Do asians have longer intestines on average than caucasians?
The references to the notion that Asians have longer intestines than Caucasians online seem to center primarily around the Japanese and date at least from the pre-war period. These have either been to enhance differences between the races to justify American animosity, or to justify Japanese pride in their uniqueness. The idea has been mentioned in “nihonjinron”, or discussion of Japanese cultural identity: “The former chairman of the association of agricultural co-operatives, Zenchu, Iwamochi Shizuma, once explained before an audience of foreign correspondents that since ‘everyone knows that Japanese intestines are about one metre longer than those of foreigners’ we should all understand that American beef was not suitable for digestion by Japanese. Visiting Washington in December 1987, the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s agricultural policy research council, Hata Tsutomu, also spoke of longer Japanese digestive tracts that had difficulty in coping with red meat.”
