In Japan, Your Blood Type Could Get You Hired…Or Fired

Does blood type really matter? If you’re Japanese, the answer, at least right now, is yes. The importance of blood type is so ingrained in Japanese culture that potential employers regularly ask about it during job interviews. There's also the Nintendo DS game that asks players their blood type to help them rediscover themselves, the Japanese department stores that sell “lucky bags” of women's accessories that are tailored to blood types, and a new dating show that lets women pick men based on whether they’re an A negative or B positive. Perhaps the biggest measure of the country’s obsession is in its books: Japan’s largest book distributor has reported that four out of the top ten books sold last year were on the ways a blood type determines a person’s personality. In the bestselling series, there’s one book for each of the blood types, which are categorized as follows: