The Japanese Say You Have 3 Faces [CITATION NEEDED]

You may have heard this quote before: "The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are." It's frequently described online as an ancient Japanese proverb, often presented as an explanation of Japanese culture, social behaviour, or even characters in anime such as Spy × Family. There's just one problem: Where did this “proverb” actually come from? In this video, I investigate the history of the commonly cited “Japanese Three Faces” theory, tracing the claim through blogs, social media posts, books, historical sources, and one particularly important 17th-century account of Japan. What begins as an abandoned video about Spy × Family turns into an investigation into misinformation, unsourced quotations, internet folklore, historical sources, and the importance of actually checking where a claim comes from. Along the way, we discover how a supposedly ancient Japanese proverb became an internet fact—and why citing your sources matters when making claims about history and culture. And, because apparently this video wasn't complicated enough already, it had to be rewritten and re-edited several times. I swear to the Lord Almighty this was conceived well before the hbomberguy video SOURCES: The “Original” 3 Faces articles/posts/blogs/etc: https://runwaypakistan.com/the-3-face... https://thewritepractice.com/three-fa...   / 1   Stack Exchange post quoting Rodregius: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/qu... Shogun by James Clavell: https://shogun.bib.bz/chapter-ten Encyclopedia dot com article on Shogun: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/edu... “Learning from Shogun” by Henry Smith: http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learnin... “They Came to Japan” an anthology of European reports on Japan, 1543-1640: fhttps://archive.org/details/theycamet... THE HISTORY OF JAPAN AS TOLD BY JOÃO RODRIGUES by Cláudia Orvalho: Castelo: https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/2001... Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by TS Elliot: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/eliotts-p... Tom Scott vids:    • The world's littlest skyscraper was a mass...      • I was wrong (and so was everyone)   Joe from Pause and Select quote:    • Cite yer shit people   Special thanks to Gil from ‪@GilLiesHere‬ The HIDEAKI ANNO PROBLEM by STEVEM:    • The HIDEAKI ANNO PROBLEM