Paris Syndrome.

Ah, Paris. The city of lights. The city of lovers. The most beautiful city in the world. A dream destination for almost everyone in the world. Oscar Wilde once said that when good Americans die, they go to Paris. (Of course, ahem, Oscar Wilde got to go to Paris because he was being a bit naughty for the time.) Anyway, an awful lot of Americans dream of coming to Paris. We associate anything French with being perfectly Parisian and perfectly nice and perhaps a bit uppity, but a good kind of well-bred uppity that we can embrace and vice-versa.

The Eiffel tower, toile de jouy, joie de vivre, that je ne sais quoi feeling we get when we see a beret-wearing man in a blue-and-white-striped sailor shirt with a baguette in one hand and a leash leading to a well-shaven poodle in the other. We choke back the tears when Victor Laszlo orders the band to play La Marseillaise at Rick’s Café Américain. We don’t know the words, but we want to learn them one day. Thank you Madeleine LeBeau. We may not be Parisian, oh but we wish we were and we wish, at the very least, to live here. Hopefully we don’t have to die first.

And we’re not alone. Our Japanese counterparts agree—Paris is where it’s at. Spring is almost here, which means that wedding season is almost upon us. Japanese wedding season. Tis a Japanese girl’s fantasy to come to Paris, have a (fake) wedding ceremony in a gorgeous cathedral and then do a photo shoot in, say, the Parc Monceau or Parc Floral. Of the couples that get married in the American Church of Paris, roughly 80% of them are Japanese tourists wearing lavish wedding gowns. Last spring, on a Saturday afternoon in Parc Monceau, I photographed two such couples.

While these already married Japanese couples who “marry” here fly in, get their photos taken and fly back home, thousands of other Japanese tourists fly in and stay for the long haul.

And some of them come down with a nasty case of Paris Syndrome.

Paris Syndrome. Sounds both romantic and scary at the same time, doesn’t it? Like dating a sweet sociopath. But hey, Stockholm has a syndrome, too. So does China. And Chernobyl. Even Kosovo. Why shouldn’t Paris have one, too?

The odd part is that it almost exclusively afflicts the Japanese. If you’re familiar with Japanese culture and society, perhaps you completely understand. I am hard-pressed to think of two more opposite cultures—French can be quite cold to strangers and a Japanese person takes that as a sign that they have done something wrong, something to offend. She will take it very personally and try to figure out what is wrong with her instead of brushing it off and muttering under her breath what a jerk the Frenchmen is. Japanese are very sensitive to others’ feelings and behavior.

When I first heard about Paris Syndrome, I wanted to learn more. I knew who to call—Chiaki Matsumoto, a descendant of a traditional Samurai family and Paris’ guru of all things Japanese. (Incidentally, she’s also Japan’s guru of all things French, in particular food and wine from Bourgogne.)

Naturally, we met for Japanese tea. Over my bean curd yokan, Chiaki told me about Paris Syndrome.

The term was coined by local psychiatrist Dr. Hiroaki Ota a few years back after treating patient after patient (both tourists and expats) with terrible culture shock. There are even subtypes. Three of them.

Paris Syndrome In a Week

The most typical case of Paris Syndrome involves a young Japanese girl who has spent a life idealizing Paris as the food and fashion capital of the world. Art, culture, romance. She spends her teen years pouring over the photos in Hachette magazines showing the Louis Vuitton store on the Champs-Élysées and she thinks this is what Paris looks like—everywhere.

When she is in her early 20s, she comes to Paris to fulfill one of her life’s dreams. She quickly notices that Paris is not as clean as Tokyo. The French do not smile at her or say hello when she passes on the sidewalk. When she gets on the Metro, a Frenchman steps on her foot and does not apologize. The reality bites. She becomes upset and unbalanced. But this happens for older Japanese tourists, too. For acute cases, the Japanese embassy even arranges for emergency transport back to Japan.

Paris Syndrome in Three Months

Another type of case involves mostly women in their 20s and 30s. They have finished their education and come here for vacation as a sort of graduation gift to themselves. After all that hard work getting an MBA or whatnot, they find themselves with an awful lot of freedom and fun. And they’re loving it. Paris is perfect. They don’t want to go back home and start working. So they stay. (Or they go back home, start a job, miss Paris dearly, and then return.)

These women live the good life . . . until they run out of money.

That happens after about three months. Up until that point, they are very happy because they don’t see the reality that is life in Paris. When the money runs out, they find themselves with no career, no family, no money. Hence, depression. It’s quite difficult for these women to go back to Japan because Japanese women are usually married by age 30. On top of that, if they don’t have a good management position by age 35, something is wrong with them. They are too old to return. They are out of the loop.

What the Tourism Brochures Show

Paris Syndrome in Three Years

Another type of Paris Syndrome affects the expat businessman. Japanese corporations used to systematically send families with the man. Chiaki tells me that this policy has changed due to women entering the workplace. Women stay behind now and continue earning their salaries and advancing in their career tracks. The children stay with the woman in Japan.

A typical expat stint is three years. During that time, the businessman is alone. He’s worse than alone—he’s in a Japanese company chock full of French employees, none of whom share his (or his company’s) work ethic. He is frustrated in meetings where his colleagues speak little to no Japanese or English and all they do is yammer on and on in French about what they will do instead of actually doing anything.

His secretary may be a locally hired Japanese national who is married to a Frenchman, but she’s been here so long that she’s totally Frenchified and he can’t even relate to her beyond their common language. She wants her 35-hour workweek and he feels she does not show him the proper amount of respect.

This type of Paris Syndrome sufferer is perhaps the most difficult to treat because he cannot return to Japan, he cannot complain to his boss back home, and he cannot quit his job here. He gets to a point where he does not want to go into the office, something that never happened back home, but he has to. There is no way out. This is the type of sufferer who is most vulnerable to suicide.

What the Tourism Brochures Don't Show

Treatment

It is not well accepted in Japanese culture to seek the help of a psychologist. Chiaki told me about one Japanese woman here, in that second category, who ran out of money. She was, like most in that category, without papers. She had come on vacation and stayed too long. After she ran out of money, she would dress nicely and go to the airport everyday, standing at the arrivals hall holding a sign with someone’s name on it. She was pretending to be a tour guide or a chauffeur for an incoming (nonexistent) Japanese tourist.

After a while, her gig was up. Her parents were asked to come get her. But they refused because it is shameful to have a mentally ill child. For people like this, they typically end their treatment in Paris and stay here illegally, penniless. But if the family will accept them back in Japan, they will go home and eventually recover with continued treatment at home.

This all sounds pretty extreme, but it still makes sense. For better or for worse, Paris has been built up in many people’s minds as the end-all, be-all of cities in the entire world. But it’s still just a city. Just a place to live. A place to work. A place to be the exact same person you are back home.