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A murder case in Tokyo has exposed Japan's custom of hiring marriage wreckers, agents who are paid to seduce one half of a couple and cause them to split.
The Times of London reported Takashi Kuwabara faced a 17-year jail sentence on Monday for murdering his lover, Rie Isohata, last year.
But the most extraordinary thing about the case was not the killing - by strangulation, after a bitter argument last April - but the circumstances in which the couple met.
Although Kuwabara inadvertently fell in love with Isohata, he had been paid to track her down and seduce her as a professional wakaresaseya, or “splitter-upper”, hired by her husband to provide him with grounds for a divorce.
The case is raising questions about the ethics and legality of “splitter-uppers”.
Isohata’s father said during the trial, “I can never forgive a business that toys with the emotions of human beings.”
Wakaresaseya perform a variety of functions, but all of them arise from the Japanese dislike of direct confrontation.
Rather than pleading with him face to face, a woman whose husband is having an affair may hire a splitter-upper to seduce his mistress away from him.
Parents may engage their services to get rid of the unsuitable lover of a son or daughter.
Dozens of wakaresaseya companies advertise on the internet, under names such as Lady's Secret Service and Office Shadow.
They employ models, actors and personable people of different backgrounds first to trail and then to seduce their quarry.
Isohata's father told reporters, “For the rest of my life, I will never forgive the defendant, or my daughter's ex-husband who hired him, or the wakaresaseya business itself.
“This has devastated not just my daughter’s life, but those of my grandchildren and me.”
