Do you think Japanese women are sexy/lovable?

My opinion is that you are rapidly qualifying for a "most goofball questions at A2K" award.

If they each had a million dollars and a flat head...

I think there are probably about 50 million women in Japan each a unique individual with their own personality and strengths and weaknesses. Equally, each person on here is an individual with their own idea about what is sexy or lovable.

Japanese women? You are thinking about the height thing aren't you?

Maybe.

you need to get over it, lots of short guys do all right with the ladies

Look at Mickey Rooney.

Shikata ga nai. Get over it.

By the way, you're flogging a stereotype. The Japanese, just like the Chinese, and the European and North American nations, have a high proportion of tall people, because they've had several generations of lots of good, nutrious food. You're just as likely to find short European women as you are to find short Japanese women.

Let me educate you a little about reality and stereotype. The stereotype for east Asians is that they short. But it is a stereotype and not reality because it ignores why people might be short, or tall. The Koreans and the Japanese are, linguisticly, speakers of Altaic languages. That means in the very distant past, thousands of years ago, their ancestors lived in the Altai Mountains or nearby. That means that they are close cousins of the Turks and other tribes who migrated into central Asia, while the Koreans and the Japanese went east. They are not close cousins of the Chinese.

Culturally, the Koreans and the Japanese borrowed heavily from the Han, and they very likely brought a lot of Han into their clans, and therefore into their gene pool. The Han are the people you would call the Chinese. But China is, and for thousands of years, has been a big place. Big as in as big as western Europe. You wouldn't think of Europeans as one people, and it is not correct to see the Chinese as one people. In the northern part of what is now China, the Han were the dominant ethnic group. Obviously, when the Koreans and Japanese moved through that area, they undoubtedly married a fair number of Han. The legendary founder of Chinese culture was Huang Ti, the "Yellow Emperor" (that's what the Chinese call him). The Huaxia cultural group lived along the Yellow River, which runs through northern China on the borders of the land of the Mongols, and then turns southeast and empties into the Yellow Sea, between China and Korea. The Han are the product of this culture, but it would be foolish to put the cart before the horse. The people were there before the culture was created. In the late third century before the common era, Shi Zheng conqueed northern China, and much of central China, creating the first true empire in China. (Earlier so-called imperial dynasties were actually hegemonic states--which means they dominated other societies around them, but didn't actually govern them, didn't "own" them.) He came from an area in the west central part of China know as Qin in the modern Pinyin spelling, and pronounced "Chin." The older, European spelling sysytem rendered that as Ch'in Ch'ao. That is the origin of the name China.

But Zheng's dynasty was not stable, because as is the case with all hereditary dynasties, sooner or later the descendants of the conqueror are less capable, and they lose their grip. In the case of the Qin dynasty, that happened sooner rather than later, and Zheng's son was overrun by the Han. For obvious reasons, they weren't happy about being ruled by a people whom they had always considered barbarians, even if they were militarily more competent. A Han leader was able to overthrow the Qin, but not to assert complete control over China. Additionally, the Koreans and Vietnamese successfully rebelled against Chinese control, as the "empire" again fragmented into hegemonies--at one point there were about 20 jokers claiming to be the king of one part of China or another. This is usually referred to as the Western Han, and they never successfully unified China militarily as Zheng had done. That was not finally accomplished until the first century of the common era, by Han known as the Eastern Han, or the Later Han dynasty. They didn't last long, either. They collapsed in the face of rebellion late in the second century, and were gone by the beginning of the third century, when two powerful aristocrats and the greatest Han general, Tsao Tsao (that's Pinyin--Cao Cao according the Europeans), created the three kingdoms. For a couple of generations, there was no single, unified empire, and the "dynasties" which succeeded the three kingdoms never successfully conquered and unified all of China. This was not again accomplished until the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and Chingiss (Ghengis Khan to the Europeans) was dead and buried for two generations before it was accomplished. Kubalai Khan briefly ruled a unified empire bigger than any other in that part of the world, but it all started to fall apart soon after his death. The Ming who succeeded the Yuan were the first ethnically "Chinese" tribe/dynasty (i.e., they were Han) to rule a unified China in more than a thousand years.

I'm sure that if you're still reading, you're wondering what the hell this has to do with short and tall people. The original Han of the Yellow River basin lived well--they had plenty to eat, and a well balanced diet. The archaeological evidence is that they were just as tall and robust as Europeans were, except in Greece and Rome, where most people were not well fed. The Koreans lived well enough, and were warlike enough to raid China to get what they wanted. Their nation is rugged and a tough nut to crack. Even the Mongols never truly coquered them, although they wouldn't admit it. The Koreans were not well and truly f*cked until the Japanese invaded and occupied them in the early 20th century. Before that the Koreans were big in the brigand and pirate business. Even the United States Navy and Marines took them on in 1871, because everyone was tired of the Korean pirates.

The Japanese have lived in their islands for about 15,000 years. They only became literate about 1500 years ago, though, so the histoical record before that is legendary, and not very reliable. But the legedary record and the archaeological record both show that they had plenty to eat, and a nutritious diet. The penalty of such success, however, is booming population growth, and for most of Japanese history, their agricultural development just barely kept pace with population growth, and many periods of instabiltiy in Japanese histoy coincide with periods in which population growth outstripped agricultural development. In the 16th centuryh this became so critical that the whole stucture collapsed, and warlords competed for power and conquest in the Sengoku or Warring States period. That lasted from Imagawa Yoshimoto's failed attempt to seize Kyoto and the Emperor in 1560 until Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu defeated Takeda Katsuyori in 1582, ending all organized large scale resistance to Oda. But Oda Nobunaga was assasinated by Akechi Mitsuhide as he prepared to invade the major island of Shikoku. His successor, Hashiba Hideyoshi (also known as Toyotomi Hideyoshi--these jokers changed their names fairly often) did succeed in unifying Japan briefly, but he was widely hated, and rather lost his mind (for example, he named his brother as his successor, and then killed his brother and his wife and all their children because he became covinced that his brother was trying to poison him). He also dreamed of a Japanese empire in Korea and China (more madness), and wasted his resources in a futile attempt to conquer Korea. He died there less than ten years after he took power, probably of disease, but some said he was poisoned, which would have been ironic justice. Tokugawa Iayasu took over, defeated all his enemies, and made himself the Shogun, the ruler of Japan in 1603. He and his descendants ruled Japan for the next 250 years.

Once agian, what in the hell has this to do with short people and tall people? For a thosuand years, China was sufficiently unstable that many people, probably most people, didn't always get enough to eat, and didn't have a good diet. In Japan, the case was somewhat better--their starvation years only lasted about a century, leading to the Sengoku period, and eventually to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Tokugawa moved the capital to Edo, which is now called Tokyo. He set up an efficient bureaucracy on the Chinese model, but never gave them policy making power, which had always doomed each Chinese dynasty. Early in the 17th century, his records show that Japan reliably produced about 25 million koku of rice each year. Historians argue about how much a koku was, but most say 172 liters, and all agree that it was the amount of rice needed to feed an adult male for one year. At the time that Japan was producing 25 million koku, the population was 30 million. That's cutting it as close as you can get--but it was enough when you consider that somewhat more than half the population were women, children and the elderly, and they didn't necessarily eat a full koku each year.

Japan struggled along living on the agricultural edge like that for centuries, but by the late 19th century population was agian outrunning agricultural production, the old problem population growth being both the reward and the curse of cultural success. So Japan began to conquer her neighbors. They conquered Formosa (modern Taiwan) in 1895. They took Korea in 1910. They then began to eye China. Big mistake. By the time war began between Japan and the United States in 1941, the Japanese had again been living on short rations for many generations. All of the nasty racist American stereotypes about a short, bow-legged, myopic people arise from the fact that the lowest levels of Japanese society had not eaten well for about three or four generations. The better off classes in Japan didn't have that problem, and after MacArthur took over in 1945, things began to look up. By 1950, everyone had enough to eat, and by 1955, they were reliably getting a good, nutrious diet. Since then, they've returned to their robust state of the ancient clans, and the Japanese no longer go hungry (except for old age pensioners, who get shamelessly screwed in Japan).

In today's world, there is no good reason to assume that the Chinese or the Japanese are going to be shorter than Europeans. As we move into the future, there will be less and less reason for that to appear to be true, unless we all start starving again. It is useful to remember that exactly the same conditions applied to Europeans for most of the last 2000 years, too. When Caesar marched his (short) legions into Gaul just over two thousand years ago, they all noticed how much physically larger and taller the Kelts ("Gauls") and the Germans were. Those tribesmem reliably got enough to eat. The Romans, not so much. Any healthy but chronically hungry young Italian with a selfish eye to his own future might join the legions just to be sure he didn't go hungry again. The same thing happened to the serfs and commoners in western Europe after the Gothic age clamped down on civlization there.

There's nothing wrong with being short. And you are just as likely to find someone your own size in North America or Europe as you are in China or Japan.

Setanta, don't be mad. I know many Japanese women are pretty tall. Is there a chance to find a woman who is taller than me?

If by mad you mean crazy, it's too late. If by mad you mean angry, i'm not angry. Yeah, you could find millions of women in Japan who are tall. Since i don't know how tall you are, i can't confirm the comparative.

he said he's 5 foot 2, 1.59 meters

Oh yeah, i remember that now. So what? Shikata ga nai.

Am I seeking for discouragement here?

Beats the hell out of me. You're the only one who knows the answer to that question. I have twice said shikata ga nai. That's Japanese, and it means there's nothing you can do about it. You are unlikely to get any taller. Deal with it.

How can I deal with it?

I can tell you one thing that won't help, and that's expending so much energy whining about it.

I don't think Lawrence of Arabia was over 5' 3" or Stalin, for that matter.... I would say that survival being the goal, and wealth one of the means, that it does not matter what size you are if you are standing on a box of cash...