Japan is popular right now. Like very popular. I hadn't known what to compare this to until recently when a client told me that the place to visit a few years ago was Iceland and now it is Japan. I remember when Iceland was the it place, so this made sense to me. But more on that client in a bit.

Japan has always been somewhat popular in the West. Ukiyo-e prints were very popular with impressionist painters and inspired them a lot in their work (this was called "Japonisme") and Japanese or pseudo-Japanese furniture and fashion has been popular at various times in Europe ever since Japan was cracked open to the world in 1853.

^{Monet was a huge ukiyo-e fan, and it showed up a lot in his art. But this was also everywhere in Europe, in fasion, style, clothes, etc. Early weebs.}

After WWII, Japan gained a certain popularity in the US. Servicemen who had been stationed there returned with general praise for the people and culture and tales of how different this mysterious land was, with the white-faced geisha, raw fish abound, a refusal to wear shoes inside (a thing that many younger people in America also embrace these days, but which would have been very bizarre to Americans of the time), and martial arts. This popularity was given a boost in 1964 when Tokyo hosted the Olympics and showed the world super advanced technology, like the bullet train, color television, and electronic scorekeeping for track and field events, beginning Japan's image as a leader in technology.

Japan's popularity really got a boost in the 1980s from two pop culture things: a movie and a TV miniseries. The miniseries was Shogun, which has recently been remade. This miniseries was #1 in the ratings and overnight it turned people into Japanophiles who wanted to visit the country. The next was the movie Karate Kid. Karate had already become somewhat known due to Chuck Norris, but it was Karate Kid that caused it to explode. Overnight every boy in America wanted to take karate lessons. When the sequel, Karate Kid 2 was released with Daniel-san going to Okinawa, that just made Japan even more popular.

^{Wax on, Wax off}

Of course there was the technology. As Marty tells Doc in Back to the Future "Everyone knows all the best stuff comes from Japan". Then there was Nintendo, which took over the video game world in the 1980s. No need to say more there.

Since this time, Japan's image in the West has just gone up and up. When anime and manga started coming over to the West in the late 90s, creating a kind of super fanatic so extreme that people not sharing their enthusiasm started calling them weebs (from 4chan's attempt to censor the derogatory word Wapanese, meaning wannabe Japanese, replacing it with the nonsensical weeaboo), that just accelerated the trend even more. I've been told by some fresh arrivals that in many US bookstores, the manga section is the largest section in the store. I haven't been in a US bookstore for many years so I can't confirm that, but if true that's crazy.

Which leads us to now, where Japan has become the dreamland of the world and a must-visit place for practically everyone.

Let's jump back to that client meeting I mentioned above. Her company hired me to do some consulting work. I met her on a Teams meeting. I hadn't previous mentioned that I live in Japan as it's not really important for this work. I usually do my meetings in a tatami room that is fairly Japanese. This room has really good light and I just like it. The more earthy colors and aesthetics of more traditional Japanese rooms is calming and comfortable. When we started on the Teams call, this woman instantly was infatuated by my background, correctly guessed it was a Japanese room, and asked if I was in Japan or if it was a fake background.

^{Not my house. This is a traditional Japanese inn I stayed at in Kyoto. But my room does look somewhat similar—albeit not nearly as expensive looking.}

The meeting was further derailed when I confirmed I was in Japan and she spent the next 20 minutes gushing about how much she loved Japan and wanted to visit. I was really taken aback. Of course I was aware of how popular Japan has become, but I had never really experienced it directly. I do deal with a lot of fresh arrivals and their enthusiasm is usually high, but nothing like this woman.

I didn't want to dampen her excitement so I just mostly agreed with her. It was this woman who compared Japan's current popularity as a travel destination with Iceland's popularity from a few years ago. She had gone there, by the way, and told me it was amazing (but not as amazing as it seems like Japan is).

I wonder what the future is here. As we have seen above, Japan has been constantly somewhat popular in the West since 1853 (with the exception of the years leading to and during WWII), though this modern mega-popularity has only been around for a few years. Will it continue? Will it increase? What do you guys think?

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.