Paris Syndrome (thing)

Paris Syndrome, first published by the 2004 French psychiatric journal Nervure, is a condition in which affected Japanese tourists suffer psychological breakdowns and possible psychosis due to the extreme culture shock between their expectations of Paris and the city's reality. As one Japanese woman explained to a Parisian newpaper, "For us, Paris is a dream city. All the French are beautiful and elegant . . . And then, when they arrive, the Japanese find the French character is the complete opposite of their own"₍₂₎. While over a million Japanese citizens visit France annually, approximately a dozen of those travelers (primarily young women) are forced to return to Japan because of the condition.

Professor Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist living in France, first identified Paris Syndrome some twenty years ago. As he explains, Parisian attitudes are often at odds with those of polite, Japanese society; and when compounded over time (typically within three months) with a difficult language barrier and other sources of disappointment,—when Japanese tourists discover, for example, that the French show little interest in Japan, a sharp contrast to the near obsession the Japanese seem to have with France—some tourists find themselves developing symptoms, such as "irritability, a feeling of fear, obsession, depressed mood, insomnia, and an impression of persecution by the French"₍₃₎. In 2006, two Japanese women reported that their hotel room was being bugged as part of a malicious plot against them. Stranger yet are past reports filed by the Japanese embassy, describing incidents including a man who began believing he was King Louis XIV, and a woman who thought she was being attacked by microwaves. While the embassy keeps a 24-hour hotline for those feeling the stress of culture shock, the treatment for Paris Syndrome is always the same, regardless of the details: a return flight back home to Japan.

Sources

1. _{"'Paris Syndrome' strikes Japanese" by Caroline Wyatt, BBC News (December 20^th, 2006)}
2. _{"'Paris Syndrome' leaves tourists in shock" Reuters (October 23^rd, 2006)}
   
3. _{"Say Cheese!" by Lauren Collins, the New Yorker (January 22^nd, 2007)}
   
4. _{"The culture shock that puts victims in hospital" by Charles Bremner, The Times (December 15^th, 2004)}