Another proposition of Nihonjinron to date is a deliberate emphasis on
how foreigners differ from Japanese. This hypothesis involves a particularistic
way of looking at Japanese culture (as opposed to a universalistic
way of thinking). In order to investigate this hypothesis, we
included five statements in our survey and asked people to respond to
them. As to foreigners' cultural competence, as Table 3 shows, 63% of
the respondents said foreigners are incapable of completely understanding
Japanese culture. As to assimilation into Japanese culture, mastering
the Japanese language and achieving mutual understanding with
Japanese, again, less than one half of the respondents thought foreigners
lacked these cultural competencies. From these results we can see how
strong the particularistic way of thinking about Japanese culture is in
modern Japan.