Searching Japan for Soul Survivors

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

If “Does Your Soul Have a Cold?” strikes you as an unusually arresting title for a documentary, you can probably put it down to the fact that it was the slogan for a SmithGlaxoKline advertising campaign that brought antidepressants to the Japanese market in 2000. In other words, it’s the work of a professional copywriter. The idea was not only to introduce the Western concept of depression to a culture still leery of it, but also, by suggesting that, like a cold, anyone could “catch” it, to reduce the shame the Japanese felt about being depressed. (We Americans — New Yorkers especially — are, of course, proud to be depressed, and are suspicious of anyone who isn’t at least seeing a therapist: What’s wrong with them?)

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