The thing I find interesting with orientalism is that it has a mirror in chauvinism from the other direction, both sides reinforcing the idea that there is something special about the cultural norms of people from East Asia in particular. It's almost as if there is a deliberate effort to reify cultural differences in a way that feels counterproductive.
I think these forces are especially noticeable living as a migrant to this part of the world, in that you sometimes find people gushing over you for being able to use what is actually a pretty unremarkable set of utensils or occasionally shitting on you for not knowing an obscure bit of etiquette that locals rarely perform. Either way it's just another form of the "western people like this, Chinese people like that" discourse which at best is vapid and at worst straight-up racist. I don't think it really helps to build a common sense of humanity.
Anyway, I feel like this kind of article is representative of the problem, in that it serves to create anxiety that there is some secret etiquette that must be performed in order to not be seen as an uncultured barbarian. Again, I have no experience with Japan so maybe they really are just That Damn Serious about how they use their chopsticks, but I doubt it. At least for me it was quite reassuring to find that - outside of the folks who really did hold chauvinist and/or racist views - most people in China cared no more about how I ate than how anyone else ate, and that the range of what was socially acceptable eating for all people was wide enough to make it clear that these sorts of articles tend to be either deliberately divisive or out-of-touch.