Drini Kakuchi
TOKYO: In 2018, MORIMOTO Shoji set aside his degree in science and astronomy and his job for a large education company and launched an unusual and successful business mainly doing nothing.
He called his service Do-Nothing Rental, a one-man business that provides services for Japanese people who want to hire someone to be with them for whatever reason they choose.
“I am available for any situation in which the person who hires me wants me to be there because they need someone,” said the 42-year-old Morimoto in a recent interview. Over the past five years, Morimoto, who also previously worked as a writer but who found work boring, has worked with more than 5,000 people.
He describes his job as “by doing nothing, I am doing something.” He says he fills a gap, often created by loneliness or frustration with adapting to life. “There is so much pressure for people to conform in Japanese society,” he explained, referring to the strict code of acceptance and following social rules in Japan.
“A lot of people fear social ostracism,” he says. His clients, the majority in their twenties and thirties, cannot open honestly to each other about their most inner requirements. This is where his business has taken off easily.
Morimoto, who exudes a quiet and unimposing personality, is happy to listen and stand by the people who hire him. He gives no advice and makes no demands, emotionally or otherwise. So, people pay him to sit in the park with them because they don’t want to appear odd to others by having a drink alone.
The cases are fascinating. “A lady wrote to me asking me to think of her that day and the next,” he said. She explained that as a newly employed graduate she needed mental support after her day off was cancelled by the company. She said, “I was feeling tired and my request is sudden. You can just think of me and say to yourself, ‘Is she ok?’ ”
Morimoto is married and has a family, which contrasts with his clients who live in a society that is increasingly living alone. Birth rates have collapsed to 1.15 per woman and only 490,000 people got married in 2024, half the peak of 1.1 million in 1975. The number of elderly living along has shot up to 19 million.
Morimoto, however, views the current lifestyle as not really about loneliness but representing the fallout of a particularly Japanese social trend.
Morimoto recalls being paid by a politician to listen to his complaints. The man wanted someone to listen as he griped about his responsibilities and the obstacles he faced. “The politician was cleaning his office and needed someone around, so that`s just what I did,” said Morimoto.
But Morimoto avoids jumping into his clients’ lives emotionally. “I have only the flimsiest connection with my clients,” he admits. “Unless they make another request, we will probably never meet again.”
The job is largely moral support, he explains. “A client who was writing his manuscript for submission to a competition wanted someone to keep him going because he was lazy on his own. So, I just sat there reading some manga books that he gave me.” Morimoto said the client was happy that he had someone he did not know in his room and reported he had made progress.
For the future, Morimoto says, it is natural for people to want to take things easy and the reason why he prefers a society where everyone lives as they want to live. “It’s like forcing adult values on a baby that reduces its cuteness,” he says. “It’s such a shame and makes me wonder why it is that adults can’t just live as they like.”
AloJapan.com