Much like Japan and English, the problem with Japan and “foreigners” isn’t just that there’s a dearth of real education about them, but that people are educated incorrectly about them.

“Foreigner” here is not a blank waiting to be written on with information about someone’s background, interests, language, etc. unknown and somewhat apprehensively and slowly being filled in. It’s a vast swath of misunderstandings and misapprehensions about what everyone outside Japan is and does which are roughly equal in consistency and unity to what everyone inside Japan is and does.

Japanese people eat fish, while foreigners eat meat. Japanese people speak Japanese, while foreigners speak English. Japanese people are shy and reserved, while foreigners are rude and bombastic. There is very little of the idea that the 98% of the world that is not Japanese might actually have 98% of its diversity as well. Actually, probably more than that, since Japan has a particularly strong sense of ethnic identity (and hence unity and uniformity) for a nation its size.

Educating people about anything outside Japan, at least once they get past 2nd grade and have been more or less officially inducted into the Japan Club, is as much erasing false information as it is imparting true information. This would be less frustrating if the TV didn’t so reliably act like a massive misinformation coordinating machine, giving everyone identical and identically wrong ideas about how the rest of the world is.