We Talk to a Real Japanese Butler About Life as the Chief of Staff of a Household【RocketInterview】

EVENT
Jan. 02, 2016 06:00 PST

Full-time butlers are pretty hard to come by these days, so when we had the chance to meet one such professional in Japan, we leapt on the chance to ask him a bunch of questions to ask about his role—like how come they don’t wear coattails anymore?

The job of butler seems fairly out of reach for most of us. They seem to only exist in the world of the ultra-rich. Sure, there are plenty of anime and manga that feature these humble members of staff, so we may feel like we already know the profession well, but a real-life butler’s job probably is nothing like the fantasy versions that we read about…or is it?

To find out, we talked to Naoyuki Arai, the author of Shitsuji Dake ga Shitteiru Sekai no Daifugo 53 no Okane no Tetsugaku (The 53 Facts on the Philosophies of Money that Multimillionaires Are Practicing that only a Butler Would Know) and butler of eight years who also runs a company that provides butler services. If anyone can answer our questions about this mysterious and prestigious profession, it is going to be Mr. Arai.

RocketNews24: What was the reason you became a butler?

Arai: Originally, I was a salesman for a manufacturing company, but I started working as a butler for two reasons. First was that I wanted to work in a job that would serve a client for their entire life, and if possible the second generation and the third generation and so on. The second reason was that, when I thought about what the highest form of service you could provide to an individual customer was, the profession of butler popped into my head.

RN24: You started your current butler company in 2008, so please tell us a bit about how that came to be.

Arai: When I started the business, I had no requests for butlers for about half a year. I didn’t have any experience as a butler, so I trained in skills necessary for a service industry. Once, a person who graduated from an overseas butler school and also had experience in being a butler came to me looking for a job. I had no work for him, so I asked, “Would you teach me necessary things to become a butler?”