Menchera - a creepy Japanese subculture about mental health (7 photos)

The Japanese can make anything a trend: maids, dolls, even the aesthetics of North Korea. This time, the Japanese have created a subculture that is directly called "mental health", but its representatives look like they have nightmares at night.





How do the Japanese do it?

Menhera, or “mentally healthy” in Japanese, is a Japanese aesthetic that combines pastel-colored kawaii with taboo topics like self-harm, PTSD, and chronic illness (how did they get there!).



Blood Bag Pendant

Fans of the style say the look has inspired an entire community to talk more openly about mental health while still maintaining a cute aesthetic.

What Menhera Fashion Looks Like

Razor blades, pill-shaped pastel accessories, syringes, and facial patches are commonly used as accessories. And yet, this is a campaign for mental health. It's weird, but that's how it is.



Prints with pills and bandages

The style originated in the Harajuku district of Tokyo, Japan. It's where almost all the weird fashion trends are born. So much so that "Harajuku" or "Harajuku fashion" has become synonymous with a dizzying array of subcultures.

While it makes sense that the trend emerged in Japan, where there are many mental health issues, dependence on public opinion and death at work, voluntary death due to simple fatigue is also not uncommon.



An eye patch as an accessory

To outsiders, this style looks extreme. But people in the community say it has helped them talk about their own mental health — and that the world has a lot to learn from it.

Turning the negative into a positive

When pills are just jewelry and a syringe is just a pendant, it should remove the stigma from health issues. As if to demonstrate: yes, I take pills and it's beautiful and normal, it's an everyday thing.



Instagram photo, tights with prints of scratches and a broken knee

Also, bandages and blades bring to the surface the topic of self-harm, which is usually hidden. Therefore, people usually do not know until the very last that someone close to them is in despair and harming themselves. If wounds and cuts are usually hidden behind long sleeves, then in Manhera, bandages are worn demonstratively.

The trend has gone beyond the country's borders



An Indian girl in a manhera and a syringe pendant

The fashion trend has become very popular outside of Japan, because the topic is common. Mental health, the stigma of talking about it, is a sore spot in many countries.

By the way, the Japanese are far from the first. For example, back in 2001, Alexander McQueen caused a huge debate because of a show inspired by a mental hospital.



Another fashionable tights with supposedly scar stitches

Have you seen elements of this style in our country? I often see band-aids on teenagers, but that's because they are now printed in very cute colors - with pictures and smileys.