What is kafunsho to a person living in Japan?

Some things are a rite of passage when it comes to living in Japan. There will be an army of clerks to welcome you. They will always ask for your full name and birthday, the most secure key known to man, as the primary mode of authentication, since nobody else in the world could possibly recite your full name and birthday. They will put you through the gauntlet to win your residence card and bank account.

As you assimilate you will learn to bow and say otsukaresamadesu at the slightest hint of an impending interaction. You will get nihongo jouzu-ed. You'll buy your first onigiri from 7-11. Your first curry bread, your first can of alcohol, your first cream puff.

And you, a perfectly healthy non-asthmatic person, will develop kafunsho.

An introduction to the Japanese March and April (as told by a non-Japanese, with no authority on the subject whatsoever)

花粉症, or kafunsho, is hay fever. kafun is pollen, sho is sickness. A sickness of pollen. A pollen-induced illness. A pollen invasion. A pollen revolt against the winter, staging an uprising in tandem with the temperature. The pollen cannot be oppressed - it will spray far and wide, into your eyes and lungs.

And you'll snivel. A little at first. Probably nothing, you'll think to yourself.

Then you'll sneeze. Probably nothing, you'll think to yourself.

Then you'll snivel and sneeze, and sneeze and snivel. Sometimes both at the same time. Probably nothing, you'll try to convince yourself. But now the words are wishful rather than dismissive.

With each sneeze the word cloud that hangs over Tokyo refreshes in real time.

Kafunsho allergy sneezing eyes watering nose leaking itchy mask goggles medication drowsy

Do you have kafunsho? echo 30 million citizens in unison, opening the floodgates for this seasonal trend to seize the spotlight. It's a trending topic now.

As for you, you'll struggle. You'll struggle with red, watery eyes, and an itch in your throat that keeps you on the edge of am-i-imagining-it and i-hope-its-not-covid. And the sneezing, of course.

This will go on for a month, maybe more. And then the first sakura blooms, the word cloud shifts, and kafunsho is relegated to history. It's hanami season now, nobody has time for allergies during hanami season. Your body, sensing this vibe shift, will stop leaking fluids in time for you to be able to enjoy being ripped off at food stalls along nakameguro with approximately 30 million other people. These 30 million people, incidentally, were probably chanting do you have kafunsho not long ago.

So what is kafunsho really?

Simply put, its an allergy. But its an allergy that everyone develops over a long enough timeline. If you live long enough you'll inevitably develop cancer. If you live long enough in Japan you'll inevitably develop kafunsho. So the story goes.

As a strong believer of doing your own research, i did my own research by consulting the truest source available, wikipedia, without fact checking anything because wikipedia is never wrong. Here's what it has to say.

• Cedar and cypress trees were planted postwar for use in construction
• It became cheaper to import wood over time
• The planted trees weren't felled, and started releasing more pollen as they matured
• Cue hay fever

Just like how a virus overwhelms your immune system by sheer volume and drives you to illness, pollen in extremely large quantities can also overwhelm your immune system and trigger symptoms. I imagine if this happened in the 16th century people might be sacrificing children to the forest to placate the gods for this inexplicable plague. Today we simply shrug and accept that its pollen.

Kafunsho in the collective consciousness

So this is, apparently, a very big annoyance.

My very elementary googling brought me to the following.

Wikipedia, saying JPY7B a year was allocated to this problem in 2002.

Japan Times article in 2006. 16% of people in Japan are sufferers. The government has a JPY20B a year plan to tackle this.

Yahoo article in 2014. 25% of the population is affected.

The Japanese Ministry of Environment statistics in 2022. Affected numbers rose from 19% in 1998, to 30% in 2008, to 42% in 2019.

Japan Times article, via Bloomberg, in 2023. 40% of the population affected, JPY221B per day in economic loss.

World economic forum in 2023. 40% of the population affected, JPY286B per year in economic loss (the Japan Times article figure is close to this per day... which has to be a typo. But it also goes to show, never trust stats you read anywhere). Global warming is also causing extended pollen seasons.

All in all, from the news,

• There are a lot of people who are allergic
• More people turn allergic every year
• The opportunity cost is a lot of money

I think my policy suggestion is, if this costs your economy upward of JPY200B a year, you can probably allocate more than JPY20B a year to resolving it (Interestingly, the number isn't reported after 2006. Now why is that?)

I suppose because of the annoyance it's become, kafunsho is a major seasonal topic, in vogue for one to two months every year.

When i was studying Japanese, a regular starter in mock conversations is the weather. The weather is good, the weather is bad, looks like it's going to rain, the wind is strong, its cold, it's warm, it was cold but now it's warm, and so on.

Relatedly, when i was studying Spanish (i took two classes but i'm not sure if my efforts counted as "studying") the regular conversation themes were dancing, going to parties, and drinking tequila.

Art imitates life. Whoever wrote these textbooks probably didn't give a second thought to the content. After all, it was natural that Japanese people would talk about the weather. (I don't know if it's natural for Spanish people to drink tequila, but i imagine the idea that they do lives in their collective consciousness)

In that same vein, kafunsho would fit right in to my Japanese textbook. It's a topic filed in the folder of Japanese conversation starters. When 40% of the population is sniffing and sneezing at the same time, it becomes a shared experience. It's low stakes, non-political (well, most of the time), easy to relate to, and everyone knows what you're talking about.

Assimilate

Here's the formula. At the first hint of a February sneeze you ask about kafunsho. As noses start to leak you empathise and partake in the suffering - my eyes get so itchy too, or i couldn't stop sneezing all weekend. Spend time outside even though you shouldn't, because the weather's getting warmer, and inhale all that pollen.

Tell those who are allergic how bad your allergies are too, and those who aren't allergic how jealous you are of them. Take a sick day or two to show just how bad it is for you. Contribute to the economy by buying allergy medication and various remedies from a JPY300B a year medicine industry. Stock up on masks that you invariably forget to use.

As April rolls around you let the memories of kafunsho evaporate, inaccessible until it condenses back into your thoughts a year later.

And if you're not allergic? First of all, listen to people tell you how jealous they are of you. Second of all, you're not allergic yet. See you next spring.