A Man Who Does Nothing – for a Living!

Rental Person Who Does Nothing is a fascinating book. The true story of a man in Japan who literally rents himself out to ‘do nothing’ for most of the time.

Services he offers are for things that actually matter: he goes to restaurants with people who don’t want to eat alone, is the other player in a board game or keeps a space in the park for someone to come view the cherry blossom.

Shoji (a Japanese earthquake expert) started his own ‘job’ to offer services for the lonely and socially anxious, after a boss told him that he contributed nothing, and it made no difference whether he showed up to work or not.

So he wondered if a person who ‘does nothing’ could still have a place in the world. With one tweet, his Rental Person service was born.

He now rents himself out for useful services, to help others. This can be listening to a secret that someone needs to reveal, ‘testing’ how it would be to have someone live with you, or even wave goodbye if you leave a train station for a long journey.

The rest of the time – he does nothing!

People can die, because of the stress of adapting to society. Or they can lose every ounce of their energy. I’ve seen it happen. If people are pressured by society into saying they have particular abilities, then the true value they have as themselves becomes blurred. If you say you have value because you can do particular things, you will always be judged by established social standards. Shoji Morimoto

About the Author

Shoji Morimoto began working as a rental person who does nothing in 2018, and has since been hired over 4000 times. He has written several books. He lives in Japan with his family.