🍦 A Saturday afternoon at a seaside shopping mall. Two women — one much older than the other — share a single yogurt ice cream, taking turns with their spoons. "Oishii ne," they laugh. Delicious. To anyone walking by, they look like a mother and daughter on a perfect day out. Except this is the first time they have ever met. In Japan today, you can rent a mother. You can also rent an uncle, a boyfriend, a stand-in father — even a guy who literally does nothing. Welcome to the strangely tender world of Japan's human-rental economy.

A 21-Year-Old, a Yogurt Ice Cream, and a Mother She'd Never Met

The scene above, reported by Asahi Shimbun on May 10, 2026, is real. The younger woman is 21. She was about to start a new full-time job that spring, and her nerves had finally caught up with her. Her real mother had passed away from cancer before she even started high school.

"Tomorrow I start my new job," she said over the phone. "I just want someone to talk to."

The number she dialled belonged to a service called Rental Mother, run by Client Partners — a Tokyo-based agency formally registered as "a women-staffed errand service." Around 400 women aged 20 to 90 are signed up as "mothers" available for hire. The rate is ¥5,000 (about $32) per hour, plus travel.

Client Partners' CEO Ruri Kanazawa explained the philosophy:

"A real mother is irreplaceable. But many people feel lonely for all sorts of family reasons. The role of a Rental Mother is simply to be there, close to that person's heart."

In some cases, sessions evolve into longer-term emotional support, with referrals to therapy or mindfulness. For our 21-year-old, two hours of window-shopping and a single shared ice cream were enough. She walked into work the next day. That's the whole story. And somehow, it's also a lot.

How Many Things Can You Actually Rent in Japan?

Brace yourself. According to Rental Family — the new Brendan Fraser film directed by HIKARI, released in 2025 — there are roughly 300 people-rental agencies operating in Japan today. Here's the menu, more or less.

🧓 Rent-an-Uncle (Ossan Rental)

Middle-aged Japanese men available at ¥1,000 (about $6) per hour. Hire one to help assemble IKEA furniture. Hire one to walk you into a bar you're nervous about entering. Hire one to listen to your career angst over coffee. The service has been around for years; even Japanese comedian Noritake Kinashi reportedly used to be on its roster.

🤷 Rent-a-Do-Nothing-Guy (Rental Nan-mo Shinai Hito)

This is the one foreigners usually find most baffling. A man named Shoji Morimoto runs a one-person service where, when you hire him, he genuinely does nothing. He won't help you. He won't give advice. He will respond to questions with the absolute minimum required and otherwise just… exist nearby.

He has over 559,000 followers on Instagram, and TV Tokyo turned his story into a 2020 prime-time drama starring Takahisa Masuda. Past requests include: "Come with me to a restaurant I'd feel weird going to alone," "Sit with me while I file my divorce paperwork," "Be the extra person we need to play this board game," "Watch me eat my last meal before a difficult surgery." The premise is radical in its simplicity: sometimes you don't need help. You just need a person to be there.

💑 Rent-a-Boyfriend / Rent-a-Girlfriend

From around ¥15,000 ($95) for two hours. Useful for: introducing a "boyfriend" at family gatherings, attending a wedding when you don't want to go alone, practising for a real date. Some services now offer English-speaking staff for international visitors.

👨‍👩‍👧 Rent-a-Family (Family Romance and others)

The granddaddy of the entire industry. The first known agency, Japan Efficiency Corporation, started in 1991 by providing fake guests for weddings. Today you can hire stand-in parents for an arranged-marriage interview, a stand-in father for a school open day, a stand-in spouse to apologise to estranged in-laws. Sessions cost a few hundred dollars per day.

In 2018, The New Yorker devoted a major feature to the industry. In 2019, German director Werner Herzog premiered a film at Cannes based on Family Romance founder Yuichi Ishii. From then on, the rental-family phenomenon became one of the world's go-to "weird Japan" stories — though, as we'll see, "weird" turned out to be only half the picture.

🍺 The Professional Get-Treated-To-Meals Guy (Pro-Ogorareya)

Yes, this is real. A person whose actual service is letting you buy them dinner. The idea is that there's something therapeutic about treating someone, anyone, to a meal and feeling generous. Morimoto credits this person as one of the inspirations for the Do-Nothing service.

👵 Rent-a-Grandma, Rent-a-Sibling

Exactly what they sound like. Sometimes used by single-parent households to give children a "grandparent" experience. Sometimes used by adults who just want, for an afternoon, what they never had.

Why Does Japan Have All This?

Western media has long framed the rental economy as evidence of "lonely Japan." Read enough first-person accounts, though, and a more nuanced picture emerges.

Reason 1: The weight of obligation in Japanese friendship. There's a cultural concept in Japan called on (恩) and giri (義理) — the unspoken ledger of debts and duties between people. Asking a friend for a favour adds an entry. Asking again adds another. By contrast, paying someone for two hours of their time clears the ledger instantly. Many users say it: "If I asked a friend, I'd feel guilty. With a rental person, I can just be honest."

Reason 2: A society of one. Single-person households now make up over 34% of all Japanese households. Roughly 30% of the population is 65 or older. Marriages are declining. Workplace social bonds have thinned. The infrastructure of casual human contact is, frankly, fraying. Human-rental services fill specific, unhealable gaps.

Reason 3: The Japanese love of the small, finite gesture. "I just want two hours of feeling like a daughter." A real mother is a lifetime contract. A Rental Mother is two hours, fully concluded, with no awkward follow-up. Lightweight intimacy. For a certain kind of person, in a certain moment, that is exactly what's needed.

Yuichi Ishii, the Family Romance founder, once told an interviewer:

"One man wanted a replica of his dead wife — same name, same memories he had written down. The world is unfair. My business exists to bring balance."

Hollywood Has Now Officially Noticed

In 2025, Brendan Fraser starred in Rental Family, directed by Japanese-American filmmaker HIKARI. Fraser plays Phillip, a struggling American actor in Tokyo who takes a job at a rental agency. He plays a stand-in father. A stand-in best friend. A stranger crying at a stranger's funeral. And — predictably — the line between performance and feeling starts to blur.

When Fraser first read the script, he said he was "shocked" the industry was real. By the end of filming, he was calling the film "a love letter to Tokyo, and to loneliness everywhere."

Years before the film, Conan O'Brien tried out a "rental wife" service for his Japan travel special. The point: this is no longer just a domestic Japanese phenomenon. It's part of how the world has come to talk about modern loneliness — and Japan, by being early to the conversation, is shaping the script.

The Expert's Gentle Caveat

Professor Yasue Nunoshiba of Bunkyo University, a specialist in family relationships, offers a measured caution:

"People may use these services to fill the gap between an idealised family and their reality. The contract has to be one both sides can genuinely accept. If sessions go on too long, there is a risk of psychological dependence — beginning to think of the rental person as real family."

Sound advice. Stories of clients falling in love with rental boyfriends, or coming to rely too much on a rental father, are not unheard of. That's why the better operators are explicit upfront: this is a service. A fiction. A two-hour kindness purchased honestly. Used that way, it can be quite beautiful.

How Does This Compare to the Rest of the World?

Japan isn't alone in confronting loneliness — just unusual in how it does so:

  • The United Kingdom appointed the world's first Minister for Loneliness in 2018. The NHS funds a programme called Social Prescribing, in which doctors refer patients to community activities instead of just prescribing medication.
  • In the United States, then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a "loneliness epidemic" in 2023, comparing its health impact to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Both are top-down, government-led approaches. Japan's response, by contrast, has been almost entirely bottom-up: hundreds of small private businesses, each with its own warmth, each charging modestly, each filling a different shape of empty space. There's no judgement to make about which is "better." It's just a fascinating divergence in how cultures choose to be kind to lonely people.

The Yogurt Ice Cream, Afterwards

The 21-year-old and her Rental Mother said goodbye at the train station with a smile. The next morning, she went to her first day of work, packed lunch in hand. This time, she made the lunch herself.

A real mother cannot be replaced. That much is certain. But sometimes, on a particular Saturday in your particular life, sharing a yogurt ice cream with a kind stranger can make Monday feel a little lighter. Maybe that's enough.

Japan's human-rental economy is strange. We won't pretend otherwise. But strange kindness is still kindness — and it's clearly helping someone, somewhere, get through their week.

Does your country have anything like this — kindness you can buy by the hour, from someone who is neither friend nor family? We'd love to hear how loneliness is met where you live!

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