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The story
A story spread on 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G (Nan G) board that TV personality Matsuko Deluxe said, “Wasn’t the good thing about Japanese people that they didn’t say they were great?” — and it sparked a debate. In the thread, many posters pointed to a sense of unease with the recent online trend of “horuhoru” (self-congratulatory) praise for one’s own country, and argued that humility has been lost. Others pushed back, asking “what’s wrong with calling something great when it actually is great?”, splitting opinion on how to evaluate Japan today. At times the discussion spilled over into feelings about foreigners and left-right labeling.
What people said
If anything, these guys are the root cause.
Japanese people today look down on foreigners, so we're done for.
Japanese people really have lost their sense of breathing room.
Back around the Abe Shinzo era, there was definitely a surge of Japanese people idolizing the Nordic countries. Now the trend seems to be self-congratulating about Japan instead.
Can't help it if it's just the truth, right?
Forcing yourself to self-congratulate about a country that's failing feels way weirder to me.
And they even pressure you into joining in.
Those are genuinely cringe.
Do you get bashed for calling something great when it actually is great?
Makes no sense to me.
Japan isn't great anymore — if anything it's a country in decline.
The point is, the era where we could call ourselves great has already passed.
Japan 30 years ago was great, though.
Same kind of thing.
You were the one hyping up Japan yourself lol
Charting on Billboard is success — what is this guy even talking about.
The way someone who never even tried to go overseas makes excuses is so stereotypically Japanese, lmao
This is probably what Japan was like under the wartime one-party 'Imperial Rule Assistance' system.
Is this just what inevitably happens when a country is dying?
What's 'horuhoru' (self-congratulation slang)? Hormones?
That's because the media trashes Japan to begin with.
The truly impressive stuff
gets hidden
because the people who benefit from it want to keep the advantage to themselves.
The kamikaze pilots were praised for dying for the Emperor and the country — that's not really the same as 'Japan is great, I'm great.'
So many people say 'too many foreigners, foreigners go home,' but are they just trying to look away from the fact that Japan has become such a declining country that it only runs on foreigners spending money and foreigners doing the work? Or are they just too dumb to even realize that?
'Lately'?
Japan's always disliked foreigners.
The whole country is basically a collection of closed-off village communities.
Nobody has a problem with foreigners who follow the law and manners.
You're the biggest idiot here for twisting what people mean.
yet still want foreigners to praise them.
They look down on foreigners,
but still want their approval,
so they go on buying sprees for foreign brand goods.
No, Japanese people absolutely do the condescending 'Wow, you followed manners even though you're a foreigner!' thing all the time.
I feel this so hard.
Like 'Wow, the taxi door opens automatically, amazing!' type stuff.
Japan's just acting big because it's basically a US dependency — without the Japan-US alliance Japan can't do anything, and that really sums up the Japanese national character.
Basically, it's lame.
That just shows how many idiots in Japan haven't updated their information.
They still think Japan is a rich country.
Same old story since wartime, as usual.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
“Horuhoru” is internet slang for the feel-good state of praising your own country or yourself, and it’s often used in connection with the “How Japanese people are seen overseas” style of TV programming that has increased since the 2010s. What split opinion in the thread was a difference in premise — whether to view today’s Japan as “a country that used to be great” or as “a country that’s still great” — so even posters who equally criticized “self-congratulation” ended up taking different positions. At one point the discussion branched off into left-vs-right labeling, but that’s a separate tangent from the thread’s main topic of humility, and isn’t directly tied to the praise or criticism of Matsuko’s comment itself. Reading only the replies, it can look like a political argument, but it’s easy to overlook that it all started from a single remark on TV.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Sad News] Matsuko: “Wasn’t the good thing about Japanese people that they didn’t say they were great?”“.
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