Dyske Suematsu Says We're AllLookSame

Ever had the weird feeling that seeing chinky-eyed Asians make them look like each other? How do you distinguish the nationality of a Japanese from a Korean? There are many kinds of people who could not tell apart two persons coming from an ethnicity different from their own.
A webmaster named Dyske Suematsu built a site entitled All Look Same, featuring an exam about Asians seemingly look the same but are actually different.

An American seeing Japanese people often would have the mindset of the Japanese being the ‘Asians wearing trendy clothes’. If the American sees a Korean lady wearing fashionable clothes, he most probably assumes the lady is Japanese. This is just the same as to how an Asian boy moving to the Western with his family for the first time would most likely not be able to tell apart a blonde, bearded man from another. This is the philosophy of Suematsu, and the main reason of why he made the site.

The site contains the link to the exam room, and also the blog of Suematsu, with his spontaneous ideas posted every once in a while. He had written in one of his posts, “The problem here is that these people would see a fashionable Asian, without confirming it in any way, assumes they are right, and end up affirming their own convictions. This is also a form of prejudice, and for many of them, the test on this site made them realize how wrong they were. This humbling experience was quite funny for some of them.”

He did this to defend that the site is not for the purpose of evoking racism but this:
“I’ve always thought that it was one of those urban myths that you can tell different Asians apart. Especially if I can’t see what they are wearing, I don’t think that I can tell them apart. And, I’m an Asian myself. I’ve been living in the US for over 15 years and I’ve heard some people tell me I definitely look Japanese, while others thought that I don’t at all. Some people boastfully claim that they can tell the difference no problem, while others quietly admit that they can’t. Even with those who claim they can, is it really true that they can? Maybe there is something to be said about someone saying “You guys all look the same!” Or, maybe they just don’t know any better. This site, therefore, is a way for me to demystify this issue once and for all.”

If facial recognition had been really easy for everyone, what could have happened to the world? Each has his own opinion on this, and this site is running to give people the humble idea that people might look alike, but we’re all unique.