Smile

Lately I feel I make forced smiles more often than I laugh from real fun and amusement.

At commemorative photos, “Hi everyone, smile”; at magazine shoots, “A smile, please”; at TV recordings, “We’ll start with a cutaway of your smile.”

For me, who am neither a celebrity nor an actor, smiling when nothing’s funny is a hard thing. But when people who see those smiles give me evaluations like “Keita’s smile is wonderful. It heals me,” even a forced smile doesn’t feel half bad, and the fool drunk on himself is funny—I break into a grin.

At one magazine shoot, when I stood before the camera with my usual forced smile, the photographer requested, “Rather than a smile, please make a severe expression, like an artist,” and, embarrassed to say, when I struck a slanted pose and glared at the camera, he said, “Nice—I feel a real dignity.” Later, when I actually met one of the people who’d seen that magazine, they said, “I came to meet you today thinking, from that photo’s image, you’d be hard to talk to—but I was amazed at how much more approachable and easy to talk to you are, a personality of endless laughter.” I don’t know myself well, but in daily life I’m probably a jokester who loves laughing from the bottom of his heart over silly talk. Indeed, for me, a life of laughter feels better in the balance of heart and body when it’s real rather than virtual.