How attitudes to fitness are changing in Japan

Way back in 2008, Japanese people literally went bananas over a new diet centered around the yellow fruit. Dreamed up by a pharmacist in Osaka, within weeks of the "Morning Banana Diet’s" debut, sales of bananas here went up 70%; not only causing a brief banana shortage but also revealing the extraordinary power get-thin-quick schemes had over Japanese consumers.

Fast forward to 2017 where it’s getting harder to avoid the promotional campaigns for exaggerated body transformation programs such as Rizap. Thin but bloated “before” pictures are set against a glowing (literally) “after” image of the new ideal body: lean, tanned and, notably, muscular.

So what’s changed in the past ten years? Click here to read more.

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