solacekames:

thatfoureyedbitch:

I was watching this video today which was Japanese people reacting to some video called “Weeaboo Cringe Compilation,” and when they started asking Japanese people how they felt about the people in those videos, it was a bunch of positivity and “as long as they’re happy” bullshit. Then I just logged on to fb (which idk why I don’t just delete it at this point) and there’s a video where I guess the producer of the Ghost in the Shell commented on Scar-Jo’s casting, and he’s pretty much like “this is a great way for the story to be told across cultures” bullshit. 

And I don’t want to speak over Asian Americans, but that shit pisses me off so fucking much! Stop asking Japanese people how they feel about westerners/Americans wearing Kimonos, wearing yellowface, being cast in live adaptions of their stories, being problematic weeaboo trash, etc! They don’t live in America. They don’t live here. There’s a reason why John Cho and Ming-Na Wen spoke up like “this is bullshit” but a Japanese producer doesn’t care. BECAUSE THIS SHIT LITERALLY DOES NOT AFFECT THEM. At least not negatively. In a best case scenario, the movie is a hit, and Ghost in the Shell gets more readers and people buying the dvds and movies and etc and giving that company more money. Japanese actors can easily get jobs in Japan (as long as they’re good). In America? Asian actors get so few roles that they make up like less than 1% of the roles available (that’s an old statistic, and idk if that’s changed in recent years, so tell me if that’s gone up), and if they do get roles, it’s crappy background characters that are racist stereotypes and caricatures of their cultures. Japanese people don’t have a voice here because it doesn’t affect them. AT MOST, it affects them with western tourists traveling to Japan acting like idiots, but 1) Japan would love the money that would make them and 2) the average Japanese person STILL doesn’t have to deal with an asshole like that. So they don’t get to speak on things and be looked at as the “voice of reason” like we don’t know why Asian Americans are mad/annoyed at the whitewashing! 

Japan and the US’s racial makeup is like completely different. So what constitutes as problematic or whatever in one isn’t major in the other and vice versa. A country where any live adaption they did of an anime would easily provide the correct representation can’t speak over a nation where whitewashing of roles about non-white countries and cultures is rampant. And it irritates me because of course the Japanese are going to love someone like Scar-Jo playing a Japanese woman. She’s the epitome of white beauty that gets fed to us to worship. Like, you can’t ask a Japanese person how they feel about this shit without talking about years of white imperialism, the US relationship with Japan (especially after WWII), the image of ideal beauty world-wide being a white woman that looks exactly like Scar-Jo, the status that comes with that level of “beauty” etc. There are too many layers as to why a Japanese person who’s lived his entire life in Japan and will never be in America to live and become a citizen might love the casting while actual Asian Americans who live here won’t. It’s so basic and lazy and fucked up and disrespectful to Asian Americans to even try it. And I’m sick of people doing that shit. 

As a Japanese-American I agree 90% with OP but the 10% I strongly disagree with is that all Japanese born-and-raised nationals really can’t be generalized like the OP suggests.

Please don’t ever trust a compilation video of Japanese reactions produced by white foreigners. They ask misleading questions and constantly cherry pick the results to produce a false impression of happy compliant Japanese who just love anything white people do.

Many Japanese communicate in a more indirect way than the US are used to. Japanese express opinions much more politely. If you see the subtitles in one of those reaction videos, they’re saying, “Whatever makes them happy.” However, what many of us are hearing, combined with body language and facial expressions, is “Holy shit look at those stupid gaijin fucks.” 

Japanese-in-Japan also have a diversity of opinions about cultural appropriation and whitewashing. Some of them understand it very well and are upset by it. Others understand it but are upset for different reasons than diaspora Japanese are. Others don’t care because it doesn’t affect them, and are irritated that they’re even being asked about such an irrelevant thing.

I’m really glad that a non-Asian-American is speaking up about these issues so I’d like to thank the OP but correct the misconception that “Japanese in Japan don’t care about these issues.” This is a pernicious myth promoted by asshole weeaboo jvloggers.