‘Weird Japan’ Stories Are Nothing to Smile About

The hottest thing to hit Japan since the 2016 viral sensation Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen is the “smile coach,” a service locals have been flocking to as they struggle to ditch their masks in a post-Covid world.

At least, that’s the impression you’d have from reading the dozens of English-language stories on the supposed phenomenon over the past few weeks. From the New York Times to the Hindustan Times, it has been difficult to avoid the articles about how Japanese are en masse engaging such services, having seemingly “forgotten how to smile” in a country that has only recently ditched masking guidance.

But in reality, their popularity appears inversely proportional to their prominence in Western media. Most of the reports lead back to one company, Egaoiku, run by former radio personality Keiko Kawano. According to one report, Kawano has trained some 4,000 people since beginning her business in 2017 — or about 0.003% of the population.

To put that in perspective, it’s about the number of Americans who are also professional falconers; adjusted for population, around the same number of US residents as visit Antarctica per year. It would be somewhat odd to see Japanese media writing stories about Americans flocking to the South Pole. Niche barely even begins to describe it: Egaoiku has one Google review, and its two-year-old Twitter account has 16 followers.

Bravo to Kawano for making a business and getting press out of it — there are, no doubt, people who will see some benefit. But is it really a trend worthy of such extensive coverage in major international outlets?

This is not a phenomenon unique to smile coaching. As I enter my third decade in Japan, it’s still fascinating to see which narratives the international media latch onto — as well as which are ignored. For years, the press was obsessed with the supposed unique problems of aging population, sexless couples and the hikikomori youth who opted to stay at home playing videogames instead of taking part in society. Fast forward a few decades, and these are all issues that now affect the western world, where they are afforded far more nuanced takes.

As those stories ran dry, it became common for media, often based overseas and relying on internet translations or stringers, to latch onto outlandish tales about the country — creating a genre of articles often known as “weird Japan.” They run the gamut from the merely exaggerated to the outright fictional — culminating in the infamous “eyeball licking” fetish supposedly enjoyed by Japanese youth, a complete fabrication that duped publications including the Guardian. An award-winning New Yorker story from 2018 on supposed “rent-a-family” businesses was built almost entirely on deception.

The “smile coach” is a milder form of this genre — it’s a real service, though one whose reach is exaggerated. But the common thread is the desire to believe that the Japanese are a little weird, a little off, a little less than normal. Stories that feed into this stereotype tend to resonate with readers, particularly if they can play up tropes of sexual deviancy or difficulty in forming interpersonal relationships. We like the country, but in the same way that we like Disneyland; look how quirky and whimsical it is. We don’t think about what the cast members do after closing time. Through these articles, it becomes a fantasy land straight out of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado.

Of course, this kind of reporting isn’t unique to Japan. But it does seem particularly afflicted — partly by the enduring obsession both with its pop culture and the seedier elements of society, but also by a growing communication gap that means the country is both less able to explain itself to the outside world, and less interested in doing so. After the bursting of the 1980s economic bubble, many international newsrooms downsized or abandoned their operations in a country then seen as expensive; many have not returned to one that is now cheap.

This has real-world consequences. Instead of learning from the experience of falling fertility rates and a declining population, the world instead bought a narrative of sexless couples, delaying policy responses. The same is true of Japan’s Covid experience. Consider even the investors caught flatfooted by a revolution in the country’s corporate governance, having not paid attention (or been sufficiently alerted) to what has changed in the past decade. Who can blame them when many still suggest the answer is nothing?

Foreign reporting can and does provide a valuable service to society — look no further than the BBC’s recent investigation into Johnny Kitagawa, the late founder of the country’s leading pop-music agency, accused of decades-long sexual abuse of teenage boys. While rumors had persisted for years amid reporting from the Shukan Bunshun magazine, it took the BBC’s investigation to really break open a story that mainstream domestic media, too close to the agency’s pop stars, struggled to report.

Plenty of strange things happen in Tokyo — just as they do elsewhere. But next time you read a story that sounds too odd to be true, it probably is. A reduction in the demand for “weird Japan” content would truly be something to smile about.

More From Bloomberg Opinion:

• The Growing Comprehension Gap That Isolates Japan: Gearoid Reidy
• Japan Has Its Best Times Since Your Last Walkman: John Authers
• Buffett’s Play Means This Time Japan Is Different: Gearoid Reidy

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