my thoughts on japanese people's interpretation of american tribal culture

 Hi.

I thought I should finally talk about this, as this has been a topic on my mind for some time. Keep in mind I am not trying to make generalizations, I'm sure this is not what every Japanese person thinks of Native American people, but these are things created by a large group of people that influence large groups of people's mindsets and thoughts.

I am half Native American, and a while ago, my half Japanese friend showed me the controversy of the Project Sekai team creating "racist art" of what seemed to be an attempted portrayal of "native americans" in their work. This might become a bit of a rant, so just bare with me.

This is my thoughts on the artist's interpretation of art like this.

So people were saying that this is racist. 

I don't think this is racist.

What offends me about this, is that people are being ignorant to the possible artists' background, you don't know their cultural background or what inspired them to illustrate this. It could've easily been a reference to ancient Japanese culture and these people, who seem to feel like they are in a world of theirselves, were too ignorant to even consider that.

I hate how the official VOCALOID team seems to be a bunch of crowd pleasers at times. People were recently complaining about how in the new proseka anime, Miku's voice sounded bad so they changed it. I thought it sounded quite impressive, because it's difficult to make a vocaloid speak normally instead of it coming out as singing or something. So I'm annoyed at that as well. I think companies should only change if there are paying customers that are displeased, not any stranger and onlooker, or potential customer. 

I also hate how no one that claims to be speaking for us Native Americans is going into detail of how this is exactly "racist", they just label it as is. The drama is not someone labelling something as "racist", it's how it is inherently racist. A reminder of something that's godawful is not troublesome enough to things that are actually harmful.

People are saying that this is racist as well? 

I find it pretty badass. 

I hate this ignorant drama-provoking behavior from people sometimes. People need to explain their arguments or we'll get nowhere in life. 

Some people said it reminded them of Princess Mononoke.

The fandom was being ignorant because they are projecting their cultural woes onto an outsider's creation. Project Sekai originated from Japan, and Native Americans live in America. I get that the game was localized to America and English-speaking audiences, but maybe if you wrote in more detail about how "hurtful" this is, people would start to understand you more. Otherwise, please think before you speak and post online.

About the event, I felt confused while reading it. I feel like it was completely lost in translation. Overall, that event was cancelled. I'm not a hardcore Project Sekai fan, so I honestly had no reaction to it being cancelled, but I already described my thoughts as above.

Moving onto the next thing, native american "rep" in idol media.

People tend to use "native americans" as an umbrella word for "tribal" which is ignorant enough. They are ignorant because there are a lot of people that are native to their country too, that aren't just native americans. There are native Japanese and Koreans.

So there's this module or costume in the first idolmaster game.

i assume this is tribal themed because of the hair jewelry and the feathers flowing down her braids. people tend to associate feathers with native american culture and indigenous cultures in general.

i get that feathers can be understood as aesthetically pleasing due to the colors and texture but i feel a bit uncomfortable looking at this module. i get that this game was never localized and was only released in Japan, but there are still all types of people within the Japanese-speaking audience that are playing these games, they don't have to necessarily be Japanese to understand and perceive the game's everything. 

this is just my individual opinion but it's strange to see it rendered in such an "aesthetic" way like that. i know that in native american culture these feathers represent different things, depending on the type of species. 

this reminds me of a similar instance, KEIKO's performance of "many classic moments", a real life idol this time. 

i'm not sure if this costume was inspired by indigenous japanese culture or native american culture. 

there are feathers hanging from her wrists and the belt of her waist. i guess this is fairly harmless, but it feels like it was more for a aesthetic reason than a universal significance. it's hard to determine her personal significance to it, because i'm not sure if there's any interviews about this available.  i understand that this performance is a bit dated, and people tend to say that people's understandings of culture are outdated too when you look back on things, so you shouldn't hold the guilty accountable, but a better understanding comes from a individual taking their time to understand everything or all there is that concerns them about the matter. 

since this is just a performance outfit and there's nothing sexual about this, i don't have a problem with it. 

i just found all of these instances, notable.

well goodbye now. now that i've finished writing this blogpost, let's go get sushi or something.

 ₍ᐢ.  ̫.ᐢ₎