{"id":3187,"date":"2003-06-16T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-06-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/06\/16\/2003-06-16-amma-s-hugs-cure-japanese-blues\/"},"modified":"2003-06-16T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-06-16T12:00:00","slug":"2003-06-16-amma-s-hugs-cure-japanese-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/06\/16\/2003-06-16-amma-s-hugs-cure-japanese-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Amma&#8217;s Hugs Cure Japanese Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.indianexpress.com\/full_story.php?content_id=25184\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>TOKYO, JAPAN, June 3, 2003: What do the Japanese do when their nation&#8217;s economic slide throws more people out of work and cuts into their savings? They go in for a hug from none other than Kerala&#8217;s Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, who is on the Japanese leg of her world tour. For the Japanese, a hug from the holy woman is said to bring happiness &#8212; something many Japanese feel is in short supply in their country. And for the last three days that is exactly what thousands of Japanese who flocked to a hall in Tokyo got &#8212; happiness through hugs. All this week, people have queued up outside Amma&#8217;s room, breathing in the incense-filled air and listening to strains of devotional songs. &#8220;Japan is suffering from deflation, and I think there are a lot of people who want to be helped,&#8221; said one businessman, who had already been hugged twice. Hugging is not a common custom in Japan and many people were overcome by emotion when embraced. &#8220;When you watch the news or read the newspapers, there are so many depressing things, but that&#8217;s not all there is in the world. That&#8217;s what I felt when she embraced me,&#8221; said housewife Teruko Nakamura as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. When asked, Amma attributed the emotion to nothing more than a lack of love in the modern world. &#8220;It is like when someone has been drinking sewage water all their lives and they suddenly get river water &#8212; they want more to quench their thirst,&#8221; she said.<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceTOKYO, JAPAN, June 3, 2003: What do the Japanese do when their nation&#8217;s economic slide throws more people out of,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}