Misfortune Teller

What's your type?

If someone asks you that in Japan, they're likely trying to tell your fortune based on your blood type.

In Japan, many people think a person's basic personality type can be determined from their blood type: A, B, AB, O. I took it for a quaint social icebreaker like Astrology (What's your sign?) in the U.S. and didn't think anyone took it seriously.

Silly me. A recent article at the Mainichi Daily News website, Myth about Japan blood types under attack reminds it is impossible to underestimate the stupidity to which some people may sink. It reports that Japanese academics are starting to protest abuses of blood typing ranging from job discrimination to broken romances to pidgeon-holing school children.

The origin of the blood type-personality type idea is another story. I had always assumed it might have arisen from a confusion between the alphabetically coded blood types and the coincidentally named Type A and Type B personality models developed by the cardiologist Meyer Friedman. However, I was mistaken and the true origin of the idea is quite sinister.

The discovery of blood types in the early 20th century was a great medical breakthrough, but it was the Nazis who made the leap from blood type to personality based on the coincidental predominance of blood types A and O among Germans versus type B among Jews, Asians, and others. The Japanese militarists adopted the idea from their Nazi allies in the 1920's. From there it morphed into the modern Japanese urban legend it is today, though one that is not quite as harmless as I once thought.