the crying game

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Fad-prone Japan has yet another obsession: public displays of emotion. Groups of pent-up salarymen are swapping karaoke for ‘‘tear therapy’’ — the chance to rent a room and watch cinematic weepies like ‘‘Love Story.’’

So powerful is this mawkish urge that entrepreneurs have even started crying clubs, where otherwise stoic guys can bond over shame-free sobbing jags for about 1,000 yen ($9.40).

The rock musician Tadayuki Inui organizes Minnade Nako Kai in Kyoto; the film buff and restaurateur Kosuke Kimura in Sendai owns Ruisen Kai (the Lachrymal Gland Club in English). England’s stiff upper lip is also quivering.

The artist Viktor Wynd holds teary events called Loss: An Evening of Exquisite Misery, inspired by Günter Grass’s sad nightclub, the Onion Cellar, in ‘‘The Tin Drum.’’

Gloomy guests swoon around in vintage clothes, listen to fado music and carry peacock feathers, half-dead flowers salvaged from cemeteries or freshly signed divorce papers. Come midnight, attendees are handed knives and onions to chop to the sound of the Mozart Requiem. Overly chirpy attendees are fined one pound per smile and two pounds per laugh.

‘‘Melancholia is not such a bad thing,’’ says Wynd, who is hoping to bring his mournful bashes to New York soon. ‘‘I don’t know why people think they’re supposed to be happy all the time.’’

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