Fluent in Hindi, Mayo is one of the most famous Japanese YouTubers in India with more than 2.7 million followers. Featuring food, pop culture, travel and other aspects of life in India and Japan, her videos inspire her fans in both countries to learn more about each other.

Mayo sat down for an interview with The Asahi Shimbun to talk about how she came to love India and how knowing the South Asian nation helped put her own country in perspective.

Excerpts follow:

Question: Your YouTube channel “Mayo Japan” has more than 2.7 million subscribers. How did that happen?

Mayo: Most of them are Indians. I started posting videos targeting Indians in December 2018 and together they have generated more than 690 million views. When I visit India, I get recognized on the street several times a day.

Q: How did you become interested in India?

A: I majored in Hindi at university because I wanted to learn a language that few people in Japan can speak. Also, I was inspired by my father, who loved climbing in the Himalayas. He told me how he loved India.

I like dancing and used to take ballet lessons, so I easily got hooked on Indian dance, too. I graduated from university and got a job at a consulting firm, and started posting Hindi lesson videos for Japanese people that same year.

Then I started making videos for Indian audiences. It took courage because I wasn’t very confident about my Hindi ability back then.

Then in March 2019, a year after I started the channel, my subscribers increased tenfold to 50,000 thanks to a popular video of the Hindu festival Holi celebrated at Tokyo’s Nishi-Kasai district, home to one of the largest Indian communities in Japan.

This was among other similar Indian-themed videos made by non-Indian people that became popular at that time.

Q: Is there anything particular you keep in mind when you make videos for social media?

A: In videos for Japanese, I make sure to avoid stereotypes about India, for example, a poor country where everyone eats curry.

In the same way, I try to show various sides of Japan in videos for Indians because, again, I want to challenge stereotypes. And also because hyping my country is not what I want to do.

Q: As you travel back and forth between Japan and India, what have you learned so far?

A: I’ve learned a lot through doing business with Indians. In Japan, you are always expected to be on time and keep your word. But that’s not the case in India. So I had to learn how to say what I have to say to my Indian clients and colleagues without hesitation.

I’ve also learned the importance of being assertive and hungry like Indians. For example, they are clever and tough at negotiating with their potential employers. They tell recruiters what salary and benefits they were offered from other companies so they can create competition among their prospective employers.

Also, it’s nothing special for Indians to be able to speak English. Compared with Japanese, Indians have much greater access to, say, the latest information and technologies from the United States.

Q: How do Indians see Japan?

A: They liked Japan even before their independence from Britain and they still do, I guess. Japanese anime films like “Demon Slayer” became very popular in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, Japanese brands like Uniqlo and Muji are opening their outlets in large cities in the country. So in that sense, Japan is becoming more familiar to Indian people.

Q: India is seen as one of the leading members of “Global South” nations, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida invited his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, to the Group of Seven summit held in Hiroshima in May. Would you talk about that?

A: It doesn’t feel right to me to lump together diverse countries and label them the “Global South.” I also avoid generalizing about India, for that matter. It’s a huge country with a variety of peoples after all.

I don’t like to call India a developing or emerging country, either. Sure, there are people with low income in the country but there are billionaires as well.

You miss the opportunity to see the real India unless you drop the stereotypes of it as an underdeveloped country.

Q: India has a unique position in global politics. The country has close relationships with Western democracies while also maintaining ties with China and Russia, don’t you agree? 

A: India and Japan don’t agree on everything with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Western narratives on the conflict don’t necessarily find wide acceptance in India. It’s not hard to find Indians who don’t believe in, for example, the BBC or the United Nations.

Discussing the war in Ukraine (where India avoids blaming Russia), one of my Indian friends argued on social media that India is perfectly justified in trying to maximize its interest.

Q: The Japan-India relationship is increasingly important. What do you hope for the future of the two countries?

A: I hope that the people of both countries become more interested in each other. For example, (I want Japanese people to know that) Bollywood movies are much more diverse than they were just a decade ago.

So my role is to be a bridge between the two nations, updating both sides with each other’s latest trends and events.