How “Rental Family” Explores Japan’s Rent-A-Person Trend
Mari Yamamoto, Takehiro Hira, and Akira Emoto, stars of Hikari’s latest film exploring Japan’s rent-a-person industry, discuss loneliness, performance, and connection.
Ever need a stand-in uncle or girlfriend? That’s something that money can buy in Japan. This interesting phenomena is at the center of the film “Rental Family.” Written and directed by Hikari, who directed several episodes of Netflix’s “Beef,” the movie stars Brendan Fraser as an actor who has been living in Japan for seven years until one day he is cast as the “token white man” by a people rental business.
Mochi talked to cast members Mari Yamamoto, Takehiro Hira, and Akira Emoto about the business at the heart of the film and the line between performance and authenticity.
What Rent-A-Person Services Look Like in Japan
Every now and then, I have seen certain tabloids and social media cover the fact that in Japan, professional actors provide rent-a-person services to portray the client’s friends, family members, or co-workers at events, or simply to hang out. Although these stand-in services have made waves when viewed from Western perspectives, the actors all shared that being approached about this film was the first time they heard about this line of work.
Hira, who plays the rental family business owner Shinji, shared that he had only heard of one story where a person in Hawai’i had been asked to perform as a horse jockey for an event. Not living in Japan himself, he suggested old white-haired men could play Santa Claus — which is not so different from holiday actors here in the States — or a marriage priest.
Yamamoto added that they visited a real rent-a-person business in preparation for the role and that she had heard stories but never experienced this service in real life. “I most recently heard that high school girls are renting out middle-aged men like an uncle. Because the background of that is that Japanese dads work really long hours, so they’re not really around, and [these girls] actually want some advice from older men who aren’t trying to sleep with them,” she shared.
Playing an actor named Aiko working at the same business, Yamamoto found these occurrences especially sweet because elderly people in Japan are a large population, and they give these grandfathers and sometimes grandmothers an extra source of income and purpose. This service also allows clients to pay someone to express what you actually need to another person, when needing something can typically feel very vulnerable.
“Why we need this service is because we can’t communicate our needs to each other,” Yamamoto reflected. “Especially in Japanese society, there’s this mentality of, ‘I don’t want to burden anyone on both parts,’ and that’s why people are so thoughtful and polite and all of these things.”
There is a darker side to this business as well. In the film, Aiko notes that the most popular services are apology services, where clients are called upon to enact apologies in the case of breakups or workplace conflicts.
Where Performance Ends and Real Connection Begins
In the film, Fraser plays Phillip, who joins the rental family business full time. While the trailer alludes to Phillip playing father to a half-white and half-Japanese girl applying to a competitive school, that’s not the only job he takes on or that is portrayed on screen.
Phillip reflects on the nature of his employment, particularly when he is assigned to portray a journalist that is writing a story on a retired and forgotten actor Kikuo Hasegawa. Played by the Japanese actor and director Emoto, Kikuo lives with his daughter but is aging and suffering episodes of brain fog. His daughter, recognizing his loneliness, hires Phillip.
When we talked through a translator, Emoto admitted that he sees the choice to hire someone to deceive Kikuo as selfish. “Because he’s stubborn, he wants to get through it himself. And [on the other hand], there’s also this question of that kindness of the daughter — is it true kindness? She’s doing this for him, and at the same time, she has less of a burden if she does that.”
Having learned about this business for the first time as well, Emoto explained that “what [this film means] to me is that, ‘Wow, humans have gone so far with loneliness they’re no longer able to speak, to be in conversation’ … society in Japan used to be a lot more connected, and particularly like neighborly connections used to be more common. But now there’s much more isolation, and people don’t even really know what their neighbors look like. I think that’s what this film expresses as well.”
Yamamoto had a more positive take on these interactions. “It is a double-edged sword in that you can express what you need sometimes. What this film says is that even if it starts out as something transactional, it doesn’t mean that what you experience or what you grow out of it can’t be real,” she said, likening it to saying hi to a stranger and striking up a conversation.
In the end, “Rental Family” doesn’t pretend to solve the oddities or ethics of Japan’s rent-a-person world. Instead, it sits in the intrigue — the sweetness, the strangeness, the loneliness, the moments of care that may or may not be “real.” As Yamamoto put it, even a paid performance can spark something genuine. And as Emoto warned, even kindness can slip into deception.
You can watch “Rental Family” in theaters starting on Nov. 21, 2025.
