In Japan, an industry born from the cultural weight of workplace departure has entered a reckoning. Between late 2025 and late 2026, roughly a quarter of the country's resignation proxy services — firms that help workers navigate the fraught act of quitting — ceased to exist, undone by criminal scandal, bankruptcy, and the arrival of law firms with deeper pockets and stronger credentials. The market that remains is not dying, but it is being remade: what once sufficed as simple procedural assistance must now meet a higher standard of legal legitimacy, reflecting a broader truth that industries