Presumably the recent remarks of former infrastructure minister Nariaki Nakayama about Japan being ethnically homogeneous were correctly reported. If so his remarks were tactless, in view of Japan's Ainu population, but also showed an ignorance of history. The Japanese are generally considered to be of Ural-Altaic stock, Mongoloid with some admixture from the south (China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific).

Korean influences were also significant particularly in early times and there are indications that Korean and Japanese people developed from similar stocks. The idea that Japanese are a people of ethnic and racial purity is thus a myth.

It would have been more sensible if he had suggested that, because of the way in which Japan's contacts with the world outside Japan had been limited and because Japan was a group of islands, Japanese society had developed in a different way from other societies and tended to be inward looking. But that would not have been interesting and such remarks would not have attracted any publicity favorable or unfavorable.