Quotes: Disgusting Country-Wide Frigid

I keep on seeing the phrase "gross national cool" used in reference to Japan.

It's a phrase coined by Douglas McGray in this article in Foreign Policy magazine.

Nippon Goro Goro was nice enough to post a transcript of a speech given by Douglas McGray from a month and a half ago that nicely elucidates McGray's opinion and how the article came about.

Interesting side notes:

McGray's page has a Google Page rank of 1. He's 9th on his own list in a Google search for his name, which seems par for the course for many print-only journalists (I can only think of names from major dailies of the nearest major metropolises, but for them it holds). He's 11th when I search using MSIE, though. Weird.

Check the "Want to know more?" link in the FP article for more reading about this view of nations and culture.