Thoughts on cultural appropriation (2019)

This is not a random historical image of Japan in the Taisho era, nor is she a geisha from Kyoto. This is a photo of my grandmother at a young age. She was less than 5 feet tall but stood so straight, her presence towered over me as a child. She was a proud, powerful woman who raised three sons, and looked after her sweet but alcoholic husband who sometimes wandered off, and often cried drunkedly at New Year’s parties that she organized to bring the family together. She was my rock, and still inspires me today to be a strong and proud woman.

The cultural appropriation of kimonos has been on my mind a lot, ever since I came across posts by @little_kotos_closet, and it’s been more on my mind since I began working with kimono fabrics to make clothing. I’ve had this conversation with some friends in private, and I’ll share some thoughts here, in case you are curious to hear my perspective. To be clear, I’m not interested in educating but this is an offer to share a piece of myself. As in real life, I will choose to interact with some and not others so I may not reply to everyone.

As a single human being, my life experience is unique, and is the foundation of how I see the world, and what feelings arise, and how I make decisions so, a little background. I was born in the countryside of Japan to two artists. My father is a painter, who came of age in the post-war era, enamored of the powerful America, a country that had conquered his own, when he was only three years old. He went to a very prestigious art school, which at the time was split between traditionalists (those practicing Japanese art) and the avant garde (those who aspired to modern, Western art). My father was in the latter group, and looked up to artists like Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns and the like.

Because of my parents’ idealisation of America, we moved to New York City when I was eight, which was a major culture shock for me. I was put into a very mixed and liberal elementary school, where we were taught about equality, and even sang “Imagine” at our graduation. This was an amazing experience and represents the idealism and goodness of the melting pot of New York City, but it was also the beginning of my forgetting of my cultural heritage. My parents often took me to see American/ European art, and my father at times discouraged my interest in traditional Japanese things. In one memory, he made fun of me for liking Japanese gardens, and said English gardens were better. He was only passing on his own view, which formed in the traumatized state of post-war Japan.

Looking back, I realize that for a long time, I tried to discard my Japanese identity in order to fit in. Japanese people sometimes appeared in my life, but they never stuck. Maybe unconsciously, I avoided them in order to blind myself from my own heritage, which felt like “otherness” in America. I surrounded myself with white friends, and dated mostly white men. I lived like a white person and pretended I didn’t notice the particular kind of racism faced by Asians in America.

As I started dating, I began to notice that there were certain kinds of men (mostly white) who took particular interest in me because of my heritage. Sometimes I felt a suffocation with these men, like I was supposed to be smaller, more dainty, more subservient. But I could not be, because obvi, I am a product of my grandmother! And then perhaps I started to notice that my white ex-boyfriends were dating other Asian girls, then I started to get really annoyed and made it a point to ask about the dating preferences of people I dated. Thinking back, it’s such a crazy thing to have to think about, but that’s real life of an Asian girl trying to avoid being objectified in love.

In college, I studied fine art, where I finally found my voice, and an outlet for my feelings and creativity. I really loved being in the company of other creatives, where we could help each other grow through dialog and critiques. I was often vocal in critiques, and appreciated when others gave feedback on my work. But there were the comments, mostly from white men, that I was “so opinionated.” This happened throughout my life, and also in grad school, and I remember an anger erupting like a volcano inside. Because this white guy was also just as vocal during critiques, and the double standard had finally became clear to me. I was also angry at myself for having accepted it for all these years.

In America, there are many images of women in Kimonos. Sometimes they are historical images of Japanese women, but often eroticized, hand colored prints, with that soft gaze looking over a bare shoulder (which I now know only prostitutes bared their shoulders!). Other times, they were white women in fashion ads wearing silky bathrobes dubbed “kimono.” #thatisnotakimono Often, they wore conical straw hats--the kind that I had never seen farmers wearing where I grew up in Japan.

Then there was Halloween. I don’t know how many times I saw people dressed up as geishas. When I tried to explain my discomfort, I was often told that I was being too sensitive--I was silenced. People in the US have finally realized that black face (a.k.a. pretending to be African American) is no longer acceptable but how is it OK to dress up as a high class entertainer/ prostitute of my country?

Through these unpleasant experiences and images, I came to understand the objectified “Japanese woman.” We shuffle our feet, talk softly, and demurely cover our mouths when we laugh. We also possess an inner sexual allure, that is so powerful and just so… alluring. And I began to see that the designers who put white women in silky “kimono” bathrobes were trying to sell that allure, that sensuality, that had been built up over decades of colonization. I, for one, could never fit into this imagined version of what I was supposed to be, and that caused an internalized conflict that I’m only starting to unravel in my forties.

When I moved to Okinawa two years ago, and Trump moved into the White House, these dynamics exploded into clarity. Okinawa was colonized by my birth country, Japan, which in turn is a modern day colony of my adopted country, America. America has seized control of Japan’s economy, land, and culture so entirely, that even today, my college students think it’s the greatest country in the world. There are some Americans on the island who are keenly aware of their place in this historical, political and social dynamic, but there are many who are not. The complexity of Okinawa is another topic, another book (or ten), but it’s made me see this unbalanced distribution of power more clearly.

When I see a white woman, particularly an American wearing a kimono, I wonder first, what she feels. If she is attending a tea ceremony, or an event that requires a kimono, fine, maybe that’s understandable. But is she thinking about the unfair distribution of power in the world, and her place in it? Is she trying to embody the image that was artificially created in the west, of that allure, that mystery and submissive femininity? Or does she reflect on the fact that when Japan lost the war, it was the beginning of the loss of culture, which is now leading to the loss of the kimono? That kimonos are now going out of fashion, and are flooding the market as they are being discarded?

Which brings me to my next point, because I’ve also been thinking about this a lot, since I’m creating clothing from retired kimono fabrics. How can I highlight the craft of Japanese silk weaving and traditional kimono painting without cheapening it? How can I celebrate something that is part of my cultural heritage, and truly honor it? I want you to look at the skill with which these fabrics were created, not the illusion of allure created by the west. And I also want you to know that this culture is slowly slipping through my fingers, when I have finally come to appreciate my own heritage. I want to make something that you can hold onto it as a piece of clothing that you can wear in your normal life, not just at Japanese tea ceremonies, in order to honor what is being lost.

It is also an exercise of not letting something (so beautiful) go to waste, and that’s something I learned from Japan, the philosophy and word, “mottainai.” But I also want you to know the origin of the word and not romanticize it. I learned it from my grandparents and parents who had to scrape by to survive during and after the war. Everything was scarce, clothing was mended and repurposed until it fell apart. My dad and brothers were so hungry they used slingshots to shoot birds and frogs to eat. But they were boys, so they shot each other too, and my uncle lost an eye as a child. Until this day, my father still laments his brother’s glass eye. When I see his eye not quite aligned with the other, I think about the war.

Personally, the created image of kimono and in relation, “Japanese woman” has caused a lot of confusion and hurt in my life. I understand this is not easy for everyone to understand. Even people in Japan have a hard time understanding because they have not experienced the half-hidden discrimination and sexualization in a country where they are considered the “other.”

I believe this applies to other women of color as well. When I see women of color in fashion ads I sometimes wonder, is it her beauty that is being celebrated, or is she being exoticized? Think of all the times you’ve seen Native American symbolism in fashion ads, or a very dark-skinned black model balancing a basket over her head (Why?!). Many Japanese women and other women of color live with these experiences, particularly in America, and it troubles us. So if we speak out, criticize, or question your appropriation of kimonos (or the marketability of our ethnicity), try to consider where we’re coming from.

Instead of silencing us, ask questions and take in what we’re saying. A kimono is not an image, it’s a garment that has cultural significance. It carries stories about real people with real hardships, so I hope that when you see, touch, or wear a kimono, that your minds’ eye and heart are wide open to its reality.

#kimono #mottainai #mycultureisnotyourcouture #japanesewomen #womenofcolor #culturalappropriation #stopculturalappropriation #stopracism #decolonize