It has been two years since the wearing of masks was recommended. The disciplined Japanese have continued to wear masks for as long as they can.
 While they have been working hard to prevent infection, the trend among women has been to wear masks with face pants. Face-pantsers are reluctant to take off their masks in public and often say they want to keep wearing them even after the infection is under control.
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 If we continue to wear masks in the future, won&#8217;t it cause some kind of harm? We asked Professor Nobuyuki Kawai of Nagoya University, who specializes in comparative cognitive science and experimental psychology.
<figure id="attachment_223613" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 4050px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-223613"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ac0294b7"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/01/aflo_151619030.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-223613" class="wp-caption-text">I&#8217;m too embarrassed to take off my mask!　What problems will this behavior cause 20 years from now? (Photo: Afro)</figcaption></figure>
<h3> People who don&#8217;t want to take off their masks are glorifying themselves!</h3>
In the first place, before the Covid-19 disaster, people used to show their faces without hesitation, so why have they become embarrassed to take off their masks?
 If you don&#8217;t want to take off your mask, you imagine a beautiful face by hiding your mouth and nose, which you don&#8217;t like, and you make subtle corrections in your mind, like Photoshop. If we take off the mask, we see our unmodified selves, so we may want to keep it on.&#8221; (Professor Nobuyuki Kawai, same as below)
There is an old saying, &#8220;In the night, faraway eyes are the shade of a hat,&#8221; and it seems that when it is difficult to see a person&#8217;s face, the brain compensates for what it cannot see and imagines that the person is beautiful. It is true that the term &#8220;masked beauty&#8221; has been coined. However, actual experiments have shown that the presence or absence of a mask has little effect on attractiveness.
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 In an experiment conducted by a friend of mine a long time ago, 30 to 40 male students were asked to rate the attractiveness of a photo of a masked woman and a photo of an unmasked woman, and the results were pretty much the same for both.
The results showed no significant difference between the two. The human eye does not capture things physically like a camera, but it complements and adds various information to it. A simple example is Hello Kitty, a representative of Japan&#8217;s &#8220;cute culture.
 Kitty does not have a mouth. This is because she was designed to be a stuffed animal. She is there for you as a friend, so I purposely removed her mouth to better fit the feelings of her owner at any given time.
 Just as a woman puts on a mask and applies the face of a beautiful woman, Kitty without a mouth feels like she is laughing with you when you are laughing, and looks sad when you are sad. I&#8217;m impressed by how well it&#8217;s made to be able to accompany the owner&#8217;s feelings.
<figure id="attachment_223614" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 4000px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-223614"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="2c7c8dfa"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/01/aflo_162595654.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-223614" class="wp-caption-text">Kitty does not choose her work. While she is everyone&#8217;s friend, she also becomes a zombie on Halloween. She&#8217;s a no-mouse, so she can change at will!　(Photo from &#8220;Short Shorts Film Festival &amp; Asia 2021&#8221;: Afro)</figcaption></figure>
<h3> The Harm to Children Growing Up in a Masked Society</h3>
If wearing masks allows face-pants people to live peacefully, that may be a good thing, but there are actually harmful effects. Among these, the effects on the minds of young children are said to be particularly serious. Growing up in a world where everyone wears a mask from the time you can remember is certainly not a natural state.
 Even before Covid-19, nursery school teachers often wore masks in the winter, and there were those who drew large U&#8217;s on their masks to show that they were smiling.
 When toddlers are able to draw a human face, the mouth is always represented by a large U shape. For toddlers, a U-shaped mouth is a sign that they feel safe and that they are accepted.
If a child is exposed to very few smiles in childhood, there is a risk of developing the same condition as those who have been neglected. In the case of neglect, there is a possibility of mental anxiety and depression when they grow up.
 This is based on data from the U.S., but the development of the brain, which controls social information, is impaired, so language and other developmental skills may be slightly delayed.
It is not so simple to avoid the problem if family members smile at each other.
 It may be difficult to trust people outside the family. There is usually a gradation in the intensity of relationships between family members, close friends, and people who know each other from the same class, but if you have never seen a smiling face, you will be quickly divided into those who are close to you and those who are not. But if you have never seen a person smile, you can quickly divide into those who are good friends and those who are not.
 It&#8217;s called social distance, but I think there are times in life when you shouldn&#8217;t be socially constant. It is no different from watching your favorite actor on TV if you can see his face on the video.
 There are multiple meanings to being next to someone and spending the same amount of time in the same place, so it&#8217;s not enough to just be connected to them on the screen.
<figure id="attachment_223615" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 640px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-223615"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="5f411187"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/01/4275667_s.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-223615" class="wp-caption-text">It is said that children only draw large U-shaped mouths in their early childhood, and gradually stop doing so in elementary school. A smile is a symbol of safety and security for children.</figcaption></figure>
<h3> Knowing the reason makes sense. Why there is so much opposition to masks in the U.S. and Europe</h3>
Although it makes me feel a little uneasy, I have heard that masks do less damage in Japan than in the West because Japanese culture reads facial expressions through the eyes rather than the mouth. If you ask me, even for a single emoticon, Japanese people use their eyes, while Westerners use their mouth to express themselves. In the case of a smile, the Japanese use (^^), while the Westerners use 🙂.
 When asked to recognize facial expressions, Japanese only look at the eyes, and the right and left eyes in the same order, while Westerners look at both the eyes and mouth in a T-shaped pattern.
 Westerners are not comfortable with masks in the same sense that Japanese are not comfortable with sunglasses; they are afraid because they cannot read the expression of the other person.
 If we were told to wear sunglasses to a funeral or to a class, we would say, &#8220;What? If we were told to wear sunglasses to a funeral or to class, we would be like, &#8220;What? It&#8217;s just like that, so I think they would say, &#8220;How can I do that?
It seems that it will be impossible to take off the mask for a while yet, but it seems that there is still a way. A recent experiment conducted by Professor Kawai is interesting.
 He recently conducted an interesting experiment: &#8220;When we asked people to eat while watching a video in which they could see someone but not hear their voice, or a video in which they could not see someone but could hear their voice, we found that the latter increased appetite and made the food taste better.
 We tend to think that it is better to have our faces in the picture when we have online dinners, but in fact, hearing voices seems to make people feel that they are directly involved. Radio is also effective in soothing the loneliness of students who live alone.
 Nowadays, schools are encouraging students to &#8220;eat in silence,&#8221; but when the infection subsides a little, it might be a good idea to try to talk as much as possible while wearing a mask. If you are going to communicate with someone, a phone call using your voice can compensate for what you cannot see, rather than a text-only line.
Even if the Covid-19 scourge is under control and masks are no longer necessary, Japanese people will probably continue to wear them. What kind of impact will such a mask lifestyle have on children?
The results will not be known for another 20 years. It may become a major issue in the future to consider mental health as well as infection control.
Nobuyuki Kawai is a professor at the Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University. His research areas include comparative cognitive science, cognitive science, experimental psychology, biopsychology, physiological psychology, and neuroscience. His research interests include comparative cognitive science, cognitive science, experimental psychology, biopsychology, physiological psychology, and neuroscience. He has been conducting interesting research on the brain&#8217;s response to being left out of a game of catch, and the cause of the aging process in humans. The story of Kitty in the article is from his paper &#8220;Noh masks, Mona Lisa and Hello Kitty. He is the author of &#8220;The Wisdom of Science: Calming Anger and Apologizing Well&#8221; (Kodansha), &#8220;The Fierce Old Man: Cognitive Science Reveals the True Nature of Aging&#8221; (Shogakukan), and many other books.

 Chimasa Ide

 It has been two years since the wearing of masks was recommended. Japanese people have been wearing masks for a long time. While they have been working hard to prevent infection, masks have become "face pants", especially among women.

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