In Japan, Your Blood Type Speaks Volumes

From today's "Who Knew?" Files..

It turns out that Japanese people are obsessed with a bodily detail that many Americans wouldn't know if someone held a gun to our heads: blood type.

The issue of blood type is getting attention in the U.S. thanks to the world of baseball, where the Japanese are sure that Red Sox player Daisuke Matsuzaka will be a "warrior" on the field because he has Type O blood.

“In everyday life in Japan, blood type is used as a kind of a sociallubricant, a conversation starter,” said Theodore Bestor, a professorof Japanese studies and anthropology at Harvard University. “It’s a piece of information that supposedly gives you some idea of what that person is like as a human being.

“Japanesetend to have a fairly strong kind of inherent belief that genetics andbiology really matter in terms of people’s behavior. So I thinkJapanese might be much more predisposed to thinking about a kind ofgenetic basis for personality than most Americans would.”

Apparently, about 90 percent of Japanese know their blood type. I confess, I can't remember mine.

Do you know yours and if so, why? Because you've had to know it, or think you might need to know it (during an emergency) or just because it's a useful bit of trivia? Or because you believe it says something about you?

Blood, Sweat and Type O [New York Times]