The World Can Use A Refresher Course

After three years of Covid-era masking, some Japanese people feel their facial expressions are a bit rusty. Enter Keiko Kawano, smile instructor.

About six years ago, Keiko Kawano, a radio host, found that when she stopped doing voice-articulation exercises, her smile began to fade. At a certain point, she struggled to lift the corners of her mouth.

So Ms. Kawano, then 43, decided to learn how facial muscles work. After using the knowledge to reanimate her smile, she started helping others do the same under the motto, “More smile, more happiness.”

And as many people in Japan unmask after three years and find their facial expressions a bit rusty, she is adapting her work to the post-Covid era.

“People have not been raising their cheeks under a mask or trying to smile much,” Ms. Kawano said last week, a few days after Japan downgraded Covid-19 to the same status as common illnesses. “Now, they’re at a loss.”

Ms. Kawano began teaching smiling at a gym in 2017 while working as a business etiquette trainer.

Despite having no medical training, her curriculum, typically taught in one-hour sessions online or in person, draws on yoga and emphasizes strengthening the zygomatic muscles, which pull the corners of the mouth. She also believes that the muscles just below the eyes are key and that weak ones create eyebrow-driven smiles, which can make the forehead look wrinkly.

“People train their body muscles, but not their faces,” she said.

After her gig at the gym, she began teaching smiling at nursing homes and corporate offices, as well as to individuals hoping that a better smile might help to land better jobs or improve marriage prospects. One early client was IBM Japan, where she held a smiling-training session for company employees and their families.



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/world/asia/japan-covid-smiling-lessons.html

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