Breakups are hard. But who has it harder: the person doing the dumping, or the one being dumped?
For some Japanese people, ending a relationship is so difficult that they’re paying breakup proxies (お別れ代行; owakare daikō) to do it for them.
The services are the latest addition to Japan’s growing proxy economy, which includes taishoku daikō sābisu (退職代行サービス; resignation proxy services) and even rental families. In workplaces and friendships built around collective harmony, the social cost of directly ending a relationship can be greater than the financial cost of paying a proxy to say goodbye for you.
Imasugu Sayonara: A breakup in one phone call
The company Imasugu Sayonara (イマスグサヨナラ; Immediate Goodbye) offers to phone your boyfriend or girlfriend and end the relationship for you for ¥33,000 (about $200).
Founder Nakakura Hidemichi (中倉秀道) says the business has logged more than 1,000 inquiries and just under 300 clients since it launched in earnest in June 2026. Nakakura pitches it as the romantic sequel to taishoku daikō (退職代行; resignation proxy) services that young Japanese workers use to quit their jobs, an industry whose best-known name, Mō Muri, recently saw its former president convicted in a case involving referrals to a law firm.
Imasugu Sayonara was founded after Nakakura himself helped a female friend who was experiencing domestic violence from her boyfriend break free at the end of 2025. He officially launched Imasugu Sayonara in June 2026.
Imasugu Sayonara’s operations run entirely on a smartphone. Clients inquire mainly over LINE, Japan’s most popular messaging app. Phone or in-person consultations are available on request.
Staff interview clients about the relationship and their reasons for wanting to break up. The client then shares the partner’s name, contact details, and preferred call time through a form and pays before the breakup call goes out.
Staff call up to five times at different hours, since people often ignore unknown numbers. If that fails, the message is sent by social media DM, such as LINE, or by a letter mailed to the partner’s home. Either way, the job is considered complete.
Nakakura said some people who get broken up with by Imasugu Sayonara get angry. More, he says, put on a brave face, saying things like, “I had just been thinking that I wanted to break up too” or “I wasn’t seriously in the relationship anyway.”
If asked why the client didn’t call the partner themselves, staff explain that the client wanted out but feared the relationship would drag on ambiguously if they tried to end it face to face. Nakakura says most recipients accept that explanation.
Who hires a breakup proxy?
There have been more than 1,000 inquiries and just under 300 clients in about three months, according to Nakakura. Inquiries have come from Hokkaido to Okinawa. Seven in 10 clients are women, mostly in their 20s and 30s.
Early cases at Imasugu Sayonara involved clients who couldn’t break up with violent partners because of safety concerns related to domestic violence and other serious problems. Now, a growing share of clients have simply cooled on their partners and don’t want to deliver the news themselves.
One client, a Kanagawa office worker in her 20s identified here as “Ms. A,” met her boyfriend on a dating app and dated him for less than six months. They had agreed to delete their apps, but a notification popped up on his phone while they were together. When she confronted him, he replied, “So what?”
She didn’t want to see his face or even let him hear her voice. The operator told him she never wanted to see him again and not to call her; she had already blocked him everywhere. She considers the fee reasonable and has since met someone new on another app.
Men use the service too, including to leave partners they have no particular complaint about.
Nakakura describes a man in his early 20s who had been in a relationship for a year before falling for someone else. He said telling his girlfriend himself would make him too sad. The operator delivered an apology and the straightforward reason: “Your boyfriend has found someone else, so please let him go as of today.”
Nakakura frames his business as the next step for resignation proxies.
“Similar to resignation proxy services, these services are increasingly being used by people who have no particular complaints about their current company (or, in this case, their current partner) but have found a company with better conditions, or someone else they like, and want to leave. They simply feel too awkward to tell their employer or partner themselves,” Nakakura said.
Why Japan hands off the hard conversations
Resignation-proxy users are team players who feel they betrayed the team, according to Kojima Yoshikazu (児島功和), a researcher at Persol Research and Consulting.
Kojima found that users scored higher than other leavers on their desire to work closely with colleagues. They also felt more sorry toward the companies they quit and were more likely to see themselves as uragirimono (裏切り者; traitors). They were more isolated, too: many had no colleagues to consult and instead had only a boss, who was more likely to harass them.
His conclusion was that these were “people who internalized Japan’s interdependent workplace order, then chose to exit it.”
The Japanese workplace runs on reading the group. Kojima draws on Ōno Masakazu (大野正和), a researcher known for his work on karōshi (過労死; death from overwork). Ōno argues that the scope of a Japanese job is not fixed but flexes with what everyone else in the group is doing: “work constantly demands an orientation toward those around you.”
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Where breakup proxies stop
Imasugu Sayonara says no to married couples and engagements. The company refuses clients who are married or engaged because of the possibility of isharyō (慰謝料; damages for emotional harm).
In one case, a woman who had completed yuinō (結納; a formal betrothal ceremony in which families exchange gifts and money) asked the service to end the relationship and help her disappear quietly. Nakakura turned her down. Disappearing after yuinō would amount to konyaku haki (婚約破棄; breach of engagement) and could lead to a damages dispute, which he considers a matter for lawyers.
Imasugu Sayonara also refuses anyone whose partner appears to have ties to organized crime, to avoid trouble.
Proxy breakups vs. wakaresaseya
Wakaresaseya companies are a related but different service. These detective-style agencies are paid to break up a target couple, often by planting operatives. Clients are sometimes ex-partners, and sometimes people who want to have a chance with one person in the couple by eliminating the competition.
Breakup companies don’t always deliver. In one example, a man paid ¥4 million (about $25,000) to split up a coworker and her husband but got nothing in return. A breakup proxy, by contrast, delivers the client’s own message in the client’s own relationship.
Japanese courts haven’t treated sabotage contracts as automatically void. In an Aug. 29, 2018, ruling, the Osaka District Court held that a contract to facilitate a breakup didn’t violate public order and morals, judging it based on the contract’s content and methods. The client had been billed a remaining ¥700,000 (about $4,400).
A law firm’s analysis of the ruling notes that such work can still become illegal through privacy violations, threats, or trespassing.
The detective industry’s own trade body bans its members from such work. The Japan Investigation Association calls wakaresaseya contrary to public order and morals and cites a March 9, 2010, Tokyo District Court case in which a former wakaresaseya employee received a 15-year sentence for murdering a woman he had gotten close to while working undercover.
Imasugu Sayonara isn’t the only breakup proxy, and it’s at the cheaper end of the market. WAKAREYO, run by LVUP Inc., sells a plan for ¥248,000 (about $1,560) and an emergency plan for strained relationships at ¥540,000 (about $3,400), both bundled with counseling. Freelancers on the Coconala skills marketplace also offer breakup-talk services.
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Sources
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