Avan stops outside a residential building. Quietly and efficiently, people begin carrying boxes of belongings, and even furniture, out of the building and loading them into the van. Finally, a family emerges and drives away. What, at first glance, appears to be an ordinary case of moving house is actually something quite different. The Japanese expression yonige can be translated as "running away in the middle of the night" — yo ("night") + nige ("escape"). Far more than just fleeing from a place, yonige involves leaving your old life behind in order to make a fresh start, often supported by moving companies that specialize in helping people disappear.
But why would a person turn their back on everything they know — including friends and, sometimes, even family? And how is it even possible to disappear in the 21st century? Business Spotlight spoke to Tokyo-based journalists Jake Adelstein and Shoko Plambeck, makers of the podcast The Evaporated: Gone with the Gods, which explores the strange world of yonige and was inspired by the sudden disappearance of Adelstein's accountant.
What got you interested in the topic of yonige?
Adelstein: We were fascinated by the fact that, in an orderly country like Japan, so many people go missing in the first place, that some of them go missing of their own free will, and that there's this wonderful infrastructure and flaws in the system that make it quite possible for you to vanish and not be found.
Do we know why people choose to disappear? Is it something that's socially acceptable?
Plambeck: The number-one reason we've found, for men, is financial trouble. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is socially acceptable. A lot of Japanese people know someone who has gone missing, but it's not something people would say in a loud voice. At the same time, I think a lot of people feel that Japanese society is like a pressure cooker, and that people can make some pretty desperate decisions.
Adelstein: I think, among women, it's domestic violence and stalkers — abusive spouses. Also, there's a problem with men becoming obsessed with women and harassing them. The police aren't very good at dealing with those situations.
Official statistics say about 80,000 people go missing in Japan each year. Is this being underreported?
Adelstein: It's definitely underreported. The fact is the group of people who have the right to report someone missing is very limited — in most cases, just the immediate family. A lot of people estimate that the number of actual missing persons, who aren't officially counted as missing, is 250,000 to 300,000.
Plambeck: We also found that one of the likely indicators that someone might go missing is that they don't have any close social connections. Maybe they don't have a family to support them. Or maybe the family is embarrassed by the person's choice to go missing, so they just don't report it.
How is it possible to disappear in a modern country like Japan?
Adelstein: The short answer is that most things in Japan don't require photo ID. If you can get someone to give you their family registry, and they are similar to you in age and height, it's very easy to take that and get yourself, say, an insurance card or register at your local domicile — and very quickly build up a new identity. And that is, at most, a minor crime if you get caught. As the reliance on photo ID is so minimal, it's surprisingly easy to become someone else.
The other way is through Japan's adoption system, which was designed to carry on family names. If your son-in-law joins the company, and you want your family name to go on, you can adopt him. And once your last name changes, it's a lot harder to find you.
Plambeck: Also, privacy laws in Japan make it hard to track people down. For instance, the person we were looking for [in the podcast] — Morimoto, the accountant — was working at a company. They never did a background check on him because the laws make that a lot harder than it would be in the US, for example.
Yonige-ya are businesses that help people disappear. How would you describe these companies?
Plambeck: It sounds like such a surreal concept, but there is a moving service in Japan, which is completely legal, where the company will help you move in the middle of the night, discreetly and without anyone seeing you, and basically help you start an entirely new life.
They'll give you a place to stay until you get settled. They'll help you find a job. They'll also advise you on how to disappear and get started in your new life. It's an all-inclusive service that's like a very specialized moving company. There are quite a few yonige-ya in Japan, and you find them the way we find everything now: online. It's very easy.
Is the service expensive?
Plambeck: I felt that it was quite reasonable for what the service is, but it is more expensive than a regular moving company. For a one-person operation, with minimal stuff, in the Tokyo area, I'd say it would cost $300 to $500. It's more expensive if you have more family members, more stuff or if it's a sketchier situation.
Is it legal to disappear? What is the attitude of the police?
Adelstein: It's totally legal, and the police are benevolent in these cases. If someone's reported missing, and the police find the person, they'll say to the person who's missing: "Your family's looking for you. Why don't you give them a call?"
Plambeck: As long as there's no foul play, and you're not a danger to yourself. It's very different if you're a criminal on the run. Then, your life is going to be a lot more limited. A lot of the time, before they do a mission, the yonige-ya will inform the local police, in case the neighbours complain. They'll also do that if the case involves a violent spouse, because if the spouse came home in the middle of it, there could be an altercation.
Finally, what are the advantages of reporting a story like this in podcast form, instead of writing a book?
Plambeck: You get to use interviews. In our case, we had to use actors because a lot of it was spoken in Japanese, so that was a hurdle in making these interviews come across. But I think a strong point of the podcast is that real people tell their own stories. Their voices give a whole new texture to the story.
Adelstein: A podcast allows you to immerse the listener in the story in ways you can't do with print — there's music, ambience, the rich sound of the human voice and raw emotion, which convey the emotional impact of the facts in a way that typography simply cannot. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an audio interview is worth 10,000 words.