Society and Culture
A popular belief in Japan is that a person's ABO blood type is predictive of their personality, character, and compatibility with others. This belief is also widespread elsewhere in Asia, notably Taiwan and South Korea. Deriving from ideas of historical scientific racism, the theory reached Japan in a 1927 psychologist's report, and the militarist government of the time commissioned a study aimed at breeding better soldiers. The fad faded in the 1930s due to its lack of scientific basis and ultimately the discovery of DNA in the following decades which it later became clear had a vastly more complex and important role in both heredity generally and personality specifically. No evidence has been found to support the theory by scientists, but it was revived in the 1970s by Masahiko Nomi, a broadcaster with a background in law who had no scientific or medical background. Despite these facts, the myth still persists widely in Japanese popular culture.
Read more about this topic: Blood Type
Famous quotes containing the words society and, society and/or culture:
“No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The distractions, the exhaustions, the savage noises, the demands of town life, are, for me, mortal enemies to thought, to sleep, and to study; its extremes of squalor and of splendor do not stimulate, but sadden me; certain phases of its society I profoundly value, but would sacrifice them to the heaven of country quiet, if I had to choose between.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)