"Like many aspects of Japanese society, rental relatives are often explained with reference to the binary of honne and tatemae, or genuine individual feelings and societal expectations."

"Authenticity and consistency aren’t necessarily valued for their own sake, and the concealment of authentic honne behind conventional tatemae is often construed as an act of unselfishness and sociability, rather than of deception or hypocrisy. A case in point: the man who hired fake parents for his wedding because his real ones were dead eventually told his wife. It went fine. She said that she understood that his goal was not to deceive her but to avoid trouble at their wedding. She even thanked him for being so considerate.... In a sense, the idea of a rental partner, parent, or child is perhaps less strange than the idea that childcare and housework should be seen as the manifestations of an unpurchasable romantic love.... I’d started off assuming that the rental schema somehow undercut the idea of unconditional love. Now I found myself wondering whether it was even possible to get unconditional love without paying... A person can do things professionally—for a set time, in exchange for money and recognition—that she can’t do indefinitely for free... I had read about a host-club worker who studied romance novels in order to be able to anticipate and fulfill his clients’ every need, and consequently had no time left for a personal life. 'Women’s ideal romance entails hard work,' he said, 'and that is nearly impossible in the real world.' He said he could never have worked so hard for a real girlfriend."

From "Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry/People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect" by Elif Batuman (The New Yorker).