Someone already beat me to the “this is a bogus attempt to project a fringe local behavior onto the entirety of Japan” post, so I’m just going to post a link to the post Italian maggot-cheese (which I am surprised hasn’t already happened!) to make it clear that the idea of this as a “Japanese tradition” is as utterly absurd as calling that an “Italian tradition.”
For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu
For some reason, foreigners really love finding fringe activities in Japan, a country of more than 100 million people, and declaring these activities are “Japanese.” There is something fetishist and exploitative and weird about the relationship between foreign bloggers/YouTubers/journalists/etc and Japan that I find very disturbing.