from a book I’m reading about Japanese aesthetics 

I think the mapping generally makes sense to me, not all countries have the same level of aesthetics that are interesting externally

This seems wildly broad at best

And pretty racist at worst

"indians are adept at thinking? chinese at acting?"

???

wtf is the context here

Why signal boost smth like this?

I don’t think it’s racist to say cultures have certain strengths and weaknesses? It’s obviously a generalization but I’m French and will happily admit we are a less efficient culture than Germany and less hardworking than China

seems like a wildly broad generalization especially if you start talking about distribution of eg mental labor

in particular, the quoted section in the book

how valid is it to claim that some culture is better at eg "acting" or "appreciating art"

(it's not lost on me the irony that the author of the book here is a japanese artisan from the early 1900s, which would probably be helpful context for other curious ppl stumbling along this thread)

but ye, wanna give some general pushback here