[Photo credit: Tumisu/Pixabay]
Maybe laughter is the best medicine.
Norman Cousins, a best-selling author who espoused the importance of emotions in health, was one of them.
His self-prescribed spontaneous humor sessions offered a powerful anesthetic effect that helped with arthritis in his spine. “I made the joyous discovery that 10 minutes of genuine belly laughter…would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he wrote in 1976.
Subsequent research has associated laughter and humor with a host of benefits, including higher pain tolerance and overall well-being. A 2023 meta-analysis found that a laughter intervention was related to a significant reduction in cortisol, the “stress hormone” made by the adrenal glands.
The research extends beyond North America. In a recent global survey, about 73 percent of participants indicated that they smiled/laughed during much of the previous day.
And, while comedy bars dot most US cities, the concept of purposeful places of laughter are also found in Japan and China. Both places are seeing a surge in stand-up comedy. According to the China Association of Performing Arts, ticket sales for comedy shows there jumped 135 percent in 2025.
The comedy theme in places such Beijing and Shanghai is stress. Well, at least stress relief. Young comics delve into topics such as unemployment, the property crisis, and parenting with a humorous lens.
Whether it is the economy or parenting, “stand-up can offer the comfort of knowing others are experiencing similar struggles,” according to Sarah Wu in The Economist.
Stand-up has made comedians out of unlikely candidates from food delivery drivers to flight attendants. While many comedians tend to be young adults, one rural 50-year-old woman found stand-up success in talking about her journey of exiting a challenging marriage. “A stressed-out society,” Wu wrote, “is finding humour, and solace, in their shared hopes and frustrations.”
Meanwhile, curiosity is drawing crowds to a Tokyo stand-up bar, opened in April 2022 by a British expat fluent in Japanese. Most audience members are tourists coming to hear stand-up comedy in English.
“If you’re on vacation in Tokyo, you’ve done karaoke…you’ve done everything, so you’re like, ‘Now what can we do tonight?’” Katharine Rowan, Operations Manager of the Tokyo Comedy Bar, told me.
“Nobody thinks to go to Tokyo to see comedy,” she admitted. Rowan also believes that social media has played a role in the recent upsurge in stand-up popularity.
Customer expectations may be lower upon entry, but Rowan said that people generally exit being impressed. “We don’t want people to leave saying, ‘Well, that was pretty good for Japan.’ We want people to leave saying, ‘That was pretty good.’”
Stand-up comedy has been around in Japan for about 15 years, living in the shadows of restaurants and bars without a dedicated space. The Tokyo bar addressed that deficiency, offering 15-20 shows per week by an array of 75 stand-ups, many of whom are from the West. The gig is part-time for most comics, as Rowan estimated that 90 percent have daytime positions.
The bar has also attracted notable comedians. Atsuko Okatsuka, a US comedian who spent part of her childhood in Japan, and Melissa Villaseñor, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, took the stage at the bar in the past year.
A common mistake for some stand-ups visiting Japan is incorrectly assuming that their material will resonate with audiences. A bit about politics in the US, for instance, won’t necessarily land with customers from Mumbai or Hong Kong.
“Because our audience is mostly tourists, we found that they are more interested in hearing about stuff about Japan,” Rowan said. “A lot of the material our comedians do is talking about the lighter side of Japan,” such as the absence of public garbage cans, crowded trains, and washlet toilets.
Rowan envisions a continued interest in stand-up in the future. “I think you’ll definitely see more Japanese stand-up than English,” she said. Those “poorly attended” shows in Japanese from years ago are “now sold out every single week.”
“I think the general Japanese public is starting to recognize stand-up as a form of comedy,” she said, “whereas before there was just no knowledge of it.”
Whether Tokyo or Tallahassee, Beijing or Boston, people want to laugh. Norman Cousins would be smiling at the thought.
References
Cousins N. (1976). Anatomy of an illness (as perceived by the patient). New England Journal of Medicine, 295(26), 1458–63. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM197612232952605 PMID: 995143
Gallup/World Health Summit. (2025). State of the World’s Emotional Health 2025. Author.
Kramer C.K., & Leitao C.B. (2023). Laughter as medicine: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventional studies evaluating the impact of spontaneous laughter on cortisol levels. PLoS ONE, 18(5), e0286260. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286260
Wu, S. (2025, Nov 15-21). Funny ha-ha. The Economist, pp. 48-49.