A single word for "death from overwork" – imagine that! You've probably seen the astonishment over that fact in contexts like this WIRED article: "And in a nation that actually has a word for 'death from overwork,'...", the gist of which is that the existence of a single word for the concept reveals its unusual severity or significance in Japan. 

In fact, there is a single word for "death from overwork" in Japanese: karoushi (過労死); there's no argument about that (well, except maybe from those claiming that Japanese has no words). What I'm debunking here is the overworked meme that the phenomenon's single-word status has any significance whatsoever. It doesn't. Read more

Ah, April in the Northern Hemisphere! If you're in a location with sakura cherry trees – whether Washington D.C., Seattle, Seoul, or any number of locales – you're in for a treat as entire trees erupt in fluffy pink blossoms.

In Japan, the blooming of the cherry blossoms is eagerly awaited every year. It's a time for relaxation and fun: walking under pink canopies along the river, taking photos in the park, and – best of all – enjoying all-day (or all-night!) hanami picnics under the blossoms with friends, food, and drink.

Unless you're Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, that is, in which case sakura season adds an extra activity to your calendar: a spring-fresh burst of the racist blathering for which you're infamous. Read more

Should I ever need to hire a translation firm, I know one I won't be considering. A strange pang of kindness holds me back from giving out the befuddled firm's name here, but the FAQ page of these "Japanese translators of the highest quality" contains this goofiness:

[T]here are no such things as words in Japanese. Read more

One of the most beloved Japanology memes overseas involves the word kaizen (or Kaizen to some). Here's the definition from the New Oxford American Dictionary:

kaizen |ˈkaɪzən|
noun: a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc.

That sometimes gets further embellished by eager writers who extend kaizen to carry continuous improvement out of business and "throughout all aspects of life", per one definition I've seen. Whatever the specifics, what you'll find in common across all definitions is that kaizen is a Japanese word for "a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement".

Unfortunately, that's wrong. Read more

It's time to visit the strange "Japan’s special relationship with robots" meme again. In a recent post, I wondered whether the meme was dying out; I haven’t heard much of it lately. (Then again, I don’t look for examples, or even spend much time in the sort of cultural-comparison media that would focus on the topic, so I'm not the best one to ask.)

Alas, though, the meme does live on, as demonstrated in a January 29 2009 episode of the Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart interviews Dr P. W. Singer, an authority on a range of topics related to modern warfare, on his new book Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. Both the topic and the interview were fascinating, with an exchange at the end really catching my attention. Here it is, with my comments interspersed: Read more

CRACKED Magazine offers a scatalogical look at Japan's Insane Creation Myths. "Hoo boy", I thought, "here comes another bunch of wild exaggerations to play up the 'Japan is so crazy' meme".

Well... I'll leave specific criticisms to experts in the field, but a scan of the linked references suggests that, yeah, these myths are built from the distilled essence of porn movies and junior-high body function jokes. Which isn't unique to the ancient myths of Japan, as many commenters point out, but these particular myths sure do aim for the gutter.

Fun stuff, if you're not too easily offended!

Surely you've heard this one: the Chinese word for "crisis" (危機, weiji in Chinese, kiki in Japanese) is composed of the two characters for "danger" and "opportunity". This reveals the wise Oriental insight that a crisis is an oportunity for progress, an impressive outlook we'd all do well to emulate. Or so we've been told for decades by management gurus, New Age philosphers, generic pundits, and even world leaders. Read more

Like zillions of people, I'm a big fan of Pharyngula. It's a blog by scientist and outspoken atheist P.Z. Myers, straddling both science and (ir)rationality as its topics.

What do witty, learned discussions of science and religion have to do with Home Japan, a lowly blog about cultural matters? The big item in common: critical thinking. Skepticism and rationality, if you will – the best tools we have for clearing away preconceptions and errors and what not, and getting at the reality. I'm simply trying to take those same approaches and tools into cultural comparison, a field I feel they've had little contact with. Read more

The smart way to learn about the world is this: Start with no conclusions. Draw in data. Form a tentative conclusion from those. Revise conclusion as new data require.

The common "culturology" way to do it: Start with a conclusion. Welcome all data that fit. Label data that don't fit as "exceptions" or "a paradox".

The mistake is called confirmation bias. Here's a really trivial example – meaningless by any measure, but worth pointing out because, hey, nice pizza ad!  Read more

In discussions of culture, why do so many people favor extreme, polarized claims over reality?

It's a common happening, though here I write after coming across a very minor example. I happened across a report on a designer's stunning blend of traditional kimono and African fabrics – the Wafrica kimono. The results are beautiful, and I can appreciate the creator's thought (unless I'm misreading) that the end result is its own object, not a subcategory of arbitrarily-labeled cultures: Read more