Japanese People: Quite a few in Japan

That high Japanese population doesn't leave much room for cultural sensitivity (aside from the Little Black Sambo book I had to explain to a young lady why "lynch" might not be the best word to use in most situations).

Moving along. One can't help but be amused at the reactions of a Japanese person who hears that a foreigner enjoys eating nattou. Of course I can't be counted among those, never having so much as touched the stuff, but it's entertaining nonetheless. The idea of a someone so devastatingly non-Japanese consuming a Japanese food seems to be quite mindblowing to much of the population.

This glares into the face of many of the resident population whom I've spoken to that recoil at the mere mention of the word nattou, Japanese-ness notwithstanding. It's one of many examples of the citizenry's tendency to self-homogeonizing, painting a stark line between Japanese and foreign. This is not a trait that's uniquely Japanese, but stick with me for a moment.




The peace sign in photos, origami, insane fashion senses, (relative) purity of spirit, group-mindedness, corruption and trickiness in the female population (at least according to some members of my current family), these are also results of the cultural paintbrush that may or may not be withdrawn once someone takes the time to think about themselves as an individual as opposed to a faceless member of a cultural whole which only exists in the most abstract and general sense.

People continually attempt both inside and outside of Japan to define what it means on a whole to be Japanese, despite many Osakans claiming that they can't stand Kantou-ben and many Tokyo-ites complaining that Osakans are rude sons-of-guns (of course, save for the occasional reference to exotic Hokkaido and questionably "Japanese" Okinawa, 90% of the rest of the country is left out of the comparitive equation). They forget that Japanese people are indeed people, and beyond the basic cultural foundation which is itself quite varied, they are themselves and not part of an imaginary, whitewashed block of sameness.