03 AUGUST, BBC : Shoji Morimoto provides a very unusual rental service to his clients in Tokyo, hiring himself out in order to, quite literally, do nothing.
He has fashioned a career out of renting himself out to clients who simply don’t want to be alone. Shoji doesn’t engage in conversation or do anything other than just be there at whatever event or activity he has been hired to attend, and yet he is in high demand, scheduling one to three sessions a day.
We often feel pressure in society to always be doing something productive or ‘useful’ in order to feel valued, which is an attitude Shoji hopes to challenge by showing that even ‘doing nothing’ and simply just being there for people can have its own value.
Video by Terushi Sho
Narration by Dan John
