Japanese culture continues to be a thrilling mystery for everyone that was not raised in the country. On the one hand they are a modern country with access to the latest technology and have become pioneers in many of the conveniences that we now take for grated, but on the other hand they are a country with a millennia of tradition that is still observed. This intersection makes so that there are more than a few societal quirks that are not often known by foreigners, one of them being you can rent a grandmother.
To be fair, you could technically do this in every single country, hire an actor or actress of a certain age and have them pretend to be a grandparent, but the point of the exercise in Japan is a lot more complex and it is rooted in more than a few cultural quirks that do not exist anywhere else.
Why and how to rent and grandmother in Japan
First and foremost, the woman that you rent does not actually need to be a grandmother, just a woman of a certain age that has a few lived experiences that make them eligible for the task you require of them. And it is more of a hiring process than the sleezy take advantage concept that the word “rent” can bring up.
The most prominent service in the country that offers a database of these women to choose from is called OK Obaachan (“OK Grandma”) and it is run by Client Partners. It is similar to many other hire by the hour services that are common, except in this case instead of hiring a cleaner for a day, you will be able to select a woman between 60 to 94 that will be able to perform some tasks for you for an hourly fee of around 3,300 yen per hour, plus transportation costs.
The tasks that the grandmother will perform range from mundane companionship and support to teaching you teaching traditional cooking, providing babysitting services, or assisting with chores. Since Japanese society is so complex and has a lot of stock in the “proper way” of doing things, they can also help younger generations navigate the complexities of breaking up a relationship, coming out to family or just being able to politely move about in an unexpected situation with grace.
This is a prime example of why some have hired these women to attend weddings or cheer on children at sports events, as they have the lived experience to not commit social faux-pas.
But there is another layer to the concept, and that is that in an isolationist society, older women can get left behind and feel like they have no purpose, especially with the decline in family units that we are seeing in the country. Combined with the sexism that is still widely present disguised as tradition, and these women can be even more isolated, so this kind of work gives them a sense of purpose (“ikigai”).
The concept might still seem strange to many, but it is nit that uncommon in Japan to hire actors to play family members during important milestones or social situations. Navigating society alone is hard and can be brutal if you do not have the right “credentials”, in this case family members, so being able to hire people to represent those roles can be quite helpful. So, if you are in Japan and wish to make a good impression or just learn to navigate the culture, you might want to consider hiring one of these grandmothers to help ease your path. Who knows, you might end up learning about unexpected things.