Secrets of the Japanese Smile

The Japanese, like their equally unfortunate neighbours the Chinese, have traditionally received a lot of stick from Westerners regarding the condition of their teeth. During the Second World War propaganda posters even made a feature of it, regularly portraying the bestial “Jap” with his slight eyes grossly exaggerated, a squat pig-like nose occupying the centre of his face and an exaggerated mouth almost bursting with jumbled zig-zagging fangs grinning sinisterly at the viewer. If such posters were to believed then the Allied soldiers had more to fear from their opponent's molars than their bayonets. Even to this day politically incorrect children throughout the western world continue to indulge this classic stereotype in the playground: the typical school impersonation of an Asian generally involving tugging at the sides of one's eyes and then biting over the bottom lip with your top row of teeth in an effort to reproduce the perceived dental malady of the average Asian. Of course as we get older, and hopefully a little wiser, people begin to dismiss such crude stereotyping, but sometimes the playground can be closer to the mark than you'd perhaps think.

Last week I was enjoying lunch in the company of my 6^th graders at the local elementary school. Normally I would have my lunch with the teachers down the stairs in the staff room, but this week the kids has especially asked if I could join them upstairs in their classroom (lunch is eaten in the classroom here, not in a dining hall as is the case in Scotland). Once lunch was finished I hung about for a bit of chat with the kids, something, as a very infrequent visitor to elementary schools, I'd never really done before. After 10 minutes or so had passed it was time for everyone to brush their teeth, this is standard procedure in Japanese schools and even the teachers join in. In the junior high schools this ritual simply involves everyone grabbing their brushes and then heading out of the classroom to negotiate a space along one of the trough-esque sinks than line the corridors. But in the elementary school the procedure was somewhat different: instead the teacher instructed one of the students to switch on “the video”. Driven by curiosity I decided to hang about to see what was about to be shown. Once all the students had filtered back into the classroom and had seated themselves at their desks, brushes at the ready, it was time to hit the play button. The large television screen began to glow revealing a figure who I guessed was most probably a dental nurse as she was balancing, with considerable difficultly, a giant set of teeth on one hand and holding a large toothbrush in the other. The featured women began to clean the over-sized dentures using the novelty brush, all the time shouting out instructions at the kids telling them to copy her. For the next 5 minutes the classroom was filled by the sound of 30 children brushing in perfect unison. It was a very Japanese sight. Afterwards I asked one of the kids if this procedure was the same every day, she replied that the exact same routine took place every single lunchtime.

Given that the Japanese instill good dental care practices so rigorously, and at such a delicate age, you would be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese could perhaps serve as an example to the rest of the world, a shining beacon of good dental hygiene. That, however, would be until you actually visited Japan. One of the first things I was struck by on my arrival here was the pitiful condition of the nation's gnashers. Blackened calcium pegs indented with patches of assorted metals featured regularly in the otherwise pleasant smiles I was greeted with. I'd see pretty young girls who evidentially invested a lot of time in their appearances, dressed in soft pastels, the delicate scent of perfume enveloping them, and with grins that bore the dental profile of Ken Dodd. Poor dental hygiene and the accompanying bad breath, meant that in my first few months here I regularly found myself reeling from both my co-workers and students due to the stench of rotting gums and festering abscesses emanating from their gobs – I have now learned to keep ample distance from those I am talking to. Braces are a rare sight, mouths full of protruding overlapping teeth are not. The legend of the Japanese people's terrible teeth is indeed no myth. So where does it all go wrong? Do the kids simply forget all they were taught in elementary school?

There is, of course, no short answer to such questions as there are many factors which contribute to making Japan the living embodiment of every dentist's nightmares. Traditionally when a Japanese child loses a tooth, they are taught an ancient custom, "ue no ha wa en no shita e, shita no ha wa yabe no ue e nageru." Literally translated, this means "throw your upper teeth under the floor, your lower teeth over the roof." The idea is that the upper teeth will grow downwards towards the tooth on the ground, and the lower teeth will grow up towards the roof, and all the teeth will grow strong. Indeed children would sometimes even pray for strong teeth. Yet baby teeth, are regarded as ephemeral and as such little importance is placed on keeping them in good condition, after all, parents reason, they will fall out eventually. Resultantly, many parents do little to encourage brushing, which in turn simply hastens the decay of their little darling's teeth. It doesn't take long for the cumulative damage to become evident: one look at an average Japanese teen's smile and you would be forgiven for thinking that scurvy is endemic in the country. The failure to encourage a habit of regular brushing amongst young children is often the first step on the slippery slope.

Then there are the dentists, who are unfortunately more often part of the problem than the solution here. For any work done on the national health service dentists are paid per appointment, as a result getting a simple filling can require up to 10 appointments, a serious disincentive for the infamously time-strapped Japanese. On top of that, toothpaste in Japan does not contain fluoride, and neither does the water supply, meaning that the Japanese tend to have rather week teeth - and foreigners with any sense get their toothpaste posted from home. Social pressure to keep your teeth in good condition isn't strong either: for a start if everyone else has bad teeth then why should you worry about your own, and in Japanese culture the quality of someones teeth has no bearing on the beauty of their smile – hence many Japanese models have stunningly beautiful faces, accompanied by stunningly bad teeth.

So given all this in mind it seemed especially unfortunate about a month ago when I made the discovery that I have a fairly large hole in one of my back teeth. It's obvious that it's going to require a filling but, having already seen plenty of evidence of their work, the prospect of visiting a Japanese dentist instantly fills my head full of images from 'The Little Shop of Horrors'. I might be mistaken, but I think it might just be best if I sit on this one.