Japanese fans & blood types?

November 8, 2005 10:51 AM

Why are Japanese fans curious about musicians' (actors', sports players' etc) blood types?

(I've noticed this recently on fanpages devoted to Japanese musicians, sports celebs, etc...haven't been able to find much on Google. Is this a new thing?)

posted by bitter-girl.com to Society & Culture (9 answers total)

Best answer: It is analogous to wanting to know a celebrity's horoscope sign. Different blood types have different personality traits associated with them.
posted by Alison at 10:53 AM on November 8, 2005

It's kind of a horroscope thing. Video game character profiles have it too.
posted by Capn at 10:53 AM on November 8, 2005

Lol! So THAT'S why it was in games like Street Fighter. I always thought it was because of all the blood they were spraying around..... as in, "what kind they'll need transfused when you're done playing with them."

(still laughing)
posted by Malor at 11:40 AM on November 8, 2005

Alison and Capn got it right - there's horoscope for bloodtypes. Whats strange however is how obsessed they are about how they'll get along with those celebrities *IF* they get to meet them one day.

ps. I get along the best with Type B blood and need to avoid type AB.
posted by grafholic at 11:52 AM on November 8, 2005

Response by poster: Oh wow -- that's really interesting. Thanks, everyone!
posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:07 PM on November 8, 2005

William Gibson, interviewed in Salon magazine some years ago about his book Idoru:

I'm trying to do a Q&A with her for Details magazine. I've got my questions in to them. The first thing I ask her is what her blood type is. That's the first thing a certain kind of Japanese journalist always asked me. There's this thing in Japan about blood type -- it's a little like astrology. Apparently it's based on one very successful crank book in the '60s that came with a blood tester so you could see what your personality was. The first time I sat down at an interview in Tokyo and they said, what is your blood type, it was one of those moments that just didn't compute at all.

http://www.salon.com/weekly/gibson3961014.html

When I was last in Japan, I saw this display case of horoscopes, little pamphlets you could buy, and it was twelve wide and four deep. The twelve sections across were the twelve traditional Asian things, year of the Dog, year of the Tiger, etc., and the four vertical divisions were for the blood types. So they'd neatly folded it in to the thousand-year-old tradition, and you could say "I'm a year of the Rat, and I'm Type B, this is my specific horoscope".
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:07 PM on November 8, 2005

Koreans also believe (or many do, to varying degrees, at least) that bloodtype has a defining effect on personality. Calling it akin to 'horoscopes' or 'astrology' is not entirely accurate... it's not viewed so much as a predictive thing as an indicative thing, again, in terms of personality.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:32 PM on November 8, 2005

Somewhat OT: This is not too different from the medieval European notion that the personality is derived from the four humors, or fluids, and their balance in the body: choleric (yellow bile), sanguine (blood), phlegmatic (phlegm), and melancholic (black bile).
posted by SPrintF at 7:36 PM on November 8, 2005

My Japanese girlfriend has just responded rather nastily to me when I pointed this post out... "Yes, it is a very Traditional Japanese heritage..." until I pointed out that medical definitions of blood type are something that came from the west.

Another non-computing moment at home...
posted by zaelic at 4:07 AM on November 9, 2005