
Rent-a-sister: Coaxing Japan’s young men out of their rooms [video] - tartoran
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-46885707/rent-a-sister-coaxing-japan-s-young-men-out-of-their-rooms
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personlurking
Also interesting:

"Substitutes: Japanese men woo silicone sex dolls to overcome loneliness" [RT,
26 min, 2018]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgbTrusgsqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgbTrusgsqA)

~~~
no1youknowz
People have a tendency to laugh and ridicule these things. But there is a
growing trend of single males in Asia.

For China [0]:

> in a country with 34 million more men than women...

For India [1]:

> has an excess of 37 million males...

The mind absolutely boggles at this combined amount.

Necessity is the mother of all invention as they say. Remember the first
mobile phone or remember the first car? Primitive to say the least. Now look
at what they can do.

I would wager we are 25-50 years away from deus ex machina bots. I hope to see
it in my lifetime.

[0]: [https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/leftover-
men...](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/leftover-men-china-
get-married-gender-imbalance-one-child-policy-10485358)

[1]: [https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-
reads/arti...](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-
reads/article/2142658/too-many-men-china-and-india-battle-consequences)

~~~
personlurking
Re: China

"Millions of single Chinese men desperately seeking a wife" [France 24
English, 26 min, 2017]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboNzluN6Nc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SboNzluN6Nc)

I caught both this report and the one in my parent comment around the same
time. The Chinese solution looks to be divided between sex dolls and importing
women (though leaning more towards the latter) while the Japanese solution is
about sex dolls and rent-a-families (possibly leaning towards the former).

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nwellinghoff
Yep turns out all you need is a friend. This is a draw back and advantage of
city life. if you want to be isolated, you can

~~~
8ytecoder
Rural and sub urban areas can be way more isolating. I don't think it's a city
phenomenon.

~~~
corobo
Speaking only from my own experience I'd have to disagree, to isolate yourself
in a rural area you have to become the weird person with the curtains closed
24/7 that people talk about

In a city you simply cease to exist if you don't leave your apartment

~~~
code_duck
Some rural areas are so isolated, or neighbors so unconnected, that nobody is
talking about you or even aware of you. There may not even be anyone near who
would be a candidate to discuss you.

For example, my friends who live in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. They
moved from the Midwest and rented a 60 acre plot. They have yet to meet any of
their neighbors after about 10 months. They’ve vaguely gotten to know people
who work at the hardware or grocery stores, but these people don’t think about
them outside of work. Since default is to stay at home and have no contact
with anyone, they’d have to go out of their way to have social contact with
people in the town.

This is not nearly as remote as some areas I know, either. And even more
remote areas, if your neighbors talked about you at all, it might just be like
“oh yeah, there’s some guy that lives down by 45 with the truck” and they keep
you in mind in case they have an emergency.

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the_af
I wonder how different this is from therapeutic companions [1], once you strip
it from its "something weird that happens in Asia" trappings. A companion is
sometimes used in Western countries for people who have mental disorders or
difficulties (sometimes very serious, like Schizophrenia), sometimes as an
alternative to internment. They are often very expensive, unfortunately. These
"rental sisters" don't look bizarre when looked through this lens.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6741585](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6741585)

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onetimemanytime
Is this the future of every society?

~~~
vinay427
I'm curious where this question is coming from. If depending on the
understanding that Japanese society is, in general, futuristic relative to
other societies, I don't believe that's the case. Otherwise, I see no reason
why this specific phenomenon might be in the cards for other societies, at
least anecdotally speaking.

~~~
ken
Is there reason to believe that the problem is specific to Japan? The video
says it's also known to be happening in the US, UK, Italy, and South Korea.
Those are 5 very different developed countries, on 3 different continents, and
together make up nearly 10% of the earth's population.

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lai
Also look up family rental service.

~~~
guessmyname
Asian Boss made a video some time ago about it [1].

Conan also made one, a bit more on the humorous side [2].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhYMirs7fk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhYMirs7fk)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU)

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alecco
How about addressing the cause instead of focusing on the cure? After WWII
they adopted a view of masculinity as toxic. And women have a big part on this
phenomenon.

> In a 2011 poll of Japanese boys aged between 16 and 19, 36% said they were
> not interested in having sex; > the figure for girls in the same age group
> was at 59%.

[https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/01/13/no-sex-
please...](https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/01/13/no-sex-please-were-
young-japanese-men/)

~~~
spinach
Why are you blaming women exactly?

Japanese men seem afraid of women in general and have a need to infantalize
them so they can consume them. There is a big culture of illustrated child
porn there, it's out in the open, everywhere and normalized like no where
else. It's retweeted on twitter by otherwise normal seeming
illustrators/people, though it would disturb most people outside of Japan. The
culture of cute, kawaii things is just as obvious in it's sex industry as it
is in everything else, although in a very horrifying way.

~~~
belorn
Your theory is that the reason why there is a gender difference where 36% of
men but 59% of women in the age group of 16-19 wanting sex, is because of
illustrated child porn? Does that not sound a bit like an extra ordinary claim
which might need some supporting evidence?

Gender roles and norms is normally used to explain gender differences, and is
often one of the first area that people explore. If the data had been reversed
and 36% of women and 59% of men wanted sex, what would we normally claim to be
the cause?

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ummonk
I think you read that backwards. Those are the respective percentages who
don't want sex.

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hkai
I'm sure our kids will laugh at this and will spend much less times on their
phones or in their rooms than we did.

~~~
sunseb
[https://www.wired.com/story/why-teens-arent-partying-
anymore...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-teens-arent-partying-anymore/)

