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Did you know it's actually illegal to be fat in Japan? Millions of dollars in penalties will be assessed unless companies can get employees to slim down. And if he doesn't lose weight, his company faces massive fines. Where being too fat is against the law. Illegal to be fat. That's what American news and the internet says. He will get fired in Japan for being fat. The government introduced a fat tax. A law that if your employees waist are too big, your company gets fined. Is your job? This one's got almost a million views. Being fat is illegal in Japan. You can actually get taxed for being fat. So, is that actually true? And is the real reason people stay thin here because they're fat shamed all the time?
And is it why one out of five Japanese women are actually underweight? There were tons of comments on fat shaming on my videos about why Japan isn't fat. One of the top comments for a while with 5,000 likes said that social pressure is the biggest reason people are thin here. The standards of what's fat are very different between Japan and the US. This is a plus-size model in America. This is one from Japan. We need to dive into this and whether America's victim culture is affecting Japan. Long story short, no. It's not illegal to be fat in Japan. There is no governmentmandated waistline and companies do not get fined for having too many fat employees. This misconception mainly came from too many American news outlets. misinterpreting
the 2008 metabolo law. Yes, per article 66 of the industrial safety and health act, Japanese companies are required to provide an annual health checkup to their employees. This is meant to be a service to the employees to encourage health, not to police fat people. So no, if the annual health checkup finds that too many employees are fat, nothing happens. The company doesn't get fined. The only way the company can get fined is if they don't provide the annual health checkup. It's all about participation rates. What some people might find odd is that the health checkup is technically mandatory. If the employees refuse themselves to do the health checkup, the company can get fined. So, the company is usually going
to beounding their employees to make sure they get it done. So, if you're staying up too late and drinking too often and eating a ton of crunky chocolate, the worst thing that's going to happen if your annual health checkup finds you're really fat and unhealthy is that the doctor is going to tell you've gotten fat and you need to lose weight because it's unhealthy. Even if you are fat, as long as you do the health checkup, you won't have any problems. So, how did a rumor like this get so big despite being so wrong? Well, it's because, of course, outrage sells. Some small Twitter or ex user got 600,000 views on a post claiming a Japanese actress was fired from a TV show for being mixed race and that Japan
hates mixed race people. Except the real reason she was fired was for breaking the law. She was doing underage drinking. And by the way, economic security minister Ono Dakimi is half Japanese. This famous newscaster is half Japanese. These male celebrities are all half Japanese. And these female celebrities are all half Japanese. Japan hates fat people. Japan Now, to get some perspective on Japan's alleged hatred of fat people, let's look at a study on prejudice. They did this experiment at Dartmouth College where they give participants a huge realistic scar using special effects makeup. They told the participants in the experiment that they're going to have a discussion with a number of people after they had
this scar applied to their face. They asked them to pay attention to whether the people they were talking to were judging them because of their scar. So, they had the discussion and filled out a questionnaire about prejudice during the interaction. They reported that they thought they were indeed being discriminated against. They said that because of their scar, the people they were talking to were much more tense, preferred to be more distanced from them, were less attracted to them, liked them a little less, and they thought they patronized them much more. But here's the catch. Before they went out to have that discussion, the experimenters told them that the special effects scar makeup needed to be moisturized because it would dry out.
Without the participant realizing it, they had actually completely removed the prosthetic makeup instead of moisturizing it. So the participants thought they had a scar, but in reality it was totally gone. Moral of the story, they felt like they were being discriminated against simply because they mistakenly assumed that people had a reason to discriminate against them. They found discrimination because they were looking for signs of discrimination. So if you come to Japan after seeing all these online rumors and these videos saying Japan hates fat people and you happen to be fatter than Japanese people, you're likely going to be self-conscious. even if in reality no one is actually doing something like
pointing at you or making comments about you. Having lived in Japan for 15 years, what I've noticed is that people from English-speaking countries are much more dramatic with their word choice. I'm not saying there's zero fat shaming in Japan, but it's really rare that you can actually call something shaming. What there is a lot of is weight commenting. Hey, did you gain some weight? Yeah, a little bit. Oh, you gain weight or you got to lose weight. That's so normal. And then no one's going to take offended. But it's really normal in Japan to say, "Oh, you got fat." Or like, "You got skinny."
Is it like a passive aggressive comment? I'd say it's neutral. I happen to agree with this commenter. Japanese people are much slower to offend or take offense. This is true, having lived in both America and Japan for over a decade. American people are a lot more likely to find things to take offense at. I can't recall ever seeing a poster like this before 2025, but they seem to be trying to bring this American concept of microaggressions to Japan. The poster says that even without bad intentions, you may comments known as microaggression. Microaggressions that hurt people's feelings. For example, that's a pretty good idea for someone who just joined the company. Or you're half Japanese, I'm jealous. Or your Japanese is really
good for an expat. In Japanese, this kind of policing people's words is called or word hunting. In the new segment on the poster, they introduced several brand new words like micro assault, micro insult, micro invalidation, which are all apparently different types of microaggression. They featured a non-binary person who they introduced as a victim of microaggressions. They also talked about a woman who said that in her workplace when she announced that she became pregnant, no one even said congratulations to her for fear of that somehow being interpreted badly.
Another man pointed out how some managers are afraid to make even generally positive comments towards women as they might be taken the wrong way. [snorts] But there was something I don't think anyone really picked up on. It was specifically highlighted that the non-binary person Yudi suffered from her co-workers talking to her as if she's a woman. However, later in the segment, the HR compliance expert who was there to explain to everyone what a microaggression is and how to avoid them referred to non-binary Yudi as a woman. I point that out because not even the well-meaning microaggression expert can stay vigilant enough to keep up with all the things you can and can't say. I read
the top 50 comments on this video and not a single one was in favor of the microaggression poster. Personally, I don't think Japan really needs the American practice of vigilantly searching for things to take offense at. In 2022, I talked with Dr. Ken Barry about how American people are so sensitive to accidentally fat shaming others that even some doctors were afraid to tell their patients that their main problem is that they're just too fat and they need to lose weight for the sake of their health. I can't believe a doctor is going to tell me if I'm healthy. You're like, "That's the job, stupid." I thought one of the reasons people aren't so offended by being told something like, "Did you gain some
weight?" is because, well, staying thin in Japan is much, much easier. But in America, you have to avoid 80% of the food supply and go out of your way to eat healthy. So, it's a lot harder to lose weight. And so, it's probably a lot more frustrating to hear comments about your weight. Body positivity was all a big lie because it's better to not be overweight. On that note, once losing weight became really easy with Ozic, the whole body positivity and fat positivity movement got pretty quiet. There's been a more than 930% increase in patients getting prescription simaglutide in the past four years. You represented body positivity and now some women are saying it's kind of a copout. Yeah, body positive. Body positivity. Body
positivity. Normalize growing comfortable with your body. Body positive community. So Lizo been on her weight loss journey. You already know I'm in that mother giddy ho. I'm in that giddy fish. But wait, one of the phrases on that don't do microaggressions poster was you'd be a lot more popular with the guys or you'd be a lot more popular with the ladies if you lost some weight. In a Japanese news spot from this year, they asked a 100 Japanese women whether they thought their body was fine as it is or if they wanted to lose weight. 82% said that they wanted to lose weight.
Personally, I do think that number in reality is probably a bit lower since women don't like to be the odd one out, saying that they think they look great as they are, but their friends are all saying that they have work to do. Now, about 40% of the women who gave a reason why they wanted to lose weight said that they wanted to be skinny like their favorite idols. K-pop culture is very big here. They are very thin and pretty. Another program reported that as of 2023, one in five Japanese women are technically underweight with a BMI of under 18.5. They even reported that in a survey of a thousand women, among those
that were technically underweight, 18.8% of them still thought that they were fat and 53% of the women who had a normal BMI thought that they were fat. The main thing that they blamed on this was the influence of social media and traditional media. But they didn't mention fat shaming. Now, I have heard stories from friends here about being brutally mocked for being chubby in grade school. Kids can be pretty brutal in general. Japanese kids are, from what I've seen, better behaved than American kids. That doesn't mean Japanese kids are all perfect angels to each other. Bullying certainly does happen here. And any Japanese kid, of course, knows the word debu, fatty, though. Can we really say that the fat
shaming in Japan is definitely worse than that of say America? Well, a study in the Journal of Social Development on 175th and 11th graders in the United States and 257 in Japan examined their reactions to obese kids and kids who look different. They found that the Japanese fifth graders were more inclusive and more positive about the so-called deviant obese kids. Further, a 2016 study on body related teasing in adolescence in Osaka, Japan, they found that 16.4% of the boys and 32.5% of the girls experienced body related teasing. Compare that to another 2018 study on weight teasing in Minnesota that found that the body teasing was worse than Japan. 45.1% of adolescent girls and
37.1% of adolescent boys had experienced weight-based teasing. So yeah, the data on this very specific topic is limited. But what we do have access to suggests that if anything, there is slightly less teasing in Japan. If fat shaming is the main reason Japanese people are able to stay thin, why are American kids fatter despite more teasing? Now, social pressure still is a thing here. As I explained in my recent video about Japan's health, people are indeed influenced by their social group. People want to fit in, like just looking at everyone else and then, oh, I might be a little fat, so I need to lose weight. something like that.
Studies have found that if you have a lot of obese friends, your chances of becoming obese yourself increase. If you have a lot of thin friends, you're less likely to gain weight. The thinner everyone around you is, and the more time you spend on Instagram watching idol dance videos, the more you'll naturally generate internal pressure towards yourself to stay thin. There are even a couple comments saying that you have the reverse situation of America where obesity is normalized and you're almost pushed into gaining weight. That is, the social culture is centered around food and eating, and you're pressured to go out and eat all the time and eat a bunch of junk food in America.
I also get the impression that more so than Americans, Japanese people are very concerned with how they think the people around them view them. So, they probably do feel some unspoken pressure to fit in if they're the odd one out due to their weight. Where this gets tricky is that the data would suggest that if you're overweight, the subtle pressure of being surrounded by people who are of a healthy weight would technically be good for your health. However, if you're already thin, then being surrounded by underweight people is not a good influence. Now, for most English-speaking countries, being underweight isn't the big issue. And unhealthy and overweight countries like America can learn a lot from Japan's
food culture, considering that their obesity rate is onetenth that of Americans. The tricky thing is, as I hinted earlier, health can be confusing. For example, it's common knowledge that salt is bad. But I've done deep dives on why it's really not that simple. Actually, the thing about salt is it may help curb your appetite. We actually need salt and have a set of brain cells dedicated to making us crave salt. So, your craving for potato chips or fries might just be a craving for salt. Studies have even found that drinking a savory soup before a meal reduces the total calories people eat. Now, personally, I haven't gotten into the habit of drinking salty miso soup every
single morning like most people here in Japan do. What I do is have a glass of element. I found that element helps curb my appetite and helps me avoid snacks I don't need, probably thanks to the sodium in it. Most people don't realize how important sodium and electrolytes are for keeping your energy levels up in general. That's why drinking Element, the sponsor of this video, has become a daily habit for me. I make sure to get extra when I'm sweating a bunch from the heat, from working out, or from going to the sauna. Element tastes great, and my favorite thing is its simple ingredients. It has a balanced mix of electrolytes, sodium,
potassium, and magnesium along with some natural flavors and some stevia. A whole serving has only two total carbs. If you want zero carbs, there's also a raw and flavor type. If you go to drinklnt.com/w what I've learned, you can get a free sampler pack with any purchase. The pack has two each of the most popular flavors so you can find your favorite or share with a
