What are 'Healing Fictions' Healing Us From?
Healing fictions are selling big; what does that mean for crime fiction? Japanese healing fiction bestsellers include Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series set in a magical cafe in Tokyo where customers can travel back in time ‘before the coffee gets cold.’ It’s sold 6 million copies worldwide in many languages. Mai Mochizuki’s The Full Moon Coffee Shop adds talking cats to the environment. Hisashi Kashiwai’s The Kamogawa Food Detectives postulates a Kyoto diner where foods evoke memories. In What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michko Aoyama, a Tokyo librarian recommends books that help people attain their dreams.
According to K-Book Trends, the healing fiction craze took off in 2022 in South Korea. One of the first novels to hit was Dallergut Dream Department Store by Lee Mi-Ye. This store is the place where dreamers go when they fall asleep to shop for dreams. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum, another early bestseller, tells of a woman in her late thirties trying to live her dream of running a bookstore with the help of others in the neighborhood. The Uncanny Convenience Store by Kim Ho-Yeon will be published by Harper Collins in 2025 as The Second Chance Convenience Store. An alcoholic homeless man gets a part-time job at the store and manages to stop drinking, recover lost memories and inspire the store’s clients.
Healing fictions tend to center on a small neighborhood business like a local bookstore, laundry or store. Covers often show a building full of light surrounded by darkness. The stories are easy to read without complex plotting apart from multiple life stories that foreground themes of empathy, courage and solidarity in the face of loss and heartbreak. Some use magical realist or sci-fi elements. Cats are common.
Cozy mystery authors have responded to news of healing fiction’s mega-success with consternation. ‘We did this first,’ they exclaim. The cozy mystery formula often sets a murder plot in a welcoming small town environment adding elements like recipes and super-intelligent pets.
Why are readers flocking to healing fictions in the 2020s? Is this a compensatory escape from harsh economic conditions and post-pandemic social malaise? Are corner bookstores, locally-owned laundromats and sole-proprietor convenience stores the reality in our neighborhoods or a nostalgic longing for some kinder version of late capitalism?
Articles on South Korea say small and one-person businesses are in a profound slump. The Japanese government has for decades supported small businesses even when unprofitable but now is letting these ‘zombie’ businesses fail. Sole proprietor businesses there face a problem of aging ownership with members of the younger generation unwilling to take over tiny shops from older relatives.
It’s hard to find data to understand if small businesses in the US are thriving, holding on or succumbing to corporate concentration because it’s politically charged. Every politician trumpets their support for small business. Experts debate whether big business facilitated the rise of Hitler, undermined worker pay, made money out of economic crises. Everyone says they hate big business but what’s the reality?
The Becker Friedman Institute of Economics at the University of Chicago is named after two Nobel laureate conservative economists, Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. The institute’s 2023 study, 100 Years of Rising Corporate Concentration, says that over the last 100 years the asset share of the biggest 1% of corporations have zoomed to 97%. Doesn’t leave much to spread among the little guys.
We want to imagine tiny businesses in our neighborhoods but the reality of life in the 2020s for most people isn’t about hanging out at a local store petting cute cats and receiving magical healing inspiration. They’re running to exhausting jobs, shopping for necessities at chain stores, cramming in a streaming show and then trying to sleep enough to do it all over again.
The crime fiction genre has been successful in part because it’s psychologically satisfying. Psychologists point to the reward value of delaying and then providing information. Studies have found that good moods last longer in an environment of uncertainty if a positive outcome is predicted. Exposure to crime rivets attention because it invokes the survival instinct. Overall, the theme of restoration of justice calms fear.
But healing fictions don’t tap the anxiety-relief sequence generated by fictional murder investigations. Instead they provide fantasies of wholeness and community for people who are stressed, uprooted and lonely. While murder mysteries have channeled fear into a hope for justice for a century, people in the 21st century may be at the point where more direct tonics are required. What do you think?
I've read the kamogawa food detectives and what you are looking for is in the library. I preferred the kamogawa food detectives, but what most stood out for me, and was more obvious in the second kamogawa book, was how formulaic they were. Of course, crime novels tend to be formulaic too, but usually over the whole book. In the Japanese books, the formula repeats every section even down to wording in places. This is not necessarily a bad thing though when it becomes too obvious it might. It does make the books quick to read and they are nice and short without all the extraneous padding that a lot of crime authors seem to be adding these days - great chunks of irrelevant history and description, route details taken from google maps.
Of course we are reading translations here - my understanding of japanese is very very basic - so we are seeing them filtered through the translator which must affect things in some way. Most of us are less familiar with the cultural nuances too so anachronisms and errors don't jump out at us. (I'm only saying that because I've just been reading a series with many anachronisms and misused words and it has annoyed me so much :-) )
I have to say that I hadn't heard them described as healing fictions before. I always tend to read books where it all works out in the end and there's no sadness - I never read anything described as "moving" - so maybe that's why I quite liked them. There's a series on Netflix called (I think) Tokyo Diner which has been around for a while and falls into this genre. I enjoyed it a lot. Samurai Gourmet might also fall into it to.
I'm annoyed by all the dream books (which I haven't read) because I'm trying to write something involving dreams and, if I ever finish it, everyone will say I copied them when I was completely unaware of them :-(