Quote Originally Posted by Index
Is the cross-section of society that is giving these opinions representative of Japanese? Have you spoken about these issues with people from other social, professional, or educational backgrounds?
I mostly frequent university-educated business people working in central Tokyo (mosty in finance, banking, IT, etc.). Id say that once we get to more ordinary people, the percentage of "bufoons" as uou called them, rises to astronomical proportions. But even among these well-educated elite, I have heard many very gross misconceptions. My job involves meeting lot's of people, and talking about many things, and the most deeply-ingrained misconceptions in all socio-economic classes (again rising as the social level decreases) were about the 4 seasons, food, blood groups and all the hings I cared to mentioned in this article (note that this thread is almost 2 years old).

These schools, however, also attract only a certain cross section of society, and it could be suggested that the students which are attracted are the ones who know least about foreign countries
I don't teach at a school (I go directly to companies), and I'd say that most of the people I meet have already been either to Europe or America or both (in addition to Asian countries). I'd say the ignorance is even worse (the type "Do you have melons in Europe") once we talk to people who haven't travelled at all (eg. some of my wife's friends). I have actually been asked the 4 season question by people who had studied a year abroad and travelled extensively ! So far, nobody who I asked me about blood groups didn't believe that the higher O-type rate among Westerners was due to the fact that the Japanese were "farmers" and Europeans were "hunters".

As an aside, I sometimes wonder whether Japanese people are somewhat more likely to admit to their ignorance in certain matters much more readily than the corresponding 'dimwit' of a western country....
It's not even that they admit it, they start asking dumb questions and display their ignorance, just out of the blue. Who else would do that ? Very often, they don't even ask because they want to know, but they are persuaded that most countries don't have 4 seasons and that the Japanese were farming earlier than the Europeans and that it has influenced blood groups, or other nonsense.



I'd also like to point out the concept of humble language, which exits in Japanese. It's purpose is to honor your interlocutor by humbling yourself and in essence putting yourself down. Since this idea exists in language (which, it can be argued, is thought), it could also conceivably be observable in other aspects of verbal behaviour such as the topic of conversation, and one's (presented) attitudes and beliefs. This does not seem too outrageous in light of what is said about the fluidity of morals and ethics (in relation to context) of Japanese thinking. If this were the case, then it would not be unthinkable that a Japanese speaker would be humbling himself (through humbling of his opinions, education, views etc) in order to put you (as represented by your culture and country) in a better light.
So far, the questions I was asked almost always indirectly put Japan above the West (since the connection to the nihonjinron), and I have rarely (if ever, outside a shop) been addressed in keigo (humble/honorific language) by Japanese people when we discuss in Japanese.