While eating sushi today, I remembered hearing or reading long ago that wooden chopsticks were outlawed in China (or possibly Japan) due to sanitary reasons.
Sounds like an urban legend, but searches on Snopes and this board turned up nothing.
I suppose it’s likely that some people reading this are either in China and/or Japan, or have been there recently. Are all the chopsticks in the far East plastic, or is this some half-remembered UL (as I strongly suspect)?
Don’t waste another second worrying about it. There are both wooden and plastic chopsticks in all Oriental countries, not just Japan and China. They have never been outlawed.
My mom was on one of the day-long river tours in China that included lunch. They passed another boat from the same company that had already started the return trip. The boat’s kitchen staff was rinsing off the used dishes and tableware in the river.
Did your mom get sick? Your point is?
I think his point was that if it is acceptable to wash the dishes in the river, they likely aren’t too worried about how sanitary wooden chopsticks are.
OK, let’s hijack the post and discuss the ramifications of washing dishes in rivers. When we finish that, the OP asked if chopsticks had been outlawed in China or Japan because of sanitary or hygenic reasons.
The answer is still no. This would be analagous to outlawing forks in the US because some restaurants don’t wash them sufficiently to sanitize them and I’m positive that not all do. Even so, banning forks would make no sense, would it?
i THINK that in Japan or somewhere I read that they cannot RE-use wooden chopsticks as they cannot get them sanitary by washing. Maybe that is the source, here.
TC: I thought we were going to hijack this bus to cuba? 
Daniel, you are the threadsaver in here. You are quite correct. I didn’t think of it because it wasn’t mentioned in the OP and neither I nor anyone I know would accept reused disposable wooden chopsticks. Someone trying to pull a stunt like that in China, Japan or Korea would have their own stick shortened a bit.
Since you have the cleverest answer, please feel free to take the thread to any country you like. I will keep the passengers in line by threatening to make another post. 
There are different kinds of chopsticks.
Nice wooden chopsticks: these are a pleasure to use. You can pick up anything with them, and they are comfortable. Common in nice homes and nice restaurants. They can be washed and re-used, since they often have a finish or varnish on the wood.
Disposable wooden chopsticks: the kind that come whittled together and you have to snap them apart. It is definitely illegal to re-use these.
plastic chopsticks: these suck (they have a smooth surface). They are most commonly used by restaurants because they are easy and cheap to clean, but even native chopstick users can be seen fumbling food and spraying sauce around when using these. I hate them.
I can’t speak on the leagllity, but as disposable chopsticks have to be snapped apart, you wouldn’t really be able to re-use them without the customer knowing it.
Koreans use almost exclusively metal chopsticks; disposable wooden chopsticks are essentially unheard of there.
Thanks Daniel, I’ll bet I half-heard or half-remembered something about re-use.