Legislating LOLs: Japanese prefecture passes law asking residents to laugh daily

The local government in Japan’s Yamagata prefecture has just passed an ordinance calling on residents to laugh at least once every day to promote better physical and mental health, although the new law has gone down like a bad joke in some quarters.

Put forward by members of the normally strait-laced Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and passed on Friday, the ordinance encourages local residents to snigger, chortle or guffaw daily and asks business operators to “develop a workplace environment that is filled with laughter,” the Yomiuri newspaper reported.

The eighth day of every month has also been designated as the day for “residents to promote health through laughter”.

The initiative is a result of ongoing research into laughter at Yamagata University’s Faculty of Medicine. Studies at the university have linked laughter to better health and increased longevity.

In an article published in the Journal of Epidemiology in 2020, for example, scientists at the university studied 17,152 subjects over the age of 40 and determined that “all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease incidence were significantly higher among subjects with a low frequency of laughter.”

The study also pointed to other research that has established a link between laughter and life enjoyment, positive psychological attitudes and elevated levels of competence, trust, openness and conscientiousness.

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The new legislation has not been universally welcomed, however, with members of both the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ) voting against the proposal.

Toru Seki of the JCP complained that, “To laugh or not to laugh is one of the