And that reads like “YOU AREN’T OFFENDED SO I AM OFFENDED FOR YOU BECAUSE I KNOW EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD FEEL OFFENDED AND THEREFORE I AM.”
Basically you’re saying questions that concern japanese culture shouldn’t be answered by Japanese but the Japanese that “live in this country” where the issue happened. Because they are the minority in said country and have to deal with it. In other words the Japanese-Americans. I get what you are really trying to say but this post sounds so wrong, cause you are racist here.Â
In your case it’s about a simple old fashion gone wrong tattoo. While most people just laugh about the stupidity and yet another proof of why you shouldn’t tattoo something in a language you don’t speak (or without a second spell check) this of course starts a debate about racism. As far as I understand it people are “offended” that she not only messed up the kanji but also deffended it with “it’s still aestethic”.Â
There is nothing wrong in asking Japanese people living in Japan about matter that concerns their culture. They aren’t less valid because they are the majority, on the other hand Japanese-Europeans aren’t less valid because they happen to not live in the country the issue happened. Especially since the article you meantioned also talked about kanji tattoos in general, so why would you draw a line to only include Japanese-Americans and not the people who also are a part of the culture? Because an american singer is involved and therefore only america has a saying in it?
There is a difference if someone is branding themseves with ritual tattoos of another culture just for aethetic reasons or if someone just wants an art piece inspired by another culture. Writings are always a bad decision, in general. Just look up some horribly gone wrong tattoos, starting with NO RAGRETS. But that doesn’t make the person racist, especially since kanji ARE used to also be aestethic just in their writing in asia for centuries.
But to come back to your proposal, I asked some Japanese people living here in my country about a wrong kanji tattoo of a person living in this country, which translates to your “Just ask the people living in the country who have to deal with it”.Â
The person had a 長 tattooed on their wrist, so it was a similar placement as the BBQ grill. I asked the person why they had the word “long” on their wrist, and they said that “it’s not the word for long, it means dragon”. Well no it doesn’t and I suspect the artist tried google translate and perhaps tried “shenlong” or something to get the kanji for “dragon”. Instead of 竜, the correct kanji for dragon, they ended up with the one above. So I showed a picture of it to various Japanese living here. Some of them are offbroad students, some of them lived here for some time, or were born here. All of them said: “The person is stupid, how could they ever make such a mistake? That’s embarrasing, they have to life with it for decades.” Of course I also wanted to know, what they think of kanji tattoos in general. Their answer was: “It’s fine, they should check it before of course, but if they like it, it’s no problem.” “It’s their body, I wouldn’t get a tattoo of just a word but rather a whole sentence. They need to ask a Japanese for a grammar check first, though.” “I like them, I have written something for a friend of mine and she got it as a tattoo.”
I did what you asked and maybe, instead of saying “can we please stop doing XYZ” just do it yourself. Everything starts with yourself.Â
Don’t get me wrong, the world has a serious problem with racism. It shows in different ways and especially the United States need to question themselves, but a gone wrong tattoo is by far the least of all these problems.Â