You could ask the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, when he said the following:

And this guy has been re-elected twice.

No, of course we can study and discuss potential (and real) differences between arbitrary groups of people. And of course there's no need for secrecy or disclaimers.

The problem comes when Japanese see this work and say "Aha! Foreigners can't eat sushi! Therefore it's OK for me to ban foreigners from my sushi restaurant since they can't eat it anyway." And if that logic sounds ridiculous or impossible, you've obviously never lived in Japan.

My point is that people should be conscious of how their research will be used. In this case, it would have been better for the authors to do a more in-depth study with more subjects, particularly Koreans (who eat large amounts of seaweed) or other areas with heavily fish based cuisine.

Certainly they like it when you struggle speaking Japanese, it reinforces the idea that foreigners can't speak the language. When you reach native fluency they're much less friendly (speaking from years of experience here).

Just what we need, more "Japanese are unique" idiocy to justify racism and discrimination in Japan. So far we've heard that "Japanese intestines are longer, so Japanese can't eat foreign beef", "Japanese brains are unique, so only Japanese people can speak the Japanese language." and so on, all of which are supported by pseudo-scientific studies such as this one.

This sort of incomplete research just feeds the view of racial uniqueness (and superiority) among Japanese and justifies their racism and discrimination against others.

This raises an interesting point. Maybe in the brain there's no way to reduce things to meaningful equations. Evolution didn't really have a set goal in mind, so what you get is a cobbled together mess of pieces that works. The reason it works is because the system can reform and grow itself in response to new input, not because it has a lot of pieces.

These large scale simulations are interesting from a neurobiological point of view. But if you want to build a "thinking computer brain", you might be better off understanding how the human brain grows and changes in response to stimuli, rather than trying to make a static copy at the cellular level. I have a feeling these supercomputer simulations are not going to be the path to conscious computers, nor even to mind uploading.

Disclaimer: I am not a neuroscientist.

Hahaha, I've had the exact same thoughts!

I'm guessing you don't live in Japan, because if you did you'd probably think otherwise. Unless you like hearing endless parades of megaphone blasting vans, with high pitched voice women screaming nothing but "Please vote for Tanaka! Thank you! Please vote for Tanaka! Thank you!".

And if you want to talk about judging politicians by their hair, former Prime Minister Koizumi was known as "Lionheart" because of his hairstyle. Most Japanese I've spoken to identify him merely by his hair, and can't name a single policy he enacted. In almost all respects, I'd say the Japanese system is a good example of what to avoid rather than emulate.

I speak Japanese fluently. I have lived in Japan for about 6 years, currently enrolled at one of the "Top 3" public universities. I can read a newspaper in Japanese. I have given lectures in Japanese on theoretical computer science. I pay my taxes, I renew my visa on time. I don't do any of the other illegal or questionable things on your list.
Having said that, the grandparent is completely correct - Japan and Japanese are extremely racist, xenophobic and nationalistic. That's part of the reason why I'm leaving as soon as I finish my degree. You might think (as I did) if you learn the language and culture you'll be accepted - you're wrong. In Japan you will always be judged and discriminated against because you are not Japanese. It doesn't matter if it's in the city vs. countryside, company vs. university, public vs. private.
If you can tolerate being treated as a second class citizen, being denied housing/employment/services because of your skin color, being treated as an idiot incapable of understanding even basic Japanese, then feel free to come to Japan. If not, then avoid it.