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Why I Hate Being Japanese - Lit Nomad

IntermediateJapanese English accentSelf talk14 min

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  1. 0:05 Hey, what's up guys?
  2. 0:06 So, I'm Japanese American and I spent the last few months in Japan trying to learn about Japan and its culture.
  3. 0:14 And unfortunately, it made me hate Japan and it made me hate myself.
  4. 0:19 And I want to get into that a little bit in this video, but it's mainly because Japan is so incredibly white worshipping.
  5. 0:28 It's just pathetic.
  6. 0:29 And you see it in everything they do.
  7. 0:32 Like for example, Japan's two main exports, video games and anime.
  8. 0:38 And in both of those, you see it.
  9. 0:40 Super Mario is Italian.
  10. 0:43 Luigi, Princess Peach, they're all white.
  11. 0:46 And it turns out that in that world, the Mario world, there are some Japanese people.
  12. 0:52 You know who they are?
  13. 0:53 It's Toad Stool.
  14. 0:55 That toad with the the mushroom head.
  15. 0:57 Those little red spots, those are Japanese flags.
  16. 1:00 I didn't know that.
  17. 1:01 Um, he actually has a Japanese name, too.
  18. 1:03 But that meek, wimpy, mute, silent mushroom, that guy's Japanese.
  19. 1:09 That's the character that Japan said, "Oh, yeah.
  20. 1:12 I guess we can have a Japanese character in here.
  21. 1:14 Let's make it that meek mushroom guy."
  22. 1:16 The other character in the series that's Japanese is Yoshi.
  23. 1:21 The dinosaur, bro.
  24. 1:24 the dinosaur that the white guy rides on, the beast of burden, he's Japanese.
  25. 1:28 He can't even speak, bro.
  26. 1:30 And so in the game that was created by Japan, those are the two characters that are Japanese.
  27. 1:37 And it's like every other game, too, right?
  28. 1:40 In The Legend of Zelda, Link is white, obviously.
  29. 1:43 Zelda's white. in the game Metroid.
  30. 1:46 You know, Metroid is is actually a girl, Samis, who's wearing like armor, and the girl is this blonde girl.
  31. 1:53 I think she's German.
  32. 1:55 So, okay. Like, we can't even see the character.
  33. 1:58 It could have been a Japanese girl, but no, it's this blonde girl.
  34. 2:02 Um, obviously Ness from Earthbound is white.
  35. 2:06 Even the animal characters like Star Fox, you know, Fox Mloud, Mloud, obviously he's white.
  36. 2:12 So the the the cool fox is white.
  37. 2:15 Of course he's white.
  38. 2:16 It's just it's just embarrassing, dude.
  39. 2:18 Like like your most popular video game, Super Mario, your your main characters are Italian.
  40. 2:23 Like can you imagine if the Italians made a video game if they made the characters Japanese?
  41. 2:28 What the Italian people would say?
  42. 2:30 They'd be like, "Why are the characters Japanese?
  43. 2:32 What does Japan have to do with this?
  44. 2:34 We're Italian." That's what they would say.
  45. 2:36 And that would be a totally rational thing for them to say.
  46. 2:39 And it's only the Japanese, where the default main character isn't Japanese, it's white.
  47. 2:46 Now, let's talk about their other main export, anime.
  48. 2:49 Every single protagonist in anime is white, too.
  49. 2:52 So, Naruto is white.
  50. 2:54 Sakura is white.
  51. 2:55 Saskuke is actually Japanese.
  52. 2:57 And you can confirm this.
  53. 2:58 Kishimoto, the creator of Naruto, you can look this up.
  54. 3:01 They asked him, "Oh, if you ever had like a liveaction Naruto, like these, what race are these characters?"
  55. 3:06 And he openly said, "Oh, Naruto and Sakura are white, and Sasuke is Japanese."
  56. 3:10 So in your anime, your main characters are white.
  57. 3:17 In your country's anime, you're Japanese and you're in Japan.
  58. 3:20 Your main characters are white and then the sidekick is Japanese.
  59. 3:25 Like, that's crazy, dude.
  60. 3:27 Can you imagine like a American film being made where the main character is randomly Japanese and then his sidekick is a white dude?
  61. 3:35 You will never see that even in AsianAmerican films that are meant to promote Asianness like Crazy Rich Asians which was this big cultural thing like oh
  62. 3:47 it's an Asian film.
  63. 3:48 The main character the main guy Henry Golding is half white.
  64. 3:53 Even in the Asian film they couldn't get a full Asian main character.
  65. 3:58 Yeah. Even Bruce Lee is a quarter white.
  66. 4:01 It's pathetic. So yeah, I mean that's Naruto, but every single one, right?
  67. 4:06 Bleach, the main guy in Bleach is white.
  68. 4:08 Attack on Titan that takes place in Germany, right?
  69. 4:11 That's why everyone has German names.
  70. 4:13 Or it's like a it's like an artificial world, but they're basically in Germany.
  71. 4:16 It's based on Germany.
  72. 4:17 And then obviously there's Dragon Ball Z.
  73. 4:19 You know, I talked about this in another video, but Goku is a Japanese monkey at the beginning.
  74. 4:24 He has a tail and then as he evolves and levels up and gets stronger, he loses his tail showing that he's evolving out of his like primitive ways and he evolves into a blondhaired greeneyed
  75. 4:36 white dude. Like it's not even subliminal.
  76. 4:39 Like if you ask Japanese people, they'll tell you, "Yeah, that's that's the message.
  77. 4:43 He evolved out of being Japanese to being a superior white guy."
  78. 4:47 That's the message,
  79. 4:50 dude. It's so cringe and embarrassing.
  80. 4:51 For those of you who say, "Well, no, dude."
  81. 4:53 Like the main character of Bleach, he's actually Japanese.
  82. 4:56 He just dyes his hair.
  83. 4:57 Well, that's still pathetic, you know?
  84. 4:59 Like, why are you dying your hair blonde and brown and, you know, making it wavy and getting a perm?
  85. 5:06 Like, why why can't you be proud of your features?
  86. 5:09 The the Chinese and Koreans, they don't do that.
  87. 5:11 I've seen like aerial shots of Japan, the the Shibuya crosswalk, and it's like 70% of the heads are just like blonde or brown and like wavy, and they're they're just Japanese people.
  88. 5:22 Or if you see like the uh the Japanese World Cup team for example, there was like one year where like 50% or more of the soccer players had their hair dyed and and you know they were
  89. 5:34 playing like South Korea or something and the you know other Asian team didn't have their hair dyed.
  90. 5:38 So it was like really easy to see who was the Japanese player.
  91. 5:41 Oh that guy with the blonde hair.
  92. 5:44 And and it I don't know what other people thought of that but but as a Japanese person I felt ashamed.
  93. 5:50 I felt embarrassed.
  94. 5:51 Like, why? What?
  95. 5:53 Bro, you're you're Asian.
  96. 5:54 Like, why are you trying to be white?
  97. 5:56 It's embarrassing. It's cringe.
  98. 5:59 Like, your your natural hair color is fine.
  99. 6:01 It's cool. It's cool to have dark hair, man.
  100. 6:03 It's tall, dark, and handsome, right?
  101. 6:05 It's not tall, blonde, and handsome.
  102. 6:08 And and the dark is not like dark skin, in case you guys are curious.
  103. 6:12 It's it's dark hair, right?
  104. 6:16 What the Japanese need to do is they need to learn from the African-American community.
  105. 6:21 You see, a 100 years ago and and and I don't condone this at all, but 100 years ago, people thought that African-Amean features were unattractive and today people
  106. 6:33 think Danzel and Will Smith are hot.
  107. 6:35 So, how did that happen?
  108. 6:37 Well, they refused to conform to eurosentric beauty standards.
  109. 6:42 They basically pushed back on it.
  110. 6:43 They said, "I don't care whether you think that's hot.
  111. 6:46 I I think my features are hot."
  112. 6:48 And they just pushed back on the culture.
  113. 6:50 And the culture thought about it and was like, "Okay, that sure if you say so."
  114. 6:57 And the thing about beauty, and this sounds corny, you know, the whole beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you know, it sounds like a cope, right?
  115. 7:06 Like, okay, sure, that's what your mom says to you when, you know, you look like Quasimoto.
  116. 7:10 No, not necessarily.
  117. 7:11 There's there's a science and like a math to it.
  118. 7:13 Beauty is the average of all features.
  119. 7:16 The proportions and symmetry are the average of all features.
  120. 7:20 Not to be confused with the average features.
  121. 7:23 Those are two separate things, right?
  122. 7:24 Being average looking doesn't mean your features are the average of all people.
  123. 7:28 So, if you have the most balanced features, you're symmetric and the size of all the things on your face or the most average of all the people you see in that region, it's an indicator that you're healthy.
  124. 7:40 Because if anything is weird, like your nose is really big or your ears are really big or something, it it could mean you have some kind of infection or there's something wrong something wrong with you.
  125. 7:50 It could be a sign of a health defect.
  126. 7:52 what you're doing when you say, "Well, no, these are the features I find attractive, so take that into consideration."
  127. 7:59 You're adding that into the average of the pool.
  128. 8:02 And and the more exposure people get to your features, the more they get used to it and think, "Actually, I can see how that's attractive.
  129. 8:09 That's how that's how it works."
  130. 8:10 The Japanese, rather than saying, "Well, no, you should embrace our features.
  131. 8:14 This is just how we look."
  132. 8:16 So, this is good.
  133. 8:17 This is beautiful in its own way.
  134. 8:18 Rather than pushing for that, they folded to the euroentric beauty standard and conformed to it.
  135. 8:25 And since Asians are so different looking from Europeans, by default, all Asians or almost all Asians are going to be attractive when you choose to go that way.
  136. 8:34 So the African-Americans didn't go that way.
  137. 8:36 They didn't say, "Oh, well, since the euroentric beauty standard is the only standard, we're all unattractive."
  138. 8:42 Then they said, "Well, no, we think this is beautiful, so you just have it wrong."
  139. 8:47 and they pushed back on it and then they won.
  140. 8:50 And so now people think, "Oh, actually, I don't know what they were thinking 100 years ago.
  141. 8:54 They're just racists.
  142. 8:55 Denzel and Will Smith are clearly handsome men."
  143. 8:57 And and I think they are, too.
  144. 8:59 But but it's an example of how you can push back on beauty standards.
  145. 9:03 And, you know, things like thicker lips and curvy bodies, those are things that in the 90s people thought were unattractive.
  146. 9:12 Like Cindy Crawford was the pinnacle of beauty in the 90s.
  147. 9:16 I remember that.
  148. 9:16 And that's not the case anymore, right?
  149. 9:18 It's mostly it's it's way more the Kim Kardashian beauty standard, the thick lips and then the the curvy body.
  150. 9:25 And and a lot of that is from African-American influence.
  151. 9:28 You know, they said, "Well, no, that's not what's beautiful.
  152. 9:31 This is what we think is beautiful."
  153. 9:32 And they pushed the culture.
  154. 9:34 They they influenced the culture.
  155. 9:36 And so, in many ways, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
  156. 9:39 And yeah, I just wish Japan had the courage to say, "Well, no, we think this is beautiful.
  157. 9:45 accept our beauty standards because different countries have different beauty standards.
  158. 9:48 Like the Chinese think having a small mouth on a woman is beautiful.
  159. 9:52 So they think Julia Roberts with her big mouth is like like ew, you know?
  160. 9:59 And it it's so arbitrary, right?
  161. 10:00 It's like I can see both ways, you know, but I've been told by the euroentric beauty standards that Julia Roberts and her big mouth are expressive and beautiful.
  162. 10:10 So I've just decided, oh no, that's beautiful.
  163. 10:13 Like so much of our beauty standards are subconscious and at that subconscious layer there's a lot of wiggle room to push for your own your own features and say well no these features are
  164. 10:25 beautiful and I just wish Japan had the courage to do that.
  165. 10:28 Kind of like a Ouija board.
  166. 10:30 You have to kind of push it the way you want it to go if you want to fight for your own people culturally, right?
  167. 10:36 The Japanese just aren't doing that.
  168. 10:38 All their their most beautiful models are half half white.
  169. 10:41 The Japanese can also learn from the Hanchinese.
  170. 10:43 The Hanchinese are very proud people and they should be proud.
  171. 10:46 They have the longest continuous civilization.
  172. 10:48 They've been around for over 5,000 years.
  173. 10:50 They're just such an accomplished people and they don't want to conform to euroentric beauty standards.
  174. 10:55 They have their own idea of what should be beautiful and they stick to it.
  175. 11:00 So, you don't see them dying their hair and running around with blonde hair like the Japanese do.
  176. 11:05 And the Koreans as well.
  177. 11:07 One thing that really annoys me about the Japanese is that they have this obsession with big eyes because white people have big eyes and they want so badly to be white.
  178. 11:17 And so every single actor on any film or TV show in Japan has huge eyes if they're the cool character.
  179. 11:25 They're supposed to be the good-looking character.
  180. 11:29 And then they'll be like a a side character that's supposed to be uncool or ugly who has small eyes.
  181. 11:35 And it's like that with their comics, too.
  182. 11:36 The only people with small eyes that come out on their show are like the comedians or people who you're supposed to laugh at.
  183. 11:42 And then the cool characters who you're supposed to be, well, that guy's cool.
  184. 11:46 Always has big eyes with double eyelids.
  185. 11:48 And the thing is in Japan about 60% of the population has single eyelids and small eyes.
  186. 11:56 And so by pushing a culture like that, they're making more than half of their population feel bad about themselves.
  187. 12:02 And it's just not a very inclusive or thoughtful cultural strategy.
  188. 12:06 And it's also it just makes them look foolish because their own royal family has small eyes.
  189. 12:12 And if you look at all their politicians, they all they all have small eyes, too.
  190. 12:17 So all these actors that they they they push forth to the world, like they're not fooling anyone into thinking, "Oh, the Japanese, they have this Latin American look.
  191. 12:27 They all have big huge eyes."
  192. 12:28 Like, no, they don't, dude.
  193. 12:30 And it's just a bad strategy and it's just very self-hating.
  194. 12:34 So, if you compare that with the Koreans, right, and you watch K dramas and K films, you'll notice that they'll mix it up.
  195. 12:42 Some of the characters that are supposed to be cool will have big eyes and some of them will have small eyes.
  196. 12:47 And that's the right strategy.
  197. 12:49 That's a more thoughtful strategy.
  198. 12:51 That's that's the kind of culture you want to push because like Japan, the South Koreans, there are some South Koreans with big eyes and some with smaller eyes.
  199. 13:00 and they don't want to make half the population that have small eyes, they don't want to make them feel bad about themselves.
  200. 13:06 It's subjective to an extent, right?
  201. 13:08 So, they'll have these K-pop guys who are supposed to be cool that have small eyes.
  202. 13:14 And by pushing that out there, the the consumer thinks, "Yeah, I can see that.
  203. 13:21 He's kind of badass with his small eyes.
  204. 13:23 He looks like mysterious.
  205. 13:25 Yeah, I can see that.
  206. 13:26 I can see how he's hot."
  207. 13:27 And that's that's the way you should do that.
  208. 13:29 You should stand up for your people.
  209. 13:31 You should stand up for the way they look and try to fight the culture to embrace your beauty standards.
  210. 13:36 Yeah, that would be my advice to the rulers of Japanese culture.
  211. 13:41 It's be more thoughtful about how you shape your culture and learn from the African-Americans, the Chinese and the South Koreans on how you should push for your own people and push for
  212. 13:53 beauty standards that are best for the largest number of people in your population.
  213. 13:57 That's how you promote your people, right?
  214. 13:59 Anyways, that's all I got.
  215. 14:01 Let me know in the comments if you disagree.

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