It's NIHONJINRON !!!

wareware nihonjin!!!!

Japan lost to Australia in the World Cup on Monday. It is big news in Japan naturally, so I get to discuss this with a lot of people. A lot of the focus is on "bad advice" from the foreign (Italian, I believe, manager) to the pure Japanese players, and from one intellectual about how it was due to physical differences between the Australian team members and the uniquely unique pure Japanese. In fact, this difference is caused by the fact that them thar semi-beast foreigners are meat-eaters, and the pure Japanese ate rice and fish historically. (You know, fish like whale meat which the Japanese government claims is a traditional Japanese food.

Only a couple of people have said the loss may have been due to the fact that the Japanese team sucks and has no offense. They said that in private when there were no other Japanese to offend.

Once again, everything is explained away by the "we Japanese are special" and them thar furriners are interfering with our pure nature.

6 Jult 2006: Gotta take some of this back. A lot of people now recognize that the problem was the Japanese team and players. I have such a pet peeve about the nihonjinron myth, that I (and a lot of people) sometimes jump to hasty conclusions.