I remember reading a few stories on here before about Nihonjinron and the belief some people have, that Japanese people are unique and different to everyone else. Some of the examples I remember hearing are “Japanese people need rice to survive”, and “only Japan has four seasons”. My wife is really curious about it and wants some examples, so please tell me your stories!
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“Japanese people have different colons” stands out to me
Westerners can’t hear insects singing.
Still see him around sometimes, even after all these years. He’s a weird dude, that Nihonjin Ron.
The reason Americans speak louder than the Japanese os because they speak from the stomach while Japanse speak from their throat.
Japanese doctors can’t treat foreigners because foreigners’ internal organs are arranged differently.
From a practicing doctor
“Foreigners have longer intestines than Japanese.” It was something about how Japanese bowel movements are apparently different than foreign bowel movements, lol.
Japan (only) has 4 seasons.
Japanese snow is different (thus foreign skis won’t work).
Japanese rain is different.
Japanese tongues taste flavors differently, thus umami.
Japan colons/intestines are a different length thus the difference in digestion.
Only Japanese understand “wa”.
Only Japanese have the concepts of “face”; both for embarrassment and for acting differently in public / private.
Haiku poetry only works in Japanese.
Japanese truly understand nature.
Japanese blood is different.
Japanese rice is superior.
Japanese beef is superior.
Giichan was an optometrist. Claimed Japanese people had worse eyesight than foreigners due to being artisans and therefore straining their eyes more.
Had a recipe book that started with the line: Unlike western cooking, Japanese cooking requires skill and attention to detail.
Had a professor saying that only japanese people feel like they should return the favor when someone does something for them. There are multiple research papers showing that this feeling is part of human evolution and is how people managed to organize themselves and cooperate inside the group thousand of years ago.
Had another professor saying that there’s no other race in the world that’s capable of working as hard and passionately as japanese people.
I’ve accidentally convinced some people at my work that foreigners can smell rain while Japanese people can’t.
I thought everyone could smell rain. Apparently a lot of people around here either can’t or haven’t connected the dots that a certain smell permeates the air around the time it’s about to rain.
So they’re confused about why I can smell rain and I’m confused about why they can’t. *Everyone is confused.*
Someone threw some trash on the public street outside work and they asked if I can go pick it up. I said no and got the whole “only Japanese people do things outside of their job description” spiel.
“Japanese words usually end in vowels so they are better at hearing natural sounds like chirping insects, the wind blowing, and running water.”
I’m gonna present a new one since we usually get 4 seasons etc ones. This often happens during the world cups.
Japan beats a European team:
“Japan is now amazing and superior to Europe. They MUST recognize and admit us. We are too smart and good”
Japan then loses to a low ranking African team:
“Ah! We were tactically much much better and smarter than them, they were just too big and physically strong. Our weakness is that we are just too small. If we were bigger…”
Me: “but what about Messi? He’s (was) the best player in the world and 5ft6”
Them: Ah…..well ummm…..that’s different.
It’s just funny seeing the underdog and superiority complex both appear within 30 seconds
Pretty much any sentence that begins “Ware ware nihonjin ha…”
Two books for everyone that are fuckin’ great:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Hegemony-Homogeneity-Anthropological-Analysis-Nihonjinron/dp/1876843055
https://www.amazon.co.jp/Myth-Japanese-Uniqueness-Routledge-Revivals/dp/0415681235
Four seasons as mentioned.
That they’re somehow cleaner then everybody else. Definitely not true.
Japanese being more sensitive to smell. This, also not true. In my country it’s the same. You don’t go mental with the perfume.
Chalking Japan’s cultural uniqueness up to being an island nation. So often I hear “島国だから…”
I’m also from a 島国 (UK), and we aren’t this culturally isolated or insulated…
Only Japan has pure water so any ramen you get outside of Japan isn’t really ramen since it’s been contaminated with bad water.
An old man told me that all foreigners are lazy and will never work as hard as Japanese people. I was just standing there thinking, “Do you realise I am a foreigner?”
Doctor asked me if I slept with a Japanese or foreigner when I contracted chlamydia. Was just a small clinic in Fukushima but this moron probably thinks that Japanese people can’t have STDs
“It only gets hot like this in Japan,” to which I replied “it’s been in the 40s in my hometown in Texas recently.” Their shock was hilarious lol.
Japanese can go overseas and learn to cook a foreign cuisine just as good or better than a native cook can. But foreigners can never truly learn to cook Japanese food as good as a Japanese cook can.
That only *gaijin* can wear sunglasses, because Japanese eyes are better and aren’t hurt by the sun. The same person said they wish they could wear sunglasses, as if they’re not allowed or something.
Not exactly the same, but a story from olden school days. The (Japanese) teacher explained how (asian) Japanese people came to be.
God was cooking us in the oven, and the first batch came out undercooked (white people), so he/she turned up the hear, and the next batch came out overcooked – then finally the temperature was dialed in just right to get the “golden” color. I was more entertained than offended.
Don’t think that would fly these days.
And uhm, also from school, our language (Japanese) teacher loved the phrase “… because Japanese is not a designed language…” – as if all other human languages were carefully architected.
That playing sports and club activities in like 80 degrees is a cultural unique facet of Japanese life and character building. No it isn’t, it’s stupid and fucking dangerous. Plus it seems to just make kids hate sports!
My (ex)wife was drunk on the right-wing Twitter uyoku BS, so…strap in lol.
I asked her to cut back on the rice-based dinners after I got diagnosed with diabetes. She replied that Japanese bodies are genetically different and that rice is nothing but good for them. Also, rice made in Japan is different from all other rice and is incapable of doing harm/causing anyone to gain weight.
Japanese people don’t commit crimes. All crimes in Japan are committed by Chinese or Koreans posing as Japanese. If a Japanese person does commit a crime, they were manipulated into it by a Chinese/Korean.
She didn’t need to vaccinate against corona because Japanese people are healthier with strong immune systems, and practice proper hygiene. Rising infection numbers were 100% the fault of foreigners spreading their germs.
Of course, comfort women was nothing but lies and propaganda spread by the Chinese/Koreans. Nanking didn’t actually happen. She amazingly acknowledged that Unit 731 existed, but said that they were ultimately heroes because their work lead to the creation of vaccines.
It’s impossible for the Japanese to be racist – they just are naturally superior to everyone else. Any Japanese who admits this is simply just failing to be modest and telling the truth.
My personal favourite usually revolves around only Japanese people eating/truly appreciating seafood.
As an Icelander, also pretty famous for our seafood intake, I thought I’d research it a little and turns out that per capita we eat more seafood than the Japanese.
Like, orders of magnitude more. It’s not even close.
At some point I’m gonna start pretending to be impressed when Japanese people eat fish in front of me.