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Of course, I say this as a diaspora Asian of sorts.

Noizumi is half-Japanese, and she found herself thinking, “Why am I so excited that my daughter has blue eyes? What’s the big deal about that? And why am I so excited that I have a baby who looks more white?”

This is the kind of statement that would get a white celebrity cancelled for saying it, but apparently it’s just a fun tidbit for Netflix.

In their early creative conversations that would eventually span 15 years, they started spinning a tale about how “back in the Edo period starting in 17th-century Japan, it would’ve been illegal to be white.

Wtf based Edo period.

CW: Rape

According to some of the promotional materials, the main character is a product of rape of a Japanese woman by a white man, which is a terrible and insensitive if they play it straight and a weeb fantasy if they redeem the dad at the end.

Idk if the series is as good as they say, but how the fuck did they think that publishing any of this was a good idea?

  • Alaskaball [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    what the fuck?

    Also I’m fairly certain there was some part of the japanese cultural historical period that had being as un-sun-kissed pale white as possible being a desirable trait among imperial courtiers because it was a sign of not being a stinking poor peasant. I’m thinking it’s from the Heian period.

    And I’m gonna go out on a limb based off of the historiography I’ve read, it wasn’t illegal to be “white” in the Edo period, it was illegal to be a gaijin bleach demon imperialist invading Japan - something that’s not exclusively “uniquely Japanese”, much to the Japanese ultra-nats and weeb nazis chagrin, as Korea and China generally considered the roving european bandits who called themselves “explorers” and “traders” to be barbarians to be kept away. - which means this diasporian asian’s been yankeefied to the point she’s obsessed with becoming european to the point of mythologizing history

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      that had being as un-sun-kissed pale white as possible being a desirable trait among imperial courtiers because it was a sign of not being a stinking poor peasant. I’m thinking it’s from the Heian period.

      yes but a white guy who works in the sun would also have their skin tan so it wouldn’t really make any difference. East asian people don’t actually have skin that looks all that darker than white people do

      race is made up and arbitrary, before the opium wars the chinese were considered white. In south africa being Japanese made you legally white

      it was once popular in england to call the Irish white skinned black people (and that’s the nice way of putting it)