Rent-a-doll: Japan’s former sex doll rental services

Way back in 2005 there was a boom for a certain kind of sex doll. Well, to be precise, a sex doll service. Sure, Orient Industry’s amazing love dolls, durable plush dolls and the like have been popular for many, many years.

But not everyone could afford to have their own luxury lifestyle companion. Nor did they necessary have the space. Perhaps they lived with their parents or with their wives and families. Or perhaps they were just unsure about the whole arrangement and wanted to give it a “test drive” first.

Well, trust Japanese consumer service to come up with a solution for this niche. Rent-a-doll services. There were two many kinds of service: delivery or rental for use in a set place.

Delivery would see the company bring the doll to your house and then pick it up again after, say, an hour. The other service would see you go to a certain place — normally a small one-room apartment — where a doll and bed would be set up.

Far from being “perverse”, these kinds of services were ideal for the elderly or disabled, as well as the chronically shy — or just the curious. It was said by one service that the majority of their customers were normal salarymen in their thirties and forties.

After the call girl-style services started in around 2004, they rapidly increased over 2005. One business even claimed to have forty “branches” around Japan.

The services declined after the boom and are practically no longer available in Japan anymore, though around 2009 certain English blogs based in Japan started to pick up on the story.

The main reason was because the wear and tear was too great for the business operators. Although customers were required to be careful and to use new onaholes masturbators every time, as you might expect, when it’s not your own multi-thousand dollar love doll, you don’t take as much as care as you should.

When you are the owner yourself then you develop respect and affection for your companion — and not just because you’ve paid a lot of money. But in the end, a rental doll is a shared object, although cleaned (cleaning costs for hygiene also added up for the businesses), so you will likely take certain liberties with the “lady” that otherwise you wouldn’t dream of.

Very famously, there was a “kidnapping” of two love dolls in 2005. A man ordered a rental doll and then gave an excuse to the deliverer why he could only take it from him in the entrance. When the courier came back to collect the doll, he found the apartment was totally empty. This process was repeated twice with a different service provider and it seems that the perpetrator had shown them fake ID. Likely the devious thief then sold the dolls on an online auction.

We still reckon by far the best thing is to own a love doll for yourself. But if that’s too expensive or difficult for your domestic set-up, the Japanese can still solve their dilemma. There are plenty of sex clubs (fuzoku) were you can play with love dolls as much as you like, without having to worry about maintenance or your family discovering your “dirty” secret!