Genres
Iyashikei
A Japanese healing genre: peaceful, calming stories meant to soothe the reader, trading plot for atmosphere and immersion.
Iyashikei (Japanese for "healing" or "healing-type") is a category specific to Japanese works, mainly manga and anime: characters living peaceful lives in calming settings, written to have a healing effect on the audience. It is treated as a subgenre of slice of life, and critics describe its focus as lying less on character and plot and more on worldbuilding and an immersive setting.
The genre became distinct around 1995, in the years after the Great Hanshin earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin attack, when a broader "healing boom" made calm itself marketable. For novel and web-serial writers it is a license to serialize low-conflict episodes: the pleasure is the visit, not the arc. It pairs naturally with slice of life in web fiction.