* All client names have been changed to protect privacy.
It was a rainy Sunday in June, the rain having started in the morning.
That day, I was scheduled to attend a sports festival as a 'father.' Kouta-kun, a third-grader. The message from his mother, Ms. Sato, my client, arrived late the previous night. "Apparently, they'll hold it in the gym tomorrow even if it rains. Please." A small umbrella emoji accompanied the short message.
When I arrived at the gym, Kouta-kun rushed over. "Dad, I'm running second today, so watch me, okay?" I answered, "Yeah, I'll be watching," without a moment's hesitation, completely naturally. What difference was there between me and the "real" — no, the "blood-related" fathers surrounding us? At least in that moment, the me reflected in Kouta-kun's eyes was undeniably 'Dad.'
In the humid air of the rainy season, I always find myself contemplating the same questions: What is authentic? What is fake? Just as there is no authenticity or fakery in a raindrop, can such a distinction truly exist in emotions?
The day I played "father" in a rainy season gymnasium.
In the gym's footrace, Kouta-kun finished third. After crossing the finish line, he looked straight at me, a trace of regret on his face. I clapped, calling out, "You ran great!" He gave a small nod and returned to his line.
Was my applause in that moment an act? I honestly don't know myself. When Kouta-kun was running, I genuinely thought, "Go for it!" When he finished third, my chest ached a little. I felt a real pang of regret, thinking he could have gotten closer to first place. These were emotions not in the script.
After years of working in the Family Romance field, there's one thing I've become certain of: emotions do not conform to the 'form' of a relationship. Love isn't born simply from blood ties, nor do emotions become fake just because a relationship is contractual.
Ms. Sato began using this service when Kouta-kun was in his last year of kindergarten. She said it pained her whenever he fell silent at parent-teacher days, asked 'Where's Daddy?' What started as two or three requests a year has now become once a month. Kouta-kun believes I am his father. Ms. Sato says every time we meet, "Someday, I'll have to tell him the truth." But that 'someday' hasn't arrived yet.
In the gym, smelling of rain, I kept thinking. Who could possibly call the warmth of this applause fake?
Can one label emotions as "fake"?
A variety of requests come to me: proxy attendance at weddings, stand-in apologies, friend surrogates, visits to watch over the elderly. In every single one of these settings, what clients are seeking isn't merely the 'form.'
There was a request for proxy attendance at a wedding. The bride had extremely few friends, and they needed to fill seats. Four of our staff members attended as friends. Tanaka, the staff member giving the speech, met with the bride, Ms. Nakamura, many times beforehand, carefully listening to episodes from her student days. During the ceremony itself, Tanaka's voice caught in his throat. He had become emotionally invested in Ms. Nakamura's struggles that he'd heard about during their meetings — the story of her obtaining her nursing qualification while caring for her parents.
After the ceremony, Ms. Nakamura contacted us. "When Tanaka-san cried for me," she said, "I felt for the first time that my life had been truly acknowledged."
Were Tanaka's tears an act? I believe not. Certainly, Tanaka entered that situation as a 'friend role,' and compensation was involved. But those tears weren't written anywhere in the contract. They spilled out naturally, touched by Ms. Nakamura's life.
It's easy to label emotions as 'fake.' Fake because money is involved. Fake because it's a contract. Fake because there's no blood relation. But whose purpose does that label serve? At least for Ms. Nakamura, who saw those tears at the wedding, they were authentic. If an emotion is real, then it is real. That's what I believe.
A phone call received on a rainy day — "I just wanted to hear your voice."
During the rainy season, requests increase. Particularly common are requests for guardian visits or phone calls from the elderly.
There's a woman in her eighties named Ms. Yoshida. Her son is on an overseas assignment, and she has no close friends or family nearby. Twice a month, our staff visits her home as her 'nephew.' Initially, Ms. Yoshida was a little distant. But after about half a year, whenever a staff member visited, tea and sweets would be prepared at the entrance. "On the days you come," she'd say, "I start preparing from the morning." Our staff reported that they wanted to take a picture of Ms. Yoshida's smiling face as she said that, but couldn't bring themselves to.
On rainy days, phone calls are particularly frequent. "I don't have any particular business," Ms. Yoshida says, "I just wanted to hear your voice." Each time, the staff member talks for about fifteen minutes about the weather or what was on TV yesterday. Just everyday conversation. Yet, that very ordinariness sustains Ms. Yoshida's day.
We are sometimes called 'human rentals.' While I've grown used to the term, honestly, it doesn't quite sit right with me. The word 'rental' implies return. But the half-year's worth of conversations accumulated between Ms. Yoshida and our staff cannot be returned. Accumulated emotions don't vanish even when a contract ends. I believe it's not a rental, but something else entirely. Something that just doesn't have a name yet.
Why do people need a "substitute"?
Society has changed. The form of families has changed. Roles once filled by neighborhood uncles, voids once bridged by aunts, now remain unfilled by anyone.
Many of the requests that come to me are for the supplementation of 'human relationships that should have naturally existed.' A father for a child without one. Friends for a wedding without them. A conversational partner for an elderly person who has none.
I believe this isn't an individual problem. It's a void created structurally by society: nuclear families, thinning community ties, long working hours, isolation. As a result, gaps form between people. We at Family Romance are doing the work of stepping into those gaps.
But I don't want clients to become dependent on me. I want them to use me to build real human relationships. This might sound contradictory, coming from the head of a proxy service who says "please don't use us." But it's my honest feeling.
Ideally, such a service wouldn't be necessary. A society where real fathers come to sports days. A society where ten or twenty real friends gather for a wedding. A society where there's always someone to call on a rainy day. But reality isn't like that. As long as there are people who need it, I will continue.
When my own sense of "authenticity" wavers.
To be honest, sometimes I lose sight of who I am.
I serve as 'father' to over thirty-five children across twenty-three families. I have played 'husband' to over six hundred women. On the job, I use a different name, speak of a different profession, and live a different life. Even when I return home, there are moments when I suddenly can't tell if the self I am now is an act or my true self.
One night, when I said "goodnight" to my own child, for a moment, I didn't know which child I was saying it to. It was just for a moment. But that brief moment pierced my heart like a sharp blade.
This isn't just my problem. It happens to staff members who have been doing this job for many years. An elderly staff member had played the role of a "grandfather" for over ten years. When he passed away, the client's child cried. But that child couldn't come to the funeral. Because they didn't know who their "grandfather" truly was. Nor could we tell them.
Our job is to make emotions real. But sometimes these real emotions lose their way. Where should the client's tears, mourning the departed staff member, go? Like the rain in the rainy season, must they simply fall, soak into the ground, and disappear?
I still don't have an answer to this question.
On a morning when the rain has ceased.
In June, Tokyo sees rain almost every day.
When I head to a site with an umbrella, I often look at puddles. The sky is reflected in the puddles. Whether it's a cloudy sky or the shadow of a building, it reflects the scenery precisely as it is. The sky reflected in the puddle isn't the real sky. But what is reflected there is undeniably "the sky."
Our work might be similar to puddles. Not a real family. Not real friends. But the emotions reflected there are undeniably emotions. Kouta-kun's "Dad, watch me." Yoshida-san's "I just wanted to hear your voice." Nakamura-san's "I felt recognized." All of them, like the sky reflected in a puddle, are transparent, ephemeral, yet undeniably present.
The rainy season will eventually end. When the rain stops, the puddles will dry, and the reflected sky will disappear. But no one can deny that the sky was there in that moment.
Tomorrow, I will once again become someone's "father." Someone's "husband." Someone's "friend." It's not me who decides whether those emotions are real. It's the person right in front of me.
It's raining again today. But I think I'll go out without an umbrella. There are surely things one can only truly know by getting soaked.
「本当はこんなサービスはないほうがいい。でも、必要としている人がいる限り、続ける」
— 石井裕一