Getting dirty deeds done, Japanese style: Firms specialize in destroying relationships
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Wakaresaseya — literally "breaker-uppers" — are specialists in destroying relationships. In a nation that eschews confrontation and shuns public displays of passion, these terminators extricate clients from close encounters of the emotional kind.
While Western psychiatrists, investigators and attorneys abet those in the throes of separation, wakaresaseya take a far more active role, and the result isn't always pretty. The agents, who are unlicensed, do whatever it takes, including entrapment, betrayal or worse, to get the job done.
"If this wasn't my business, I'd consider a lot of what we do immoral," says Hiroshi Ito, a handsome 33-year-old wakaresaseya with Tokyo-based Office Shadow.
There are few statistics on the dodgy field, but Tokyo-based Daiko Research Office estimates that a dozen firms like itself, mainly here and in Osaka, pull in tens of millions of dollars a year handling hundreds of cases. Complex jobs can run to $150,000.
This compares with just two companies a few years ago.
Moment of weakness
Each wakaresaseya company has several, even dozens, of operatives skilled at playing roles, from sexy flight attendants and powerful officials to wholesome housewives and movie moguls.
The person a client hopes to banish — the "target," in industry parlance — often is lulled into a trap through a seemingly chance meeting in a bar, at a party, on a flight.
A moment of weakness captured by a camera hidden in a cigarette box or behind a lapel is enough to upend his or her life. Though breaking up is hard to do, these firms boast 95 percent success rates.
Most firms prefer not to divide families (but will). And virtually all try to weed out troublesome customers, including stalkers, those with a grudge, the indecisive.
"I purposely wait four or five days to see if they really want it," says Hiroyuki Yoshida, president of Office Shadow. "We need to see how serious they are before we destroy people's normal lives and emotional ties."
After a down payment is received, the wakaresaseya launch an investigation, beginning with the client: Why did your husband take a mistress, what prompted your wife to sleep with her boss, why do you want to dump your boyfriend?
Further afield, interviews with neighbors and colleagues, printed records and tailing fill out the details of the target's preferences, lifestyle, favorite golf course or department store and commute.
With the bead drawn, wakaresaseya devise a "scenario" to entrap the target and ultimately convince or pressure him or her into ending the relationship. Stubborn targets can even be lured into fake business deals, saddled with huge financial debts and visited by faux mafia-linked debt collectors.
Threats of a career-ending scandal also work wonders to weaken tender ties, often before a sympathetic new "friend" guides the target emotionally into accepting the divorce or breakup.
Follow-up is important
Finally, there is "after-care" — for an additional fee, of course — to ensure that people stay apart. After driving away a mistress, operatives might plant rumors that a neighbor finds the wife attractive to rekindle a husband's interest in his spouse and keep him from straying again.
After-care may also include advising the client to stop complaining incessantly, lose weight, even dress and act more like the girlfriend her husband has just given up.
"It's like a cancer operation," says Kiyoshi Hiwatashi, managing director of Lady's Secret Service. "You remove the tumor but need to make sure it doesn't grow back."
Wakaresaseya deny breaking the law and insist that no one in their profession has been arrested in the course of work.
But wakaresaseya clearly inhabit a legal gray zone, as they hint at far more complex cases involving secret photos taken at hot springs, drugged targets, stolen documents and unwitting victims left on bullet trains to awaken hours later across country, alone and humiliated.
Clients might even be enlisted to play supporting roles. Thus a wife might introduce her husband to an alluring operative "friend" at a party and leave early to let things develop. Some enjoy playing secret agent so much that they later become full-time operatives.
Most cases involve love
The higher or more socially respected the targets are, the easier it is to loosen their heartstrings with a threatened scandal. Wakaresaseya brag about judicial impeachments they've engineered and political careers they've derailed as they sought to break up relationships.
Homosexual clients also offer a promising field. Infiltrating the relatively tightknit community can be challenging, given homosexuality's taboo status in Japan. But the stigma also makes pressuring someone easier.
Though most cases involve a love problem, separations of friends also are common, including cases where a new friendship threatens to disrupt older ties between two people.
Psychologists and wakaresaseya firms cite several reasons for the industry's recent success. Women in Japan these days are stronger and increasingly likely to initiate separations, yet law and culture still encourage them to make it look as if it's the man's idea.
In addition, many people who once helped others break up, including village dignitaries and matchmakers, are no longer around.
"Intermediaries are very important in Japanese culture, but many are being eliminated as society changes," says Shizuo Machizawa, a psychiatrist and professor at Tokyo's Rikkyo University.
"While most people in foreign countries wouldn't think of hiring someone to arrange a breakup, young Japanese these days seem to think they can pay away their problems," says Yasuyuki Takase, president of Daiko Research. "Relationships are treated like something they're buying from a convenience store."
Wakaresaseya say emotional immaturity and a growing desire to pass off responsibility are fueling their booming business.
They blame Japan's education system and family structure, weaker morality in modern times, and new Internet and cell-phone technologies that make it easier to get involved with relative strangers but no less difficult to sever ties.
Doing this work can take its toll on the operatives. Wakaresaseya say they find the car chases, lengthy stakeouts and long hours in smoky bars draining.
Even more taxing is the emotional cost of living a lie, acting sympathetic to people you may detest and being a party to so much deception and dirty dealing.
"I don't think I'll ever be able to marry," says operative Ito. "Human ties seem so fragile to me now."