Interview with Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, & Akira Emoto, honouring our need for human connection in Rental Family
Based on the real life “rent-a-family” industry in Japan, Rental Family is a film that explores the desire for human connection.
From director HIKARI and her co-writer Stephen Blahut, the film shines a light on this part of Japanese culture, addressing mental health struggles that are stigmatized in Japan.
The practice of renting actors to play roles in your life or create experiences or memories has been a well-documented phenomenon in Japan, beginning in the ‘80s.
“Even though they’re paying for the service, they find a friendship within that two or three hours they spend together, the actors, the surrogates — they are also 100% invested in the relationship and find their own connection in the community. The roles may seem fake, but the emotion is real.”
HIKARI began researching the industry in 2018 and shares that there are currently about 300 rental family companies that exist in Japan.
“In a big city like Tokyo, or even a countryside town, you can feel so isolated … Every single person I spoke to was looking for connection,” she shares.
Watch our interviews with Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto and Akira Emoto about their roles in Rental Family.
Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, and Akira Emoto take on roles for rent on screen
Brendan Fraser (The Whale) takes on the lead role of “Phillip” in Rental Family. His character is an American actor struggling to find work and connection in Tokyo. When auditions come up — few and far between it seems — he barely makes it to auditions on time and comes home to a dark, lonely apartment, raising a glass of beer to his neighbours across the way. The man is lonely.
One day, he gets a call for a role and ends up in a very unusual acting gig. After he’s fulfilled his role, he meets Shinji, played by Takehiro Hira (Shōgun), who is the casting director of a “rental family agency” in need of “a token white guy” for his clients.
Being in the business of “selling emotion” and “the chance to play roles with real meaning”, Fraser, alongside Hira, Mari Yamamoto (Pachinko) as “Aiko”, and Bun Kimura (Tokyo Vice) as “Kota”, Phillip immerses himself in his clients’ worlds.
In doing so, he forms genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality, forcing him to confront the complexities of his work and interrogate his own sense of purpose and belonging.
Cold Tea Collective spoke with actors Takehiro Hira (“Shinji”) , Mari Yamamoto (“Aiko”), and Akira Emoto (“Kikuo Hasegawa”) about Rental Family, with additional commentary from director HIKARI and lead Brendan Fraser.
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Rental Family flips the “token Asian” trope and challenges discrimination through humanizing each character
At first glance, the poster paints a picture of a fish out of water, as a large white man squeezes himself onto a train in Tokyo. Before watching the trailer, I immediately thought to myself, “oh no, another story of a white American butchering his Japanese and telling a story about Japan from a very non-Japanese lens.”
Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a lot more to the film. Flipping the “token Asian guy” trope on its head, we see Fraser’s character navigate what it means to be a gaijin (foreigner) trying to make a meaningful life for himself in Tokyo.
In a conversation with Mari Yamamoto’s Aiko, Phillip attempts to connect with his new co-worker and understand her motivation behind the work as rental family actors:
Aiko: “You’re just a gaijin (foreigner), you’ll never understand how things work here.”
Phillip: “You’re right, I am gaijin, but Japan is my home now. And I want to try to understand.”
His character has lived in Tokyo for seven years, and we meet him not as a young hopeful he may have been when he first arrived, but one that honours the respectful practice of learning to speak Japanese and immersing himself in local culture.
Phillip is also kind, generous, and doesn’t have an Asian fetish or Japanese love interest, which in my opinion, would have detracted from the ability to tell the stories of the other characters more fully.
However, no matter how long he’s lived in Japan and no matter how proficient his command of the Japanese language or career success he finds, Phillip and other characters that reflect specifically stigmatized identities or roles in Japanese society – whether by choice or not – continue to be discriminated against.
Rental Family challenges stigma and discrimination through humanizing its characters
Phillip takes on the role of the father of a mixed-race child, “Mia” (Shannon Gorman). He is hired by her single mother “Hitomi” (Shino Shinozaki) whose ultimate goal is to get Mia into a good school under the guise of having a functional and loving family.
Naturally, Phillip takes on the role of Mia’s father with trepidation and moral conflict. But we still see the humanity of his decision to take on this role and to play it to the best of his ability, even to the point where he and Mia develop a true bond.
We don’t learn what happened to Mia’s biological father, nor the depth and breadth of Hitomi’s struggles as a single mother, but she decides it’s worth risking her daughter’s trust – and potential trauma that would come with such a big lie. This speaks to how challenging discrimination against single mothers and their mixed-race children can be – and how high the stakes are.
Although not a gaijin in how Phillip is seen as one, “hafus” face similar discrimination. The term “hafu” is used to describe individuals of mixed Japanese and non-Japanese ancestry; or more specifically, a person with one foreign parent.
Hafus are always seen as “just a gaijin”, even if they’ve been born and raised in Japan and speak Japanese as their first language, just like Mia.
“It was important to us to strike a balance. Often, a country and its people are reduced to stereotypes,” shares HIKARI. “That’s why Tada, the owner, and his co-workers are so important. They add complexity and nuance by giving the story an Eastern and female perspective.”
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Rental Family explores the universally human desire for connection and purpose in life, through all stages
The stand-out performance in Rental Family comes from veteran Japanese actor Akira Emoto. He takes on the role of “Kikuo Hasegawa”, an elderly and very famous actor whose daughter hires Phillip to act as a journalist interested in documenting his life and work, as he also begins to lose his memory.
Of all the storylines in the film, we get to see Emoto’s in the fullest — including a resonant portrayal of what it means to have lived a full life, but still possibly look back at their life with regrets.
There is a scene with him and Fraser’s Phillip talking about Kikuo-san’s strained relationship with his daughter:
Kikuo-san: “Do you know what Masami used to call me when she was young? ‘That man on the screen.’”
Phillip: “Do you regret it?”
Kikuo-san: “Not at that time.”
But Kikuo-san quickly changes the topic, because allowing that emotion to be felt fully would be too heavy.
As Phillip continues to get to know Kikuo-san, he is eventually convinced to do a little late night “prison break” out of Kikuo’s home in Tokyo, to his hometown in the south of Japan. In an old abandoned home surrounded by forest that hadn’t had human visitors in years, Phillip learns the reason for Kikuo-san’s drive to return to his old home: to find photos of his first love and their life before the fame — and the regret.
The veteran actor says that this scene was the most emotionally challenging for him. “For the last scene by the tree, it felt like my character would explode and Brendan’s character was there to accept and hold that moment for me. I felt extremely supported and was grateful for him being there.”
Emoto delivers a dynamic and heartfelt performance. In this role, Emoto also delivers the most lines in English in his career, with the help of English dialogue coach Sean Muramatsu. Emoto and Fraser would oscillate between Japanese and English on camera.
Despite the real life language barrier, the two share such great on-screen chemistry. Emoto feels that “with Fraser, there’s something that exceeds language and cultural identity, but just pure human connection — and this was a miracle in itself.”
Fraser describes working with Emoto as similar to working with other on-screen greats throughout his career: “England has Ian McKellan, and Japan has Akira Emoto. Someone who is respected and accomplished and has an obligation to themselves to work from a place of authenticity.”
As the production progressed, Fraser also discovered Emoto’s cheeky sense of humour and came to respect his “working actor” approach to the job, recognizing his attitude of appreciation for the opportunity to work, despite his brilliance. “I think it’s just an attest to humility and professionalism,” says Fraser.
“He really elevates what it means to be Japanese: how to respect people, how to respect yourself. For me, he is a person who represents what Japan is all about,” adds HIKARI.
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Diving deeper into how rental roles can mirror what’s already there or what has been lost in Rental Family
Aiko: “Sometimes we need someone to look us in the eye and remind us we exist.”
Taking on several rental character roles in the film, what was more interesting to me was the motivations and backstories of Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto’s characters, Shinji and Aiko.
“One of my favourite scenes to shoot was with an older lady … She was an old lady who wanted to be like this famous singing duo, Pink Lady, but she never could because she was too shy,” says Yamamoto. “So then she hires me to play part of her girls’ group and hires an audience of fans. That was a pretty fun day.” Yamamoto also shared that she found it delightful to take on different roles and act completely differently.
“I love my character because I feel like she’s someone that’s so compassionate,” says Yamamoto. “I want to see more of those characters in the world.”
Taking on a big responsibility to ensure that these rental roles are played out to perfection and recognizing the risk of it all falling apart, Hira’s Shinji Tada takes his work very seriously — sometimes questionably so, creating false realities for those who don’t know that they are playing rental roles.
“Although it doesn’t seem that way, [my character] takes members of my company very seriously,” he shares, which speaks to the underlying motivation and dedication to perfection (and reputation management).
We see Shinji go home to his wife and child after a day of work, however we later learn that they too are rental actors.
“The backstory of my character is that I had a real son and a real family,” shares Hira. “Maybe I don’t talk to them because I work too much or they left, so I work hard because I have nothing left to do.”
This is something that I think would’ve told a deeper story of Japanese culture without it having to be told through an American lens.
He also reveals that there was a scene filmed where Shinji meets his real life son, maybe for the first time in many years, which was unfortunately left on the cutting room floor.
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More stories to tell about Japanese culture and our shared humanity, from a Japanese lens
What I appreciated about this film is that it was full of heart, but it wasn’t heavy, despite there being some emotional moments. The cultural nuances captured in conversations between characters, facial expressions, body language, and much of what was not said made each storyline resonant and accessible.
I’m a millennial, so I’ll always have a soft spot for Brendan Fraser. I was impressed by his Japanese and performance as an individual and as part of this special ensemble.
Recognizing that HIKARI and Blahut wanted the film to appeal to a wider audience, the use of Fraser as a “token white man lead” is reflective of how non-English language or non-Western-centered films still require some sort of white starpower to break through.
However, I would have loved to have seen this story told from the lens of a Japanese person to see a deeper story overall. It leaves me wanting more, specifically for Hira and Yamamoto’s characters.
The film needs a prequel for Hira’s character and what led him to this kind of work. Yamamoto’s Aiko could also beautifully portray the struggles women face in Japan due to cultural expectations. The pair certainly have the ability to carry the weight of these stories, but it’s still up to studios and the system to allow that to happen.
Rental Family shines a light on the importance of the roles we all play — real or not — in our own lives and in the lives of others.
“By the end of the film, we hope audiences ask themselves what role they would hire someone to play in their own lives,” shares HIKARI.
Veteran actor Akira Emoto believes that it’s up to each viewer to reflect upon what this means for them. “What every person feels will be different, and will evolve even within that person,” he says. “I hope it’s a narrative people can take and nurture, and that meaning can evolve.”
Special thanks to Lisa Durrell for translation support for Cold Tea Collective.
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