(Orinally written January 15, 2007; last updated on August 23, 2025)
Some foreigners will believe anything they are told about Japan.
These are myths believed not by Japanese people, but mostly by some foreigners. Some of them are quite entrenched in the belief systems of some non-Japanese.
A frightening amount of misinformation about Japan has been spread around and (more frightening) believed for decades. A disturbing aspect of these myths is that some of the originators I have seen have presented themselves as Japan experts, but have never been to Japan. They are the blind leading the exceedingly credulous.
Spreading this nonsense requires willing believers, and there is certainly no shortage of credulous myth-believers. Often the most credulous are those who come to Japan prepared to worship a culture they believe is “superior” to their home-country culture. When they find anomalies, some tend to take refuge in the more-comfortable mythical version of Japan.
Japanese people understand the meaning of kanji characters without remembering the pronunciations of the characters (i.e., directly from the form of the character).
Wrong. This belief, promoted by many Western kanjiphiles, and particularly by the ones who mistakenly believe that kanji are somehow superior to sets of phonetic writing symbols, is clearly incorrect. Kanji characters are not ideograms but rather logograms that represent words—and often a number of different words, depending upon context and usage—when taken alone, and it is difficult for a Japanese to avoid thinking of a word that is written with a particular kanji when encountering a kanji character. Alas, kanji might seem exotic to Westerners, but there is no magic pipeline from the character to the meaning without going through a specific word or words in the Japanese language. I have written some basics about the Japanese language elsewhere.
People who are accomplished in martial arts in Japan register their hands with the police.
Ridiculous. What might be true is that, if a martial arts “artist” gets into a fight and injures someone, the courts might take into consideration the possibility that he/she could have used less force than someone without skills in martial arts, but “registering of hands” is something that was clearly made up outside of Japan by people who don’t know Japan.
Almost all Japanese are middle class and there is no visible poverty.
Wrong. Anyone who has walked through a major city in Japan will realize that homeless Japanese people exist. Many live along river banks, but some come into town to “mar” the cityscape, although they are much better behaved than the “people experiencing homelessness” in other places.
Another point on the graph is that one block away from my home until a few years ago there was a Ferrari repair shop and a Maserati showroom, but there was also a very tacky Daiei supermarket right across the street from them. Diversity of income abounds. (Added July 8, 2012; modified October 18, 2013)
If you are a passenger in a taxi accident, you are liable for damages because you hired the tax.
Wrong. Perhaps this notion has died out, but it was a common belief among foreigners living in Japan decades ago, particularly among US military based here. In approaching a half-century of residence in Japan, I have never heard of a single incident in which a passenger in a taxi was held liable for an accident because of hiring the taxi. Causing an accident by trying to strangle the driver while he is driving might be a different matter. (Added November 30, 2011)
Japan is full of devout Buddhists.
Greatly exaggerated. With the possible exception of some of the people working their way up the Amway-like totem pole of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist lay organization, you will have a difficult time finding many Japanese who have any burning interest in Buddhism on a day-to-day basis. Temples are everywhere, and a large portion of the population goes to a temple when they should go (often when someone dies or on certain days of the year), but Buddhism does not play an everyday role in the “spiritual life” of the average Japanese, who tends not to have a recognizable “spiritual life,” at least as might be imagined by someone from a Judeo-Christian culture. Apologies to foreigners who came to Japan expecting something different; don’t believe all you hear or read about Japan before you see it for yourself.
Buddhists do not drink.
Ridiculous. Some poor non-Japanese will believe anything they read or hear about Japan. While in my long years in Japan I have met many people in Japan who do not drink, I have yet to meet one who says it is because of religious belief. It is more likely to be because drinking causes other, more earthly problems, including redness in the face, silly behavior, and noodle-chucking.
You cannot form a company in Japan as a foreigner unless you have a Japanese employee.
Incorrect. There is no such restriction that I know of. People who are under this misimpression are probably confusing things people have told them about obtaining some type of residence status to live in Japan, perhaps under some government-engineered loopholes to demonstrate to locals that foreigners who come here are not a burden on society.
Sometimes people might have been told by the immigration <sic> office that they will need to hire one or more Japanese employees to be able to stay in Japan with a company they formed as their income source. This also is nonsense, but perhaps some of the immigration people apparently think that foreigners will believe nonsense. They seem to be correct in some cases. (Added March 21, 2007)
Japanese people are extremely polite.
Correct, but with qualifications. The Japanese are usually very considerate and polite to people to whom they should be considerate and polite. Most Japanese people are skilled at using the correct level of politeness in the confines and according to the requirements of their social system, which definitely does not mean they are polite to everybody all the time with the same level of politeness.
Naturally, if you are foreigner in Japan, until you have demonstrated that you are more permanent than the average tourist, you will be accorded the requisite level of politeness. After you settle in and gain a degree of acceptance, and certainly after you begin speaking non-strange Japanese, the politeness you receive will be governed more by the relationship you have or are assumed to have with people in particular situations.
The population of Japan is homogenous.
False. This is a myth actually promulgated and enjoyed by the Japanese themselves, and it sometimes finds use in a variety of ways to excuse behavior patterns that strike non-Japanese as being strange or unacceptable. The myth of homogeneity falls apart, however, when you look around at Japan, which now has a few million foreigners (many of whom are children and grandchildren of Koreans who were brought to Japan as labor until the end of WW2 and many newer arrivals from Asia), and a number of other demographic classes (e.g., children who grew up with only a single parent) that are not treated very well in the Japanese social system. Heterogeneous as it is, however, some Japanese feel uncomfortable talking about this aspect of their society.
Vegetarianism is common in Japan.
False. Compared to the US, where yuppie vegetarians abound, Japan has few vegetarians, and trying to find a vegan is an even more difficult task, unless you wander accidentally into a Buddhist temple. Pity the poor foreign vegetarian or vegan who tries to live the good life that they imagined in Japan. While Japan’s consumption of meat is much less in other countries, almost all Japanese eat meat, the local McDonald’s is full of Japanese people, and almost all Japanese meals involve eating things which once traveled on four, two, eight, or no legs, fins or a pair of wings. Even having a perfectly good native word for vegetarianism (saishokushugi), the Japanese most often refer to this dietary preference phonetically as bejitarian, strongly hinting that vegetarianism is seen by the Japanese as being a non-Japanese phenomenon.
Japanese restaurants have sushi.
True in the US and certainly true for sushi restaurants in Japan. Although a Japanese restaurant in the US probably needs to have sushi to survive these days, sushi in Japan is almost entirely limited to sushiya, which offer nothing but sushi. It is very difficult for the average Japanese to imagine a restaurant that has smelly fried things and sushi, a common sight in the US. Since the overwhelming majority of even Japanese restaurants in Japan are not sushi shops, the overwhelming majority of restaurants in Japan do not have sushi. Without this piece of perhaps-surprising information, a non-Japanese-capable foreigner in Japan might have to wander into numerous eateries before encountering one with sushi (i.e., a sushiya). I have had a client venture out in Tokyo one time and experiencing just that phenenomenon. He was shocked to stop at more than 10 eateries to be told that they don’t have sushi.
Japanese eat sushi all the time.
Overstated. In Japan, sushi is considered rather classy and expensive, and good sushi can be very expensive. A small number of Japanese don’t eat sushi, only slightly larger group rarely eat it, a significant, but not that large, number don’t like it, and even the great majority of Japanese, who do like and eat sushi, don’t eat it as often as one would guess judging by the proliferation of sushi shops in the US.
Japanese commonly eat unrefined rice (genmai) with the outer covering remaining.
False. Ordering genmai in anything but the most specialized of Japanese restaurants (catering to health enthusiasts, foreigners, or Japanese who are “playing foreigner” by eating “trendy” unrefined rice), will get you very strange looks. That said, the average supermarket these days does usually have genmai on the shelf. However, it took Japan centuries to get to the point at which its general population could eat refined white rice. The trendiness of genmai in Western countries has done very little to convince Japanese to go back to their “origins.” White rice is standard and essentially universal.
Japanese bars commonly have girls you can take out and have sex with.
False. What is true—and probably quite surprising to the people who believe the “girl-to-go” myth—is that any urban area worthy of the name has a large number of establishments where sex (of the Bill Clintonian variety, at least) is available on premise, sometimes in clear view of other customers. Although almost no such places offer girl-to-go services, I suspect that a diligent seeker of the baser pleasures will be able to find one with such services. Seek and you shall find.
Foreigners should figure out how to write their name in kanji characters, as that will allow them easier entry into, and acceptance by, Japanese society.
Misguided nonsense. Being a translator, I have in the past gotten requests from (usually) non-Japanese-capable aficionados of martial arts, flower arranging, the tea ceremony, and the like who are anxious to learn how to “translate” (sic) their names into kanji characters. While these characters are interesting, the unexciting truth is that all a foreigner does by writing his or her name in kanji is to invite confusion or laughter. Almost no long-time Westerner residing in Japan does this. It is almost exclusively the newcomer, and usually the newcomer who does not yet know the Japanese language, who wishes to go native with kanji representations of their names. Some have asked me about obtaining an inkan (see seal) with kanji characters, and my advice is the same: Don’t do it. Inkan with the katakana rendering of your name is standard for foreigners.