While in Japan, I recall reading numerous articles that tried to depict Japanese as a ‘unique’ people. ‘Facts’ given to support this included: Japanese have unique intestines (and thus could not possible eat foreign-grown rice), Japanese brains capture and process sounds and music differently, etc. etc. Hear this stuff enough, and you almost start to believe it, especially when the reports cite ‘scientific facts’. Talk to educated Japanese, and with nary an exception they believe all these things too, with no sign of skeptimism.
This ‘Japanese are unique’ talk has died down quite a bit --Japan is now the not-so-proud owner of the lowest interest rates perhaps in history (possible exception – Italy in the 14th century), and in any event a 10yr economic collapse suggests the country has little to brag about.
But, I still wonder sometimes - what ‘scientific facts’ could they possibly have used? Any truth to these theories?
Absolutely no truth to this crapola. The intestine story is an old one and used for reasons why foreign rice couldn’t be eaten by Japanese, and ditto for foreign beef. Made the rounds in the early 1990’s when resisting calls to open up their domestic markets.
Japanese have a no doubt unique culture as anyone who has lived there can attest. But the physical differences usually cited are complete and utter bull.
Reminds me of the Brass Eye programme:
Yes, it exists. I’ve run across it too many times - often in infuriating ways. It’s called “nihonjinron” (a little difficult to translate, but lit. “Japanese Theory”). Here are some links: http://brunchgrill.freeyellow.com/page2.html and http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ElAnt/V1N6/dale.html
My favorite example is that the Japanesxe brain is actually physically different from non-Japanese in the way it processes language, put forth by Tadanobu Tsunoda in his book The Japanese Brain:
Uniqueness and Universality. He postulates that “Western” subjects hear pure vowels in their “non-verbal” or “harmonic” right brain, while “Japanese” subjects hear
such sounds in their “verbal” or “non-harmonic” left brain. Riiiiiight. :rolleyes:
Thread about Japan, so I’m required to post.
This “different Japanese brain” theory has also been used as an argument against starting English study in elementary school. The delicately tuned Japanese brain will be severely damaged by being exposed to cold, unemotional English at such an early stage in its development.
Oh well, at least I’ll never go hungry.