Anti-social? Blame your antigens: Truth and Pseudoscience in Japan

     My good friend David once asked me, “What is the point of truth if the lie is better?” At the time I fell silent, pondering the inherent value of truth that I knew existed somehow, but that I could not articulate. Most societies view truth and falsehood as a mutually exclusive dichotomy, in the presence of one, the other surely seems impossible.
     Japan never ceases to fascinate me. It is a country that somehow manages a beautiful and delicate fusion of truth and fantasy, modernity and history, science and myth. There are many things that I run into that totally lack any scientific grounding, but are believed because, why not? They seem right and feel good. For instance, my host dad, when I studied in Sapporo, explained that you drink hot tea with your sushi and eat pickled ginger afterward because the heat and strong flavor will protect you from getting sick from any impurity in the fish (sure, that feels about right). A couple weeks ago, I was told by one of the teachers at school to eat some tempura before I was to record a listening tape for the students’ English exam so my voice would be crisp in the recording (sounds about right). I also heard from someone that women who are breastfeeding should not eat mochi (rice that has been cooked, mashed up, and formed into hard blocks which then become extraordinarily viscous when heated) or drink cold milk because mochi is sticky and inhibits the flow of breast milk, and cold milk is cold. And babies don’t like cold milk (duhhh).
     When I met Mr. Nakamura, the oldest (and now my favorite) of the JTEs (Japanese Teachers of English) that I teach with, he asked me three things about myself right off the bat: my hometown, my age, and my blood type. He was visibly shocked when I explained that I didn’t know my blood type, so I also further explained that blood type was not typically exchanged information in the US, and I thought that most people I know at home probably don’t know their blood type either. I have had people in Japan ask me this question before; he was definitely not the first. Many Japanese people believe that blood type is an indicator of personality, and therefore asking someone’s blood type can be an ice breaker similar to asking someone’s astrological sign (except markedly less creepy and dated).
     Nakamura sensei’s surprise at me not knowing my blood type suddenly made me stop and think, “Wait, yeah. Why don’t I know my blood type?” Nakamura sensei, after knowing me for approximately 2 minutes, fielded a surprisingly confident guess that my blood was type A (to which I really couldn’t say anything either way to). I whipped out my California driver’s license and scanned it quickly, half expecting to find the desired knowledge, but to no avail. My eyes came to rest on my organ donor sticker, and soon I was imagining myself, a stretcher-bound bloodied mess, flying down the corridors of an ER somewhere, drifting in and out of consciousness with the doctor leaning over me begging, “for pete’s sake, just tell us your blood type!” I somehow manage to sputter,
“Nakamura sensei…seemed so sure… type A?…” And then the lights flicker and fade and I hear the doctor’s voice as if from the end of a long tunnel,
“Well shit… at least he’s an organ donor.”
     Although I don’t actually feel like I’m in tangible danger not knowing my blood type, it comes up a surprising amount in things like morning television shows and newspapers that have daily blood type based horoscopes, popular magazines and books pertaining to blood-based relationship compatibility, and the occasional person who will happily size up my personality and guess what kind of blood antigens I’m packin’.
     I had been asked before about my blood type a handful of times, almost all of the people who asked me were over 60, so I had thusly concluded that blood type as an indicator of personality was something believed these days only by the aged population of Japan. That was until I saw this, which shows that the majority of people in this survey do believe there is in fact a correlation between blood type and personality. The sample had a wide range of ages, making me reconsider the idea that this belief was perhaps dated or on its way out (and a grain of salt for those ultra-critical readers, the sample was just over 500 people. So if you don’t like that, umm well, get cracking on your own survey).
     Many are shocked to find that Japan’s apparently harmless blood-typing pseudoscience is an idea originally imported from Nazi Germany. The Nazis took the discovery of the ABO blood typing system and manipulated it to their ends, claiming very literally that they alone held the true blood line (Germans who are a higher proportion of type A and O, claimed blood superiority over Jewish Germans and others with a higher proportion of type B blood).
     In 1927, Takeji Furukawa published “The Study of Temperament Through Blood Type”, importing this idea of personality-based blood typing to Japan. Although his methods were entirely flawed and he lacked any reasonable credentials, Japan’s government took on this idea and within the framework of their expansionist policies and militarization of the time, began scientific testing with the hopes of breeding stronger soldiers. The popularity of these ideas dwindled in the late 1930’s as the government became increasingly aware that these ideas were totally bogus.
     Fast forward to the 1970’s; Masahiko Nomi, a man with no scientific or medical qualification publishes his book “Understanding Affinity and Blood Type”, which quickly becomes a best-seller and serves to spark a massive popular interest that still exists today. Nomi’s work has subsequently been relegated to the realm of pseudoscience by countless psychologists, but for some reason, many Japanese people have continued to believe in the proposed link between blood type and personality. In fact, I would argue that the popularity of his ideas has actually increased due to the public backlash from the scientific community. Four out of the top ten bestselling books in Japan for the last year were on the topic of blood type and personality.
     Some vehemently oppose the idea that blood types are indicators of personality for a number of different reasons. Some cite the racist links to Nazi Germany and Furukawa’s writings that claimed the rebellious Taiwanese attitude during Japan’s occupation was due to them having a higher proportion of people with type O blood (yup, sure, it was their blood types, not the military occupation). Others cite the fact that some employers still ask about blood type in their job applications or the fact that teasing based on blood type, or bura-hura (from “blood harassment”) exists in the schools of Japan today.
     So, is the correlation between blood type and personality a dangerous, potentially racist idea that openly ignores the truth, or is the issue not the lie itself, but rather how and why it’s used?