I recently saw this photo on Boingboing, under the heading,

Asia food trend: “cannibal banquets” - Bogus?

The photo shows a few asian people sitting around a table dining on food that’s been made to look like a human body.

Weird huh?

Now, for a site as big and as well respected as Boingboing is (that’s a kick-ass site name!), they’re sure to word their post carefully, so as not to misinform. They didn’t specify which Asian country, because they weren’t sure. Always good to err on the side of caution, right?

So who was their source for this picture? Boingboing found the story from Weird Asian News, who titled the their report,

Japanese Banquet of Cannibalism

Ok. So it’s Japan, huh? A little more specific, but I’m sure they have a good source. Japan is pretty crazy right? Surely it can’t be anyone but them?

So who does Weird Asian News atrribute as their source?

Turns out that it’s Tom 论坛. Ah, another Chinese BBS. Oh boy. Here we go again. I’m curious to see what kind of anti-Japan fury lies at the end of this internet trail.

Is this picture really in Japan? Maybe. But I’m glad that Boingboing has the good sense to question that. Speculation on Boingboing says that it might even be in Taiwan.

But it doesn’t surprise me that the first instinct of many on Chinese Chat Forums is to point to Japan. I think one thing we need to keep in mind here is that certain over-zealous (read “racist”) posters on Chinese BBS’s have been known to misattribute weird and crazy shit to the “evil empire” next door, without any real factual basis. Let’s hope that they’re being careful about it. Wouldn’t be the first time that some craziness of unknown origin ended up mistakenly being an anti-Japan witch hunt.

But even if it is Japan, so what? No worse than eating real monkey brains, right?

But as the wise and wonderful Steven Colbert would say:

‘You don’t look up truthiness in a book, you look it up in your gut.’

Let that be a lesson to all of us.

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