TOKYO, Sept 7 — For three days at the end of August, Tokyo was home to a start-up that seemed destined for either a Netflix documentary or a sociology seminar: a “Scary Person Rental Service.”
The premise was unnervingly straightforward. For ¥20,000 (RM575), the company would dispatch a tattooed, scowling man to stand beside you while you confronted life’s everyday indignities: a noisy neighbour, a snide colleague, a philandering spouse.
At higher rates, the scary person could remain by your side for up to three hours, provided you covered their train fare if your grievance lay beyond the Tokyo metropolitan area.
The company stressed its boundaries.
“They will not do anything illegal,” its website said, adding helpfully, “We do not employ gangsters.”
Instead, they offered atmosphere — the suggestion of violence without the inconvenience of actual violence.
It worked. One client brought along a scary person to hush a neighbour. Another borrowed one as a fake “good friend” to neutralise office bullies. A wife confronting her husband’s mistress hired one for moral support; the mistress confessed on the spot.
As the company later reported, clients found that simply having a scary person present made them “calm down and feel safe.”
Online, the service attracted a mix of admiration and thought experiments.
“It is human nature to bully the weak and fear the strong,” one supporter said. Another wondered what might happen if both parties arrived with rented muscle. A third suggested that the true value lay not in frightening others but in making clients less frightened themselves.
The idea was not without precedent. Earlier this year, women in China went viral for hiring bodyguards — at a few hundred yuan a day — to manage abusive husbands, stalkers, and unfaithful boyfriends.
Still, the Japanese version had a particularly theatrical flair, as though life’s small disputes required casting calls.
And then, as quickly as it arrived, it was gone.
On August 31, the company announced it would discontinue the service, offering no explanation.
The South China Morning Post reported that speculation turned to paperwork: the business may have lacked the proper license to rent out intimidation.
For now, Tokyo’s scary-person-for-hire joins the long list of vanished curiosities in the gig economy.
But it leaves behind a lingering thought: in a society where politeness is compulsory and confrontation taboo, perhaps the most radical luxury is someone willing to stand there, scowl, and say nothing at all.
AloJapan.com