a unilateral gesture of deep affection. Second phase, the door. The sister sits directly outside the bedroom door, speaking through the door. Even if she doesn't receive a single response for months, she keeps sitting there talking to herself for half an hour.

[00:11:22]The third phase is opening the door.

[00:11:24]Only after establishing trust over half a year or a year does she try to get the person out of the room. The entire process can last one or two years. This service isn't cheap either, about $6,000 per year. Sounds expensive, right? But for those desperate parents who are about to die and still don't know how their child will survive in the future, this is literally the only lifeline. And these rented sisters are truly working at the risk of their lives because some of these recluses isolated from society for so long, not only have introverted personalities, but also serious violent tendencies. One slip-up in what was meant to be psychological counseling turns into a fight club. But this industry has also had real miracles.

[00:12:05]There was a veteran otaku named Nakamura Ikuo, who after being persistently extracted by Sister Komari, not only returned to society, but fell in love with her. It's said they later intended to marry. This would be the most positive and dramatic side of the industry, looking like a Hallmark movie, until that man appeared and turned everything into a farce. That man is the protagonist of today's fraud, Ishii Yuichi. If in the previous chapter, Sister Komari was sacrificing herself to save people, the protagonist of this chapter, Ishii, owner of Family Romance, thought that was too tiring and undignified. He decided to transform this industry into something grandiose.

[00:12:43]This guy wasn't just successful in Japan, his fame crossed oceans abroad.

[00:12:47]BBC, CNN, these international media giants lined up to interview him. Even the famous hardcore documentary director Werner Herzog was deceived, going to Japan to make a film based on him called Family Romance LLC.

[00:13:00]Ishii even acted in the film as himself.

[00:13:03]In front of the media, he boasted of being the busiest man in Japan. He claimed to have a multiple life. Today, he was someone's caring husband.

[00:13:11]Tomorrow, he was someone else's present father. Upon waking in the morning, the first thing he did wasn't brush his teeth, it was to think whether his surname today was Tanaka or Sato. He bragged about having played the husband of 100 women and having dozens of children scattered across the country.

[00:13:28]And he was very proud of this, saying he loved the sensation of moving between lies and playing with the entire world.

[00:13:35]Western media was completely fascinated.

[00:13:37]They thought it was the perfect miniature of lonely Japan. As long as the story was exotic enough and fit their stereotypes of a sick Japanese society, logic and facts didn't matter.

[00:13:48]But those who walked too close to the river will eventually get their feet wet. Ishii's biggest problem is that he got so deep into the role he fooled himself. In 2018, the famous American magazine The New Yorker sent a renowned journalist to interview him. Faced with this prestigious reporter from far away, Ishii thought the previous tricks weren't enough. So he bet everything and told the journalist a story worthy of an Emmy nomination. The protagonist with the pseudonym Reiko Shimada was a struggling single mother. Worried that her young daughter would grow up without a father figure and develop trauma, she rented Ishii to play the child's father.

[00:14:24]And this performance had already lasted years. Here comes the key point. That innocent girl to this day had no idea that this father who loved her and took her to the park every weekend was actually an actor paid by the hour. The journalist heard this and thought, "What a perfect story. It's exactly the kind of tragic and moving Japanese tale that Western readers love." So the journalist asked to personally interview this Reiko. Ishii of course immediately agreed and arranged a warm family meeting. At the meeting, Reiko's performance could only be described as best actress level. She cried recounting the hardships of raising her daughter alone, told how she emotionally depended on Ishii. In a moment of deep emotion, she said into the recorder the famous line, "Even if I didn't pay, Ishii would still be the perfect husband in my heart." And Ishii, sitting beside her, looked at mother and daughter with a profound expression full of tenderness and responsibility. When the article was published, the effect was explosive. Readers worldwide cried.

[00:15:24]Everyone lamented, "My god, Japanese society is so warped. Single mothers go through so much." And on top of that, they praised Ishii. "This isn't a simple greedy rental service. This is a living saint, a humanitarian." But only Ishii himself knew where the flaws of this play were. Because the story was too good, perfect to the point of seeming fake. While Ishii enjoyed this international victory, Japan's NHK channel also arrived. Although they're all colleagues in the profession, the Japanese are detail-oriented, or rather cunning. The NHK documentary team, during preliminary research, sensed something didn't add up. First, they investigated that Mr. Nishida, who paid to rent a wife and daughter for dinner.

[00:16:05]NHK discovered that this guy had never been widowed. His wife was very much alive. And more, Mr. Nishida himself was a part-time employee of Family Romance.

[00:16:15]In short, that meal wasn't the redemption of a lonely old man. They were employees working overtime and eating the corporate meal. This discovery pulled a thread that unraveled everything. Ash followed the trail and exposed Reiko's story that moved the world, too.

[00:16:30]Guess what? That single mother who cried her eyes out before the journalist, who said she couldn't live without Ishiya, was no client at all. She was Ishii Yuchi's actual wife, and that little girl who supposedly didn't know her father was rented was likely their own biological daughter, or just a contracted child actress. This was clearly a trap set by the couple. He didn't rent actors to clients. He rented fake clients to the media. Western journalists wanted stories, exotic loneliness, no problem. My wife acts well, she performed for you. Afterward, The New Yorker had to publish a long retraction admitting they had been deceived.

[00:17:05]And Ishii's response was sensational.

[00:17:08]Faced with all of Japan's condemnation, he calmly stated, "I fabricated everything to protect the privacy of my my clients." Dude, you put your own wife to act for the whole world and you call that protecting privacy?

[00:17:22]Getting here by logic, Ishii should be ruined, his company bankrupt and maybe in jail.

[00:17:28]But reality is more boring than fiction.

[00:17:30]Although his name stinks like three-day-old natto, his family romance continues operating normally and business is probably even better. Why?

[00:17:38]Because in Japan, this is a real necessity.

[00:17:42]Whether to have a decent wedding or to get a fake father to go to parent-teacher meetings, as long as Japanese saving face culture exists, as long as there are people who think making others think I'm happy is more important than actually being happy, this business will never go under.

[00:17:58]Ishii's fraud was exposed, but people's vanity wasn't. Only the poor Western journalists came out losing. They wanted to use a magnifying glass to report on the extreme loneliness of the Japanese and ended up becoming clowns in the hands of the Japanese.

[00:18:13]Ishii is, in fact, very smart. One could even say he's a master of psychology. He precisely understood Western stereotypes about Japan. You think Japan is sick, lonely and weird?

[00:18:24]Fine, I'll perform that for you.

[00:18:26]As a line in the film goes, if the lie works, does the truth still matter?

[00:18:31]Reality is often more absurd than any script.

[00:18:34]If you worked at a rental company, what role would you most like to play?

[00:18:38]Leave a comment below.

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