Earn 71,000 euros a year for “doing nothing”? The Japanese who has achieved it

Shoji Morimoto is the Japanese who earns money for “doing nothing”, he charges 10,000 yen -$71- for rent. “Basically, I rent. My job is to be where my clients want me to be and not do anything in particular,” he told Reuters. Currently it has one or two clients a day, before the pandemic they could reach up to four clients a day. This strange job is what allows him to support his wife and his son.

During the last four years it has accumulated more than 4,000 reserves. A year this Japanese has an average of a thousand clients at 71 euros per appointment, earning him about 71,000 euros per year, for “doing nothing”

He previously worked as an editor where he was constantly scolded for doing nothing and that’s where his idea came from. “I began to wonder what would happen if I offered my ‘do nothing’ ability as a service to clients,” he told Reuters. Morimoto in a conversation confided to Reuters that he did not understand a society where productivity is valued and “doing nothing” is detracted from. “People tend to think that my ‘doing nothing’ is valuable because it’s useful (to others) … But it’s okay to really do nothing. People don’t have to be useful in any specific way,” he said.

From his Twitter account where he has 250,000 followers, it is where he gets the most clients. Many of them have become regulars, one has hired him some 270 times.

From playing on a seesaw in a park, and even smiling and saying goodbye to a person from a train, since the client wanted a goodbye. These are some of the actions you take on your reservations. Although Morimoto is not willing to do anything, and he has refused various jobs such as moving a refrigerator or going to Cambodia, and he does not accept any requests of a sexual nature. He just “do nothing”.

One of his most recent clients is a 27-year-old data analyst who hired him because she wanted to wear a sari, a traditional Indian dress, in public. But she didn’t want to embarrass his friends for it, so she decided to hire Morimoto’s services. The young woman sat across from him and they had a conversation over cakes and tea. She claimed that “with my friends I feel like I have to entertain them, but with the rental guy (Morimoto) I don’t feel the need to talk.”