. . . . . ."Hayashi sensei ga odoroku, hatsumimigaku!". . . . . . This is Hayashi Osamu, a cram school teacher who became famous for a commercial in which he says "ja itsu yaru ka? ima desho!"
That's easy for him to say because Hayashi Sensei here is blood type O and as we know from the 2013 anime "ketsuekigatakun" or "Blood type Kun," blood type O people have great focus and can stay up all night studying. You see, in Japan, blood types are sort of like zodiac signs.
Many people believe that blood type affects personality and can determine things like the compatibility of a marriage partner. And, this idea has been widespread since at least the 1970's when journalist Nomi Masahiko made it popular.
Blood type is more likely to be brought up by women when on the topic of romance, but it's not uncommon for blood type to appear in the media and many other places. This is famous singer Nishino Kana's 2015 song about blood type A people.
. . . . . ."Datte watashi A gata da shi, yappari are kore to shinpai…". . . . . . One Japanese television show aired an experiment to see how kids would react when a "substitute teacher" dropped a vase that the kids were told was very important.
They saw that blood type A kids right away told on the substitute teacher, type B kept the secret, type O also told on the sub, and AB promised to keep it secret but then ratted the sub out anyway. In 1990, the Asahi newspaper reported that Mitsubishi Electronics created a small team composed entirely of blood type AB people, thanks to their "excellent creativity and planning skills".
In 2011, ex-Minister Ryu Matsumoto, famously conducted himself in an unprofessional way that led to his resignation. He blamed the rude behavior and abrasive remarks he made towards two governors on the fact that he was blood type B.
. . . . . ."B-gata de tanrakuteki na tokoro ga atte." . . . . . . That same year, an issue of Asahi Newspaper talked about how some new graduates were worried that they were being discriminated against during hiring processes for being blood type B.
It's not particularly common, but people can sometimes be asked what their blood type is during a job interview, and on some companies' job application sheet, there's even a field to fill in your blood type. One twitter user wrote in 2015 that one of his work superiors said that "blood type O people are usually irresponsible, so I don't want to hire them."
Now, let me be clear that I'm not trying to present this as a big societal "problem" — the point of these examples is simply to illustrate how widespread the concept is in Japan. According to data from 2016, somewhere around 40% of Japanese people believe that blood type contributes to your personality, but what was most surprising to me was that:
