Do you research your competitors? (By the way, our company has sent spy employees to three rival companies.)

I’m Saito, a column writer♪ Universe has what I believe is the largest membership of both women and men in Japan. (In fact, recruiting male members is several times more difficult.) The amount of information that flows from there is enormous, which, in its own way, feels even more frightening than having a spy. I belong to four different dating clubs, but not places like SugarDaddy or online sites. I’m registered with clubs that require interviews and charge relatively high annual membership fees. They range from small to large, new and ambitious to long-established, each with its own distinctive qualities. I think they each stand out in ways that are difficult to imitate. You can’t judge a dating club based on the opinion of a single spy, and there’s no way people who spend tens of thousands of yen, millions of yen, or tens of millions of yen would all receive the same treatment. Perhaps a good manager thinks it’s better to have a variety of members and gather information from them, so they can see things from many different perspectives. That’s how I imagine the representatives—even though I’ve never met them.

Maezawa here. Universe doesn’t have a spy system, so we haven’t sent anyone in as a spy. However, registering with other agencies individually wasn’t prohibited, so I believe some people are registered with them on a personal basis. For certain reasons, members have now been asked to refrain from doing so. That said, there’s also a note that it’s a matter of personal freedom and won’t be enforced.