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Hi! Thanks for the thoughts:

I'll have to put off any mea culpa just yet, as I'm not sure what fault you're pointing at. Yes, I've said that Ishihara makes a number of "the Japanese are such-and-such" assertions without backing those up. But I can't be guilty of the same, at least within this article of mine, because I haven't made any such assertions. My text is wonderfully free of any assertions along the lines of "the Japanese are..." or "Westerners are...".

I do assert that the Gov's claims of "unique sensibilities" and what not are silly. And, true, I don't follow that with evidence for my claim of "how silly". Yet here's the kicker: I can do that. The claim of (for example) "unique Japanese sensibilities" is the assertion that's being made, and it's entirely upon the claimant to provide evidence. Until then, the listener does not have an obligation to properly argue against what hasn't been properly argued for in the first place. (Or as wittier minds have worded it: "What is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.") 

There is, though, an assertion of mine in a separate article, which you mention a bit later. I'll address that below.

True. And practitioners of disciplines like sociology should be honest in recognizing that weakness, and be very careful of presenting claims as fact when the topic at hand is, unavoidably, not subject to rigorous scientific methods. (If nothing else, a claimant simply noting that his claim is opinion or conjecture would go a long way to removing any objection on my part!)  

You're referring to my response to the claimed "paradox" of some Japanese web designers making ugly web pages while some Japanese artists make beautiful art. I stand by that response fully!

The claimant doesn't say that Japanese people making beautiful traditional art and Japanese people making ugly web sites are the same individuals – in fact, he contrasts long-dead artists from the 19th century and so, with (obviously) modern-age web designers. So my statement is spot-on in that regard, though I insert a "generally" to cover modern-day artists as well, who certainly could double as web designers. Yet even then, I believe it's reasonable to depict the two groups as generally non-overlapping. Traditional artwork and web design are both time-consuming disciplines; how many people could seriously pursue both? (Sure, a professional traditional artist could dabble in web design – but the resulting ugliness of a dabbler's site wouldn't even be a surprise, let alone a "paradox"!)

The claimant's point is not that the individuals making lovely art and the individuals making ugly sites are the same people, but rather that they're from the same country, and thus it's strange that they should vary so much in the quality of their artistic expression. And that's the point to which I have to say rubbish. At least until someone provides good evidence that national origin is correlated to quality of artistic expression.

On that topic:

My fault is in not making my meaning of "sense of aesthetics" more clear. Yes, shared background will lead to shared experiences in aesthetics, quite possibly some degree of shared preferences, and so on, as you suggest; I can't argue with your general gist there. Rather, by "sense of aesthetics" I mean the factor that's the focus of the "paradox" claim: the quality of artistic expression. Artistic ability. Or in very plain terms, one's goodness or badness at art and design.

A claim that this factor is connected to nationality does need to be backed up by evidence. Hence my response to the "paradox": If there's no evidence that nationality/ethnicity/"culture"/whatever is an indicator of individual artistic/design ability, and if the individuals making lovely traditional art are not the same individuals making ugly web sites, then no paradox has been demonstrated. We just have both good artists and bad ones, which is what's expected. "Some people make nice art and some people make ugly sites" is not a paradox. 

That's all there was to my point.

Getting back to my Ishihara article, and wrapping up:

Let me note that my exhortation to those making sociological claims – "Prove it" – is not an ideal choice of words. The scientific method that I hold up as an ideal doesn't typically deal with "proof", and in fact acknowledges the difficulty of ever "proving" anything (outside of mathematics). Rather, the scientific method seeks to work with evidence, not "proof" per se.

My words "Prove it" are arguably okay as colloquial usage, but my request to claim-makers should be re-worded as "Provide evidence". Mea culpa on that!

My thanks to you for providing me the chance to revisit the article and discover that area for correction. And thanks for your thoughtful comments overall!