Japan Has a Service That Will Break Up With Your Partner for You
Breaking up with someone isn’t always easy, but some people in Japan have found a way to avoid that awkward conversation: pay someone else to dump their partner for them!
A new Japanese service called Imasugu Sayonara lets customers end their relationships over the phone without having to speak directly to their boyfriend or girlfriend.
The service charges 33,000 yen (about $200) to deliver the breakup message on the customer’s behalf. It might sound bizarre, but it’s part of Japan’s growing market for outsourcing uncomfortable personal interactions, which already includes services that quit your job for you and even agencies that rent out family members.
How Does Japan’s Breakup Service Work?
Launched officially in June 2026, Imasugu Sayonara (イマスグサヨナラ, roughly “Immediate Goodbye”) was founded by Hidemichi Nakakura, who came up with the idea after helping a female friend leave an abusive relationship in late 2025.
Since then, according to the founder, the company has received more than 1,000 inquiries and served nearly 300 clients. Most of its operations take place through LINE, one of Japan’s most popular messaging apps.
The process is relatively straightforward:
- The customer explains their situation and why they want to end the relationship.
- The staff collects the boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s contact information and the preferred time for the call.
- After payment, an employee contacts the partner to deliver the breakup message.
- If the person doesn’t answer, the staff can make up to five attempts at different times.
- If the calls fail, the message can be sent through social media, such as LINE, or by postal mail.
The company considers the job complete once the message has been delivered, regardless of whether the recipient reacts as expected.
According to Nakakura, some people get angry when they discover they’ve been dumped through an intermediary. Others try to play it cool, claiming they were thinking about breaking up too or that they weren’t particularly invested in the relationship anyway.
Who Is Paying to Break Up With Their Partner in Japan?
According to figures shared by the founder, approximately 70% of the clients are women in their 20s and 30s. The company has received inquiries from across Japan, from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south.
Initially, many clients sought the service because they were afraid to leave abusive relationships. In these situations, avoiding direct contact can help reduce the risk of confrontation and make it easier to distance oneself from a violent partner.
Over time, however, the company also began receiving requests from people who had simply lost interest in their relationships and didn’t want to deal with the breakup conversation themselves.
One reported case involved a woman in her 20s from Kanagawa who met her boyfriend through a dating app. They had agreed to delete their profiles, but while they were together, she noticed a notification on his phone.
When she confronted him, he responded dismissively: “So what?”
After that, she didn’t even want to see her boyfriend’s face or hear his voice. She hired the service to tell him she never wanted to see him again and that he shouldn’t contact her. She had already blocked her ex on every platform, considered the fee reasonable, and eventually met someone new through another dating app.
Men use the service, too. In another case, a man in his 20s wanted to end a relationship of about a year because he had fallen for someone else. He explained that he would be too sad to deliver the news in person.
The employee passed along the message that the man had found someone else and that his girlfriend should let him move on.
The Company Won’t Handle Every Type of Relationship
Although Imasugu Sayonara offers a solution for people who want to leave a relationship, it has clear limits on the cases it accepts.
The company refuses cases involving married couples or engaged partners, as these situations can lead to legal disputes and claims for emotional damages.
One rejected request came from a woman who had already participated in a yuinō, a traditional Japanese engagement ceremony in which families exchange gifts and money. She wanted to end the engagement and quietly disappear.
The founder turned her down because the situation could amount to a broken engagement with legal consequences, something he believed should be handled with legal advice.
The company also refuses clients whose partners appear to have ties to organized crime, in order to avoid potential safety issues.
A Breakup Service Isn’t the Same as Breaking Up Someone Else’s Relationship
Another interesting detail is that Japan also has companies known as wakaresaseya, which work to cause breakups between other people.
The distinction matters: while Imasugu Sayonara delivers the decision of someone who already wants to end their own relationship, wakaresaseya agencies are hired to interfere in other people’s relationships. In some cases, their clients want to split up a couple so they can pursue one of the people involved.
These operations can involve investigators and employees who approach one of the partners. Depending on the methods used, they can lead to problems involving privacy violations, threats, or trespassing.
One case cited in earlier reports involved a man who paid four million yen to try to break up a coworker and her husband, only to fail to get the result he wanted.
The breakup-service market also offers much more expensive options. WAKAREYO, for example, offers plans costing 248,000 yen and an emergency plan priced at 540,000 yen, both of which include counseling.
I wonder if there’s already a manga about this kind of service. Wouldn’t it make a pretty wild rom-com premise?
via Smart Flash, Link 2, Jiji.com