Megumi was a baby when her parents separated and her father disappeared from her life. But years later her mother told her he wanted to reconnect. Megumi began to see Yamada regularly. She thinks he is her father, and that Yamada is his real name - but this is a lie. "Ever since she was little she'd ask me where he was," says Megumi's mother, Asako. "All she knew was that he had gone soon after she was born, so she blamed herself." For years it didn't appear to be a problem. But when Megumi was about 10, Asako noticed a change in her daughter's behaviour. "She didn't talk to me and became very quiet and withdrawn," Asako says. "It took a long while to find out about the bullying."
Asako discovered that Megumi wasn't only blaming herself for her parents' breakup. Her classmates were also ostracising her because she didn't have a dad - children of single parents are often stigmatised in Japan. Eventually she became so unhappy that she refused to go to school. "She's my only child and it was breaking my heart to see her so sad," Asako says. She tried to get the teachers at school to help, but when that failed another idea came into her head. "All I could think about was, what if I found a man who was nice and kind, an ideal father, someone who would make her feel better?" Asako says.
She'd heard about relative rental agencies that could send an actor to play a guest at a wedding or go on a date - they are well established in Japan. So she contacted one to ask if they could also provide a fake dad. After auditioning five hopefuls, she settled on a man called Mr Takashi. "I found him the easiest to talk to," Asako says. "He's very kind and sweet, so I just followed my instincts." Takashi runs a rental agency with about 20 staff and more than 1,000 freelancers - men and women of different ages and backgrounds who can cater for almost any situation, taking on fake names, personalities and roles. They often have to lie, but they are very strict about not breaking the law. As an actor himself, he's played boyfriends, businessmen, friends and fathers, and been a bridegroom at five fake weddings. He prepares for his roles, he confesses, by watching Hollywood movies like Little Miss Sunshine, the Oscar-winning film about a dysfunctional family bonding on a road trip, and The Descendants, in which George Clooney plays an indifferent parent who suddenly has to embrace fatherhood after a family tragedy. "I study these films, and memorise phrases and lines," Takashi says. "I take notes on how different family members interact and communicate, and what it takes to be a certain kind of father or husband. They help me understand different family dynamics and relationships."
Asako met Takashi several times to talk about the kind of father she wanted him to play to Megumi. "My requests were very simple," she says. "Firstly, I wanted him to say how sorry he was that he couldn't be in Megumi's life until then. Secondly, I wanted him to listen to whatever she wanted to tell him." Asako then told Megumi that her father had remarried and now had a new family, but that he had recently been back in touch because he wanted to see them again. He was working, she said, as "an actor". Megumi was shocked, but eventually agreed to meet him. And so, nearly 10 years ago, Takashi became Yamada, Megumi's father - his longest-running, and perhaps most ethically dubious role to date.
