Japanese culture has a reputation for politeness, consideration of the feelings of others, and cooperation.
Somewhere on this earth there must be a culture that is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Anyone care to suggest a candidate? What culture has a reputation for rudeness, inconsideration, and selfishness?
The Japanese.
Southern Californian culture, maybe tied with New Jersey culture.
I don’t know about selfish but Israelis are well-known for being blunt and/or rude.
In a global perspective, us Americunts take the cake.
Obviously, Americans.
Believe it or not, that is actually not true. The U.S. doesn’t have to be the absolute best or worst at everything. Sometimes we are just in the middle or maybe just a little above average. There are parts of the U.S. that are fairly rude but not the majority. The South is known for being polite in particular but many other regions are as well.
Even if you are just talking about tourists to other countries, there are several others that have worse reputations than Americans (Israelis in particular).
The US is far too large and diverse to really be viewed as a single culture.
On the other hand, when you populate a place with malcontents who were not able to get along in their home country, things can get ugly.
[QUOTE=Bill Murrey in Stripes]
We’re Americans, with a capital ‘A’, huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the “wretched refuse”.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t know about toward tourists, but my eastern European MIL and her friends were blunt to the point of rudeness to me. “Why are you so thin?” “Why don’t you have a baby?” “That coat looks very shabby,” etc., etc.
What’s more, most of the Europeans I know who have been to the US have told me about the politeness of most people there. Cashiers smiling at you and asking how you are, neighbours inviting them over to barbecues… certainly more open than most Europeans, at least judging by that anecdotal evidence.
Sorry if this isn’t what OP wants to hear, but I don’t think his question can be answered. Politeness and rudeness are entirely subjective.
I’ll give my host country (Sweden) as an example. You will rarely develop a close relationship with your neighbour. A stranger will NEVER talk to you unless absolutely necessary. Carrying a heavy bag in each hand and need help opening a door? No-one will help you unless you ask.
These things would seem rude, or at least not very polite in most societies. And yet I don’t feel that Swedes are impolite. They are just shy enough that talking to their neighbours seems uncomfortable. They are so protective of their privacy that talking to strangers feels too aggressive. And so individualistic that offering help to people who don’t ask for it is equivalent to patronising them
I’ve travelled extensively and found most ordinary people in their own country to be utterly delightful.
New Zealand, Japan and Germany/Austria have proved particularly nice, I always feel like a fish-out-of-water in the USA but the people seem genuine and generous to a fault.
I struggle to think of any times when I found people’s rude behaviour to be remarkable or memorable. Three times only have I been gobsmacked and, though it may prove to be contentious, on each occasion it was a by a group of what I presume to be Jewish people. I don’t know what sect but they had those stereotypical big hats, coats and hair ringlets.
All of them were English groups BTW and on each occasion it involved the act of pushing in, en-masse (large groups each time) into well established queues and kicking up an enormous, nay, cataclysmic fuss when they were called out on it. Once in Salzburg, once in London and once in Paris. There seemed to be a degree of entitlement at work on each occasion that I found particularly annoying.
So, by that anecdotal evidence I’d have to say “english” but a specific subset and a specific behaviour of that specific subset. As you can see from my sketchy description I don’t really know anything about jewish people and of course it could be purely coincidental (and their behaviour perhaps touching on my pet rudeness peeve) but still, by the third time I was wondering to myself whether I was biased in some way until a colleague remarked after the incident ( and without any prior comment from me) “un-fucking-believable. I’m writing that down verbatim”
I think the Dutch are rather blunt and it sometimes comes across as rude. I don’t think they (or rather, we, I am one of them) are particularly selfish, kind of averagely so. But we do like to be clear on how we feel about something, whether you want to hear it or not.
I live in (the north of) Italy. I love and adore the country and the Italians, but it is the land that customer service forgot. Not so much rude as taking indifference to new heights.
A German friend of mine got stiffed in a job interview for a faculty position in the UK and was shell-shocked by how rude we (the British) were. He put it thusly - ‘You might think us Germans are the rudest bastards on earth, and we are, but it’s due to us having very rigid and high standards of politeness.’
So you can definitely come at rude-ness either way - a laissez-faire, laid-back attitude is going to infuriate someone more used to clearly de-marcated standards of conduct, and vice verca.
Personally find China to be a challenge. Any and every interaction with one’s fellow man seems to be grounds for a huge fucking shouting match. As a self-respecting Englishman who’s not raised his voice in 35 years, this is hard to understand. More seriously, the selfishness aspect of Chinese culture is very alien - meaning the sense of self is so different when you have this crushing weight of over a billion people sharing your country.
I’m a Norwegian, not a Swede, but it’s exactly the same thing here. I’m used to that, so leaving Scandinavia (actually, even Denmark is borderline) can often feel like walking into a party full of drunken extraverts. Being naturally both shy and introverted on top of being a Scandinavian, it can be disconcerting. Even the U.S. felt like that to me, especially when dealing with anyone employed in the service industry. Enough with the beaming smiles, and all the “how may I help you” and “have a nice day” stuff already! Just give me my coffee and leave me alone. Jeez, what’s wrong with you people? 
In other words, being used to a base comfort level of reserved distance and general grumpiness, too much friendliness can seem “rude” to me, or at least uncomfortable and invasive.
I have the most trouble with Chinese immigrants to America. (Sorry, I know China’s a huge place and probably has many cultures, but that’s as much as I can narrow it down.)
“Why you so fat?”
“You have husband? You too old not have husband. No one like marry old ladies.”
“Why you not have more kids?”
“That shirt ugly. Can I have it?”
Erm…excuse me, hi, nice to meet you, can I take your mother’s blood pressure now? Jeesh!
A bit too late for another edit to my previous post: Basically, if you visit Scandinavia and people seem cold and aloof, they are actually just trying to be nice to you, by leaving you alone.
I agree with others upthread (or my interpretation thereof): rudeness is subjective, and it’s usually only one particular part of “rudeness” that any culture collectively displays.
For example: Brazilians are very kind and generous, always helpful and open. But they just don’t do please and thank you. It’s perfectly normal at the table to say “gimme the salt”, while beckoning for it. I was strictly taught “may I have the salt please”, so to me it seems rude, but the thing is: it isn’t rude there. It doesn’t seem rude in Portuguese, only in English.
Another example: Eastern Europeans (in some places) don’t smile as much as we do. For us, smiling is a polite way of approaching people, it’s simply the default. There (again, some places) smiling is what you do when something is mildly funny. But approaching someone who doesn’t smile at you is weird and scary for us. I remember one time, on a roadtrip, we were camping to the side of a field when we saw the farmer approach. His face looked terrifying and he was carrying some sort of stick. We genuinely thought he was going to shoot us! He came over and thrust a home grown cucumber at us, clapped a few of us on the shoulder and continued on his way. Still unsmiling. It really takes a while to get used to.
Yet another example: we think it’s rude to demand from someone when they’ll have children, in Romania my friends do this all the time. Our housekeeper there slapped me when I said I didn’t want children! People I only vaguely know prod me in the belly and demand to hear when I’ll finally have children. Apparently that just isn’t rude there. But Romanians are absolutely not rude, on the whole. They’re lovely, quite formal often and with great hospitality. Especially our housekeeper, I adore her. She gets a pass for slapping me 
Egyptians (or at least, that subset of Cairenes who ride the metro) seemed to me to have absolutely no concept of forming a line. Their concept of “No, you first” is as developed as the average four-year-old’s is. Getting a ticket to ride the metro involves putting your money in one hand, shoving that hand into a mass of people, gradually moving closer to the hole in the window where the person behind the glass is trading money for tickets, and waiting until your hand is the one he takes money out of, then hoping he puts the right number of tickets back in your hand.
Of all the places I’ve lived, Russians win the award hands down, particularly those in positions of petty authority and anywhere you have to compete for space or goods (e.g., public transport or standing in line at McDonald’s). They make the rudest American look positively Canadian!
