More Than Real

Remember the first episode, season one of the dystopian series Black Mirror, where the woman’s husband dies in a car accident and she then orders a perfect replica of him? Well, that’s sort of what’s happening now in Japan. I mean, IRL.

There’s a company in Japan that hires professional actors to impersonate whoever you need. Do you want a father for your child? Do you need a boyfriend to show up with at parties? Are you gay, but you want to comfort your family by pretending you’re not and marrying someone of the opposite sex? You can find all of this at actor Ishii Yuichi’s Family Romance company.

Although the title prepares you for reading something a bit out of the ordinary, the interview that follows goes beyond the (or at least my) imagination. First, you have the situations when the Japanese feel they should hire someone: the one guy who paid good money to fly with five employees to Las Vegas and take pictures for his Facebook profile; the dying man who wanted to see his grandchild, but the latter wasn’t born yet (“His daughter was able to rent an infant for the day”); the anorexic people who want someone willing to eat in front of them. In between you have Yuichi’s story, his feelings about being a girl’s father for eight years, his views on identity and, generally, how is the life of a person whose job it is to be someone else.

As to the motivation of this business existing, Yuichi says:

“The happiness is not endless, but that doesn’t mean that it’s without value. The child had a father when she needed him most. It might have been a brief period, and she might know the truth now, but she had a meaningful experience at that time.”