88
votes
Accepted
Did WWII Japanese soldiers engage in cannibalism of their enemies?
I'd like to note that this answer contains mentions of particular instances of cannibalism, and while no unnecessary details have been included, it may still be upsetting to some people.
Yes, ...
- 11.1k
55
votes
Accepted
Did the residents of Aneyoshi survive the 2011 tsunami thanks to the warnings of a stone marker?
It's kind of right.
According to other sources the Aneyoshi monument is not a common "tsunami hazard" sign. Instead, it prohibits building homes below the marked point, and, apparently, ...
- 1,579
37
votes
Accepted
Were there Black people in Japan in 1600?
Yes, according to Historical Context of Black Studies in Japan:
Confucian scholar Nishikawa Joken, for example, published Kai tsusho ko (1695), in which he wrote that the Zimbabweans were caribals. ...
- 34.1k
33
votes
Is the Japanese government encouraging the young to consume more alcohol?
Yes, here is a decent article about it:
Why Japan is asking its young people to drink more
The country’s National Tax Agency (NTA) has introduced content named ‘Sake Viva’ where it has invited ideas ...
- 47.1k
29
votes
Accepted
Do Japanese police roll drunks and criminals into giant futons?
Yes, they do in fact do this! It is called a "protection sheet" 保護シート and it is a thin sheet made from plastic, not a futon.
Here is a video of a violent drunk being rolled up, and another of a ...
- 47.1k
21
votes
Accepted
Did a man from a non-existent country, Taured, appear in a Japanese airport in 1954, and then disappear?
This mystery was resolved by a Brazilian YouTuber, Natanael Antonioli, in July 2019. Further missing pieces were added by a Fortean researcher in March 2020 (article forthcoming, in Fortean Times ...
- 47.1k
19
votes
Accepted
Did the Japanese military use the Kagoshima dialect to protect their communications during WW2?
There is a kernel of truth to this story, but the full story is much more remarkable than I expected.
Kagoshima-ben was used on phone calls from Japan to Germany when coded telegrams failed.
...
- 47.1k
18
votes
Accepted
Do Japanese crows use traffic to crack nutshells?
This behavior has been well documented in Japanese crows, but Cristol et al (the contradicting paper in the question) did not observe it in American crows.
This Ph.D. dissertation discusses the ...
- 12k
15
votes
Accepted
Are more than 40% of millenials in Japan virgins?
No.
CNN is misreporting.
The statistics are for the fraction of NEVER MARRIED people who are virgins.
Specifically, the study is The Fifteenth Japanese National Fertility Survey.
The ...
- 109k
14
votes
Accepted
Did a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament prize card sell for $2 million USD?
No Japanese source for this
This is a one-of-a-kind card and there is no information in Japanese about its sale or current ownership. At one point a Yahoo Auctions listing was created with a $10 ...
- 47.1k
13
votes
Are there only 1,200-1,900 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in India and Japan, as of March 30, 2020?
Yes but be careful
You're looking at 'confirmed cases' - this isn't a good comparitive measure of actual cases as each country has their own approach to testing. Japan and India have been noted for ...
- 2,208
11
votes
Accepted
Do Macaque monkeys steal money from wallets and use it to buy food from vending machines?
The claim is plausible. Let's break it down into several components:
Q: Are monkeys capable of stealing wallets or learning to use vending machines?
A: Certainly. There is ample video evidence of ...
- 10.8k
7
votes
Did US forces use tens of thousands of Japanese women as sex slaves after the WWII?
Did the US forces use tens of thousands of Japanese women? Yes. The New York Times article Fearing G.I. Occupiers, Japan Urgesd Women Into Brothels indicates the number of Japanese women involved were ...
- 39.1k
7
votes
Accepted
Is the Japanese emperor forbidden from eating fugu (puffer fish)?
Formerly the emperors had to stay in their palace in Kyoto and did not have the chance to visit Shimonoseki, where most fugu is prepared. More concretely, fugu was illegal in Kyoto and Tokyo from ...
- 47.1k
7
votes
Is Islam banned in Japan?
No, Islam is not banned in Japan. The wikipedia entry about Islam in Japan says:
The history of Islam in Japan is relatively brief in relation to the
religion's longstanding presence in other nearby ...
- 15.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Was Japan required to open its semiconductor patents to the US in a 1989 "deal"?
In 1989 Japan granted Texas Instruments a patent for the first semiconductor integrated circuit according this New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/24/business/japan-grip-still-...
- 109k
6
votes
Did Japanese people misspell "We pray for MacArthur's election"?
My uncle Bernard Frew joined MacArthur in Australia; he served as his secretary, landed holding the arm of the Philippian President, stood in the group behind the General on the Missouri, then changed ...
- 61
6
votes
Did a department store in Tokyo crucify Santa Claus?
Snopes, linked in the OP and the accepted answer, says:
the earliest reports of this legend we’ve found so far all stem from the early 1990s.
However, the 1986 The sun at noon: an anatomy of ...
- 109k
5
votes
Accepted
Do cellphones pose any harm to pacemaker users?
Yes, in some cases. The risk seems to depend on the cell phone and pacemaker involved. Apparently there's no conflict in some cases, while there can be in other cases. The American Heart ...
- 4,121
5
votes
Accepted
Did Tomoaki Hamatsu live entirely on contest winnings?
NPR investigated this and found that he was given bread until he actually won food.
(Nasubi's testimony) The staff got together and would give me
basically a very simple little bread each day, so ...
- 47.1k
4
votes
Did Hiroshima change the layout of its streets subsequent to the war?
An overhead photomosaic of Hiroshima pre-bombing can be found here (U.S. National Archives, NAID 540225).
Comparing that to a present-day map of the city (Bing Maps link), it's clear that the answer ...
- 3,694
3
votes
Accepted
Is passenger rail in Japan at least an order of magnitude safer than in the U.S. (as measured by fatalities per passenger-km)?
Using 2014 data the fatality rate for US long-haul rail service is 0.43 per BPMT (1 death per 2.32B miles traveled); excluding non-passenger deaths brings that to 0.15 per BPMT (1 passenger death per ...
- 1,127
3
votes
Is this a photo of the result of a kamikaze attack on a ship in WWII?
That image is in the Australian War Memorial's collection.
c. 1944. The imprint of a Japanese kamikaze aircraft on the side of HMS Sussex. Incredibly, the aircraft hit the side of the HMS Sussex and ...
- 22.7k
3
votes
Do Japan's teachers need to bow to the Emperor?
Because this doesn't have an actual answer yet...
The other answer, which describes this claim as the opposite of the truth, was true before 1945. In the post-1945 liberal democracy, nobody in Japan ...
- 47.1k
1
vote
Accepted
Did Japanese people eat pickled fish eyes?
The 1939 article The Caloric Measure of Man in The Cavalry Journal July/August 1939 says:
The Japanese soldier lives on a ration of fish eyes and rice.
A National Geographic article says:
...
- 109k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible