Our Kid’s Japanese Godfather Gave Her a Kimono. Can She Wear It?
We’d never want her thinking somebody else’s culture is a costume.
My husband’s closest friend from childhood is Japanese American, and although he moved back to Japan after college, they are still very close. He’s our daughters’ godfather, and they think of him and his wife as another uncle and aunt (we’re also called “Uncle” and “Auntie” by his kids). For our daughter’s fifth birthday, they sent her a sweet gift of a box full of Japanese candies, a stuffed toy, and a kimono in her size. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but I’m hesitant to let her wear it, as much as she’s begged us to let her dress up and show it to her friends. I know how big of an issue cultural appropriation is, and I don’t want to let her think that somebody else’s culture is a costume. She has a lot of anti-racist children’s books, and books about kids from other cultures celebrating holidays and traditions, and this could be a great way for us to talk about the problem of white people appropriating other cultures and using them as costumes—but also, our friends have been asking us if she liked her kimono, and I don’t know what to tell them! I will confess: I don’t want to be thought of as another insensitive white lady who lets her kids “dress up” as stereotypes of other cultures, and that may be part of what’s holding me back from letting her wear it, so I think an outside perspective might help. What should I do—let her wear it, or talk to her about why she can’t?
Yes, for fuck’s sake. A loving family member gave it to her in kindness and generosity.
It’s only a “costume” if she wears it to play a caricature like Mickey Rooney from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Otherwise, it’s a lovely robe given as a gift.
This mom is shitting all over a loving gift because she’s worried what other woke moms will say. This is as ungracious and ungrateful as a person can be.
Worse, she’s so anti-racist she’s gone full circle and become racist.
“That robe is not for you because of your white skin. That robe is only for Asian people.”
Hooray, segregation.
Also, way to ingrain her daughter with self loathing, that every time she enjoys something that might be from another culture, she’s just appropriating it and that’s bad.
This is a sickness that people who are too affluent have developed to torture themselves because they have too few real struggles in life.
Mickey Rooney, not Andy. But otherwise, spot on!
But the image is more amusing than the reality.
One of my favorite memories of my late mother is from an evening when we went to visit one of my father’s students at home. He was a visiting student from India, there (in Holland) with his young wife. At some point that evening, the two ladies disappeared for a short while, then returned with both of them looking radiant in a pair of beautiful Indian silk saris.
I’m glad I have that photo.
“Cultural appropriation” is bullshit.
It’s also madness to try and stamp it out. You can argue that cultural aspects should be treated with reasonable respect. But if you have a mix of or adjacent cultures, then there will be cross-pollination.
(What happened to the joys of multiculturalism, anyways?)
And the Japanese honest to God do not give a crap. Seriously. They don’t care. You should see some of the utter weirdness they do when they appropriate American culture. It’s hilarious.
Of course the reality is that appropriation, whether cultural, linguistic, or otherwise, has been going on for as long as the human species has existed.
For a nice example consider the English language, which is an amazing mix of Germanic (Anglo-Saxon mostly) and Romance (Norman French as well as later imports directly from Latin), with a whole pile of smaller contributions. Wandering through a dictionary will give you examples of words taken from Tamil, Manchu, Greek, Carib, Wampanoag, and many others.
Culture ditto: contemporary US culture comes probably mostly from England, Germany, Mexico, China, Japan, India, and many other smaller contributions from all over the world.
Is writing “culture”? The world at the moment has only a handful of major writing systems plus another dozen or so minor ones. Most are alphabets, every last one of which can be traced back to the Phoenicians. That leaves Chinese (with its spinoff Japanese), plus just a couple of separately created ones (Korean, Cherokee, Cree).
Chances are that for a number of other countries and languages the size of the melting pot is smaller, but it’s always there.
Speaking of scripts: if you want to include ones no longer used into the picture, it barely changes. I can think of one or maybe two syllabaries, three ideographic scripts, and two “insufficient data”.
I’d argue that writing is one of the most basic cultural activities — so this demonstrates that across the whole world that has been created from scratch only a handful of times. A bunch of even the few script families I mentioned were inspired by others even if they aren’t directly related; Cherokee is a classic example.
Bleep bleep em. Let em wallow in thier miserable life.
I weep for the species…
I remember in college, we had an “Asian” quarter in which a number of students spent the quarter in Japan.
Every single one of them came back with a silk kimono and no one gave a fuck.
Relevant video with actual Japanese talking about this very subject. Start at 5:20…
https://youtu.be/YG_hloEVFGY?t=320
Ironically enough if the rats in the previous post could talk, they would sound just as woke as this, am I right?