@morimotoshoji
I’m starting a service called Do-nothing Rental. It’s available for any situation in which all you want is a person to be there. Maybe there’s a restaurant you want to go to, but you feel awkward going on your own. Maybe a game you want to play, but you’re one person short. Or perhaps you’d like someone to keep a space in the park for your cherry blossom viewing party…I only charge transport (from Kokubunji Station) and cost of food/ drink (if applicable). I can’t do anything except give very simple responses.
With this tweet, I became “Rental Person,” a Rental Person Who Does Nothing.
Billed as a “memoir”, Rental Person Who Does Nothing is more the story of modern Japanese society than it is truly the story of its purported subject, “Rental Person” Shoji Morimoto. Morimoto gives a vague explanation for why he decided to start this service (something to do with his ex-boss at a publishing company calling him a “permanent vacancy”, saying “it makes no difference whether you’re here or not”), but really, it would seem that when he decided to leave that job and become a freelance writer, he stumbled onto the idea of renting himself out so as to get material for his twitter account: an account that currently has almost half a million followers and led to a TV series and this book. In keeping with his passive “do nothing” persona, Morimoto didn’t even write this book: Another writer (not a particular fan of Rental Person) and an editor asked Morimoto “simple questions” to which he provided “very simple responses”, and in combination with dozens of client requests copied straight from the twitter account, they have assembled a pretty straightforward story of what it is that Morimoto provides. And it’s this low effort, straightforward, intentionally impersonal style that makes this a not terribly good read, and that’s too bad, because through the “jobs” that Morimoto is asked to do, this book reveals something really shocking and insightful about Japanese society. Married with a child, Morimoto isn’t offering romance or friendship or engaged conversation — he is literally showing up to do nothing — and it was fascinating to learn the variety of ways in which people are looking for just that. Not a great book, but I’m glad I read it. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final form.)
If people are pressured by society into saying they have particular abilities, then the true value they have as themselves becomes blurred. If you say you have value because you can do particular things, you will always be judged by established social standards. So I never say I can do anything. And I don’t do anything.
The variety of tasks Morimoto engages in is fascinating — standing behind a woman while she asks a grumpy neighbour to return the laundry that fell off her balcony onto his, listening to someone say their most personal truth out loud, waving to a man as he leaves on a train — and so many of the tasks are requested by people who have friends, but who would be embarrassed to be seen enjoying an ice cream soda (as a grown man) or unwilling to risk crying in front of anyone but a stranger upon returning to Japan after missing one’s grandmother’s funeral while abroad (as a young woman). Human rental services are apparently not entirely uncommon in Japan (“According to its website, Ossan Rental ‘rents out middle-aged men who mistakenly think they’re cool. Prices from 1,000 yen an hour. They’re at your service for chats, confidences and running errands.’”), and there are evidently “volunteer listeners” who will help you with your problems, but Morimoto’s hook is that he’ll take up space at your request, but do very little else. He will sit on a tarp to reserve your spot at a cherry blossom viewing party, but he will not pick the spot; he’ll reply “good job” or “that’s cute” to a text message if you give him the response ahead of time, but he won’t give a personal opinion in a conversation; he’ll read the manga you provide if you just need someone to sit in your apartment to keep you focussed on a project, but he’s just as likely to play on his phone instead, “there’s no mental cost. It’s very easy.”
I was eventually surprised to read that Morimoto doesn’t charge his clients for anything but travel expenses ("I suppose the bottom line is that doing it for nothing seemed easier") and that he and his family were living off his savings (“Maybe it’s best to think of it as something I’m doing for fun [like a trip abroad I’ve saved up for.]”) And while he goes on to explain that many clients insist on tipping him — he likes to complain that it’s better to tip in cash than with Amazon and Starbucks giftcards — and that his first priority in choosing his clients is deciding which tasks will have the best stories for his Twitter account, several sources outside of the book say that he charges 10 000 yen per task. It seems like the rental person who does nothing is doing pretty well for himself.
Though my relationships with clients are almost always one-on-one, use of Twitter means we’re not alone — there’s also an audience of unknown size. So I feel that Do-nothing Rental is made up of three elements: me, client and audience. Anyone watching can always go up on stage as a client, and a client can always sit in the audience.
In what was Morimoto’s first request to generate a huge response, a client asked him to send the message “gym clothes” at six am the next morning. People were fascinated by the idea of someone outsourcing to a human something that could be easily handled by the client’s own technology — imagining Morimoto waking himself up before the appointed time, typing the words into his message bar, watching the clock tick off the final few seconds before he could hit “send” — one commenter said that it brought a tear to their eye. In such a disconnected and conformist society — where even if you do have friends, being honest about your thoughts and preferences is a shameful proposition — Morimoto seems to have stumbled into a valuable niche market: not only is he providing a physical presence for those in need, but he’s sharing it on a virtual platform where thousands of others are vicariously feeling that freedom and connection. What this book exhibits about Japanese society really is fascinating, but even if the disengaged/low-effort writing was meant as an intentional display of “doing nothing”, I wanted more from it.
