{"id":2720,"date":"2010-09-26T19:31:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nikkeiview.com\/blog\/?p=2720"},"modified":"2010-09-26T19:33:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-27T01:33:18","slug":"japanese-dont-draw-anime-characters-to-be-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/japanese-dont-draw-anime-characters-to-be-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese don’t draw anime characters to be white"},"content":{"rendered":"

chibi anime -- do Japanese draw the characters to look \"white\"?I’ve written before about Japanese anime<\/a>, or animation, as well as the genre’s characters and their large eyes<\/a>, and wondered if they symbolize a desire to look more Caucasian. <\/p>\n

But this brief guest post by Julian Abagond<\/a> on the blog Sociological Images<\/a> titled Why Do the Japanese Draw Themselves As White?<\/a> that offers very interesting food for thought.<\/p>\n

Abagond makes the case that Americans (white people) think Japanese draw anime and manga characters to look Caucasian, but that’s a Western construct, and that “Americans” (he conflates nationality with ethnicity, a common slip in race\/culture conversations, even by well-intentioned people and often by Asians) see everything in terms of white unless there are stereotypical symbols that identify a character as another ethnicity.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He says that Japanese simply do the same and don’t think they’re drawing anything other than human beings in their own image: Japanese. He points out that Caucasians in anime are drawn differently from the “regular” anime characters — not with wide eyes and crazy hair colors. So the characters we think are drawn to look “Western” are just Japanese to the Japanese.<\/p>\n

If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman I have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, I have to add slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.<\/p>\n

The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marge SimpsonThis makes great sense to me. And, he punctuates his point with an obvious piece of proof from American pop culture:<\/p>\n

You see the same thing in America: After all, why do people think Marge Simpson is white? Look at her skin: it is yellow. Look at her hair: it is a blue Afro. But the Default Human Being thing is so strong that lacking other clear, stereotyped signs of being either black or Asian she defaults to white.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s true — the Simpsons are yellow, and we all know (or assume) that Matt Groening created the cartoon family to be a “white” American suburban family. Now, that’s some chewy food for thought. What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before about Japanese anime, or animation, as well as the genre’s characters and their large eyes, and wondered if they symbolize a desire to look more Caucasian. But this brief guest post by Julian Abagond on the blog Sociological Images titled Why Do the Japanese Draw Themselves As \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[78,246,877,1528],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2722,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions\/2722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikkeiview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}