[ SECRET POST #4438 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4438 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #635.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I went by a Japanese name at my old job because I worked for a Japanese company and my actual name is difficult for Japanese people to pronounce. After enough of them stumbled over trying to pronounce it we decided it would be easier for me to just pick another name to go by. A lot of Asians (Chinese especially) have "American" names for this exact reason. So... that doesn't sound odd to me at all.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: There's a difference between having a Japanese/Chinese/Korean fake name to work in an Asian company than having a Japanese/Chinese/Korean to work in an American/English-speaking company. The dude I was talking about did the second.

[(Anonymous)]

If I'm thinking of the same thing as AYRT, this was the (American) (not Asian) editor of Marvel passing himself off as a Japanese man so he could work on comics which were then represented to the public as being created by a Japanese man

IIRC

[(Anonymous)]

NA

If that's the context, the tweet... makes no sense. The problem with someone using an Asian alter-ego to work for a comic book company which then uses his adopted Asian name to pass off their products as authentically Japanese ISN'T the person being a "freaky fetishist weeaboo". As a Japanese person, I don't give a fuck if you're a freaky fetishist weeaboo. You do you.

However, I do think there are serious issues with someone passing themselves off as Asian to access the credibility that comes with Asianness, and with a company not being willing to pay money to an actual Asian person for that same credibility. That's just... really really racist. Fetishism and weeabooism and cringey fakeness of the author hired has nothing to do with it -- it has to do with who a corporation is willing to pay to get cultural credibility. If the answer is "I'd rather pay a white person with an Asian name than an actual Asian person" that's suggestive of some serious racism (of the "I have a sheer preference for white people" type -- like, I'm talking about serious serious racism here) on the part of the employer. The artist can be as cringey as he likes; I don't care. I do care about how the employer comes off. If society is seen to tolerate that level of racism, that's a bad sign.

By blaming the artist for being culturally insensitive or weeabooish or just embarrassing, and viewing THAT to be what's wrong with the situation, we're letting the way more serious case of racism off the hook.

[(Anonymous)]

It's confusing because there was a level of self-dealing in the decision making - the person was basically publishing his own work and using a pseudonym to get around rules - but at the same time, the marketing and pub definitely traded on the supposed authenticity and foreign ness of the author.

What I would say is that I think all of these things are different aspects of the same thing, some of it is less bad but it all contributes.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Yeah, I looked more into it, and it seems like the person in question not only pretended to be Japanese and deceived the company but then went on to write really fetishistic plotlines featuring white characters in Japan. If the person had just been really weeaboo and embarrassing, that's fine, but trying to pass his personal fetishistic plotlines off as being written by a Japanese person has additional problematic implications.

I still think the tweet is missing the point by calling out behavior like adopting a Japanese moniker or pretending to be Japanese or loving Japanese media so much you identify with it -- that's cringey but it's not racist. The serious issues here is (1) that he managed to get published with these tactics at all, and (2) the things he published: in this case, fetishistic plotlines that misleadingly purport to be a Japanese take on Japan, when they're not. That affects how people interpret Japanese culture in a more stereotypical/othering kind of way, which is bad.