llien
Member
Eat this, meninists!
There are about 10 of us sitting in a conference room in an office block in Tokyo and a man has just put on a selection of film clips.
As the music blares from tinny-sounding speakers, a heart-rending story about a deaf man and his daughter begins. The daughter is struck down with a terrible illness and is rushed to hospital. The man, unable to communicate that he is her father, is not allowed past the reception desk. The film ends with him crying inconsolably as she dies alone.
As the second film - about a fatally ill dog - starts, I hear a muffled sob from the other side of the room. Minutes later, there are some loud sniffing noises to my right. Within 15 minutes, half of the room is staring at the screen, tears streaming down their faces.
Most of the films he plays focus on ill pets or father-daughter relationships, and appear to be targeted at women
The man showing the films begins to walk around and, with a large cotton handkerchief, softly wipes the tears from people's faces. He diligently refolds the handkerchief for each person to offer them a dry patch.
His job title is somewhat unusual: ikemeso danshi, or "handsome weeping boy". He runs sessions with the sole purpose of making people cry.
The crying workshops were Hiroki Terai's idea - he's a businessman determined to get Japanese people to express their emotions, "I have always been interested in the hidden sagas of human beings," he says.
It all began when he was 16. With no friends at school, Hiroki ate his lunch in a toilet cubicle, alone. It was a difficult time: "It was around then I feel I started to find out more about people's real emotions - on the surface they're smiling but that's not always how they feel.
His first project was running divorce ceremonies for couples whose marriages have broken down, "The climax of the ceremony is crushing the wedding ring with a hammer." The couples said that crying was the most cathartic moment. Hiroki therefore decided to set up a crying business in 2013. It started with workshops open to everyone in Tokyo.
"People would come and cry together. When they cried they said they felt really good afterwards," he says. "The only problem was the perception of crying men. People thought they were weepy or wimps."
Hiroki's solution? Crying workshops led by handsome men. He wanted to bring the image of crying men into the mainstream while using those men to make other people cry.
I asked him why the men have to be good looking. He shrugs his shoulders, "I think it's because it's so different to daily life," he says. "It's exciting."
BBC
There are about 10 of us sitting in a conference room in an office block in Tokyo and a man has just put on a selection of film clips.
As the music blares from tinny-sounding speakers, a heart-rending story about a deaf man and his daughter begins. The daughter is struck down with a terrible illness and is rushed to hospital. The man, unable to communicate that he is her father, is not allowed past the reception desk. The film ends with him crying inconsolably as she dies alone.
As the second film - about a fatally ill dog - starts, I hear a muffled sob from the other side of the room. Minutes later, there are some loud sniffing noises to my right. Within 15 minutes, half of the room is staring at the screen, tears streaming down their faces.
Most of the films he plays focus on ill pets or father-daughter relationships, and appear to be targeted at women
The man showing the films begins to walk around and, with a large cotton handkerchief, softly wipes the tears from people's faces. He diligently refolds the handkerchief for each person to offer them a dry patch.
His job title is somewhat unusual: ikemeso danshi, or "handsome weeping boy". He runs sessions with the sole purpose of making people cry.
The crying workshops were Hiroki Terai's idea - he's a businessman determined to get Japanese people to express their emotions, "I have always been interested in the hidden sagas of human beings," he says.
It all began when he was 16. With no friends at school, Hiroki ate his lunch in a toilet cubicle, alone. It was a difficult time: "It was around then I feel I started to find out more about people's real emotions - on the surface they're smiling but that's not always how they feel.
His first project was running divorce ceremonies for couples whose marriages have broken down, "The climax of the ceremony is crushing the wedding ring with a hammer." The couples said that crying was the most cathartic moment. Hiroki therefore decided to set up a crying business in 2013. It started with workshops open to everyone in Tokyo.
"People would come and cry together. When they cried they said they felt really good afterwards," he says. "The only problem was the perception of crying men. People thought they were weepy or wimps."
Hiroki's solution? Crying workshops led by handsome men. He wanted to bring the image of crying men into the mainstream while using those men to make other people cry.
I asked him why the men have to be good looking. He shrugs his shoulders, "I think it's because it's so different to daily life," he says. "It's exciting."
BBC
