When I first saw the listing, I thought it was a joke.

“Wanted: Woman, early 20s, to play the role of estranged daughter. Must cry on cue. Pay: ¥15,000/hour.”

I was 24, recently laid off from a retail job in Osaka, and unsure what to do next. But something about that ad stuck with me. Maybe it was the oddly theatrical nature of it. Maybe it was curiosity. Or maybe it was loneliness—my own, and something larger I sensed in the city around me.

Japan is growing older and more alone. In 2024, the government reported that 29.3% of the population is aged 65 or older—about 36.25 million people. That number has been rising for decades. By 2050, more than 10.8 million elderly people are expected to live alone, making up over 20% of all Japanese households. Already, in just the first half of 2024, more than 28,000 elderly individuals living alone died at home—many of their deaths unnoticed until days later.

Against this backdrop, the rise of Japan’s “family rental” industry starts to make a strange kind of sense.

Today, I work for a company that provides stand-in family members. I’ve been a daughter, a girlfriend, a younger sister, a niece. Clients hire us for reasons ranging from social appearances to emotional healing. One woman wanted to tell her nosy neighbors that her long-estranged daughter was finally speaking to her again. An elderly man paid me to visit him each week to talk about the wife he lost years ago.

It’s easy to be cynical about it. There are moments when I question what I’m doing. Isn’t it manipulative? Aren’t we just performing connection for money?

But then I remember one job in particular. I was hired by a businessman in his 60s to act as his daughter during a hospital visit. He’d never had children of his own. He just wanted someone to hold his hand.

“I’ve worked my whole life,” he told me, eyes glossy with tears. “I didn’t think it would end with this much silence.”

For some, renting a family member is less about deception and more about creating a moment of relief—a pause in the ache of loneliness.

I keep my real life and my rented roles separate. My friends don’t know much about what I do. My own parents live in a different prefecture. We talk once a month, maybe. In some ways, I think I understand the clients more than I’d like to admit.

There’s no blueprint for navigating this new terrain. Japan’s demographic crisis has created gaps—emotional, generational, and social. And into those gaps, companies like mine have quietly stepped.

Sometimes, I wonder what it says about us as a society—that we’re more comfortable hiring actors than picking up the phone to call our families. But in Japan today, where so many suffer in silence, perhaps what matters most is that someone is listening, even if they’re paid to do so.

As I left my most recent job—playing a cheerful, smiling granddaughter for an 84-year-old woman—I bowed politely and stepped into the elevator. She waved from the doorway, a tremble in her hand. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “See you next week?”

I nodded. And I meant it.

Written By Hana Ishikawa for The Asian Diaries