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The story seems fake. Does anyone have a link to this "Family Romance" corporation? Where is the proof? Why would the guy be so ruthlessly candid about his im
by jhiska 9y ago
The story seems fake.
Does anyone have a link to this "Family Romance" corporation? Where is the proof?
Why would the guy be so ruthlessly candid about his immoral failings? Why does he talk in a carefully manicured, but cruel and amoral way -- why is he dissing his own product? Why would he plaster his face on The Atlantic when he depends on anonymity? They have 800 employees -- that's large; why haven't we heard of this before? Why is he so knowledgeable about what English-speakers don't know about Japan and so able to help us understand -- has he lived and studied extensively abroad? Why is he able to understand what he does is immoral but is unwilling to change even as it affects him so deeply -- why doesn't he get a new job? What would happen to his clients if he decided to stop working for them -- how legally binding would his contract be? Is he legally obligated to keep lying even if he changes his job -- that's impossible, right? No one is legally obligated to lie. Is the business really "booming" when it seems to be so unknown -- and, in fact, relies on keeping a low-profile for maximum effectiveness? How did the clients find them -- and how did everyone else not find them?
Where are other, reliable articles about this? The only other source I find is The Sun and people have mentioned Yahoo! Answers, which aren't reliable sources. Can someone in Japan confirm this?
It screams of fictional writing.
- HHest 9y agoLink is provided in the article. Am also surprised that the actor allowed his photo to appear. In fact, the website, which is in Japanese, has many photos. I wonder if they are of employees who work there. That would seem counterproductive.
- jhiska 9y agoYou are indeed right that there is a website. A website could be manufactured if this is part of a clever viral campaign for some dystopian book or film. Where is reliable proof? Can someone in Japan confirm this?
- uremog 9y agohttp://family-romance.com/ http://family-romance.com/
- hutzlibu 9y agoWell, since it is a buisness and beeing professional it is OK for him. So I would only think it is fake, because he openly speaks about it. Advertisement I suppose, but counterproductive for his clients. But maybe he also don't want to put it up anymore and just focus on the management part?
- Hasz 9y agoThe linked domain was registered 5 years ago -- if this is promotional stunt or fake piece, it has been impressively planned out.
- jdtang13 9y agoThis entire interview is very Japanese. There’s certain mentalities, especially an ironic, self-aware, self-deprecating cynicism, that is really present in some Japanese people that Americans can only understand with some effort. Maybe the business could be fake for some unrelated reason, but the interview itself is entirely consistent with a Japanese mode of thinking, and the writing does not scream as fake at all to me. The writing is definitely more self-aware and humorous than you would expect from an American in the same situation.
- 4bpp 9y agoThere is a fairly recent manga ("Kanojo, okarishimasu.") fictionalising the rental girlfriend version of this business. In a two-page preface to one of the chapters, the author depicts a date that he sent his editor on with a girl rented from a real service for the purpose of "material collection". In the wake of that, the author (@miyajimareiji) and the service in question proceed to exchange a series of Twitter PR backrubs, and notably it turns out that the employees of the company (@aoi_renkano and others) all have meticulously maintained Twitter presences. Based on that, I suspect that (1) the people doing the hiring are pretty good at suspending their disbelief anyway and would rather have more information about the "product" they are getting, and (2) the people who are actually going to be deceived are not even expected to track down a Japanese Twitter account, let alone an article in an English-language newspaper with near-zero name recognition in Japan. Regarding the point about the interviewee supposedly being knowledgeable about what English speakers don't know, have you ever seen raw transcripts of a typical newspaper interview? The interviewer and translator (and there almost certainly was one: the English is far too idiomatic, and the person who ultimately penned the article seems to not even know that Japanese names are given surname-first, given how the article is written as if Yuichi were the surname) probably provided a lot of leading that was ultimately left out, or even added in explanations of their own.
- pixelcort 9y agoI'm living in Tokyo. There are a few companies providing these kinds of services. I get print advertisements in my mailbox weekly for them.