When Hiroki Terai was a child he once asked his parents why there was no such thing as a divorce ceremony and they laughed at him. Now, as Japan's first professional "charisma divorce planner," he watches with satisfaction as soon-to-be-former couples join hands on a mallet and smash rings, beginning new, separate lives.

Last March, a friend of Terai's from college, on the verge of his own divorce, echoed that life-long question. "Japanese culture celebrates both beginnings and endings," he said. "Why is only the beginning of a marriage marked?" A month later, Terai held his first divorce ceremony for that friend at a restaurant in Shinjuku. Word got out, and it struck a chord. Requests started coming in. After performing a few more on his own, he teamed up with day-trip specialists Friendly Travel to run the ceremonies as a half-day package tour for ¥3,000 per person.

The parting couple meets near Sensoji Temple in Asakusa and rides in separate rickshaws with friends and relatives following on foot to a "Divorce Mansion," a doppelganger of Japan's ubiquitous wedding halls. There, they stand before their guests and listen as Terai recounts the circumstances leading up to the decision to separate (they've briefed him in individual meetings beforehand). He says that although one side, usually the wife, will often demand a blunt statement about exactly what went wrong, he opts for tact. "I won't just come out and say 'he cheated,'" Terai says. "I'll say something indirect that gets the message across. And I always add that 'there are surely circumstances known only to the two people involved.'"