Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A memoir, by Shoji Morimoto

If Haruki Murakami was a younger man today, grappling with how urban loneliness intertwines with technology in the 2020s, he could have easily written Rental Person Who Does Nothing: A Memoir.

When I came across a piece on Shoji Morimoto’s most unique line of employment sometime last year, initially I thought of it as a viral story and nothing more. But his idea of renting himself out to strangers as a service provider who promises the service of providing nothing – except simply accompanying his patrons to spend time together, doing what often are the most mundane things, reveals the deep-seated need for human connection that the Japanese society is lacking today.

The most interesting aspect of the narrative, which aligns perfectly with the idea of a rental person who does nothing, is that Morimoto allows the numerous stories of his clients who have hired him in the past to drive it, instead of making it about his own life – of which we only get occasional and brief glimpses.

The requests have a wide range too – from someone asking him to go watch a baseball game with them, to accompanying somebody as they file their divorce papers, or to say goodbye to someone on a railway platform, pay a hospital visit, or even wait at a marathon finishing line for a stranger. In one instance, a couple who’d met online wanted to rent him so he can watch them having offline sex, but unfortunately his wife stopped him from entertaining that offer.

The episodes may read slightly repetitive at times, but the point he’s trying to make about not being in a perpetual race and instead appreciating the thought of slowing down is most pertinent today.

“I get a surprising number of requests to listen to people,” he writes early on in the book. This memoir does something similar – it endorses the importance of listening and, in turn, learning something valuable about ourselves.