Have you seen this post critiquing the use of Western feminism to analyze anime? Thought of you! cancerously(.)tumblr(.)com/post/77750279190 What's awful, though, is that hisanakagami received a lot of hate and harassment in response and left tumblr because of it.
Hey! I actually haven’t seen this post before, surprisingly, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. (Also sorry for the late reply, work’s been busy this week)
I found myself nodding the whole time while reading hisanakagami’s response, because she’s very very right- western gaze social justice (i.e. white feminism, popular US/West Europe sj narratives) is one of the worst things that have happened to anime and it dumbs down all the critical discussions that center around it.
Here’s the fact: No matter how large the international anime community may seem online or in real life, it is extremely unlikely that critiquing anime will ever have any significant effect on social mindsets in any country other than Japan (and arguably east asian countries that have an imperialist relationship with Japan). And even in Japan, anime/manga is not really in the forefront of anyone’s mind when it comes to social change. The bulk of discussions that center around feminism, imperialism, ableism, happens in novels and documentaries, meetings within Japanese feminist, indigenous, immigrant, disabled communities. So for international fans to only concentrate on anime/manga when it comes to social justice in Japan and East Asia, is completely narrow-minded and skewed right from the start. To even try and separate anime/manga from its position as a Japanese form of media by ignoring its cultural context is even more ignorant and oppressive, because you’re ignoring/silencing the work of actual Japanese and East Asian people who are trying to change things.
Also, Japan occupies a complicated position in the world. It is both a “victim” of western imperialism and an imperialist aggressor. What this position means in terms of social justice discussion pertaining specifically to the East Asian region, is something I don’t trust the large majority of western sj bloggers to understand. (I don’t even trust most White East Asian Studies professors to understand it and they’ve been researching it for years) Like Hisanakagami said in her post:
Why did I never see anyone call out Hayao Miyazaki on his bullshit in “The Wind Rises”? He was glorifying the designer of the Zero’s Engine, Jiro Horikoshi. It was a fighter aircraft that was built with Chinese and Korean slave labour, then used to massacre these peoples. Nah, you were too busy crying over his disdain for otaku and wondering whether Kill La Kill was a metaphor for puberty.
Basically international anime/manga fans tend to have twisted priorities. They pick and choose the aspects of anime/manga that pertain to them and ignore the others- a harmful and ignorant approach.
Actually let’s talk a bit more about Miyazaki Hayao. One of the most influential people when it comes to the anime/manga industry. Also one of the most influential people when it comes to social change within Japan and the East Asian region. Studio Ghibli movies are one of the few and only forms of anime/manga that are actually respected within Japan. Which is why I’ve always wished that Miyazaki would take that extra step and make a movie about idk Japanese immigrants from South East Asia and their lives instead of another tv series based on European media (as cool as Ronja the Robber’s Daughter sounds, I was pretty disappointed when I heard about it). So there’s no jumping around the fact that Miyazaki can be problematic in his own way- especially when it comes to Japanese Imperialism and perpetuating Western standards as ideals. But do international fans pick up on that? No, they concentrate on stupid otaku shit.
Anyway, I’m not sure how this reply became this long, but what I’m trying to say is that Western sj bloggers need to start backing the fuck down when it comes to critiquing anime/manga because 1) they don’t know what they’re talking about and 2) they don’t have the right. The fact that hisanakagami was driven off tumblr despite her authoritative position as a Queer Japanese Trans Woman just shows how complete and utter bullshit most of these white feminists/western sj bloggers are. They don’t give an actual fuck about social justice, they’re so wrapped up with ~their connection and opinions~ with anime/manga that they can’t even realize that they’re practitioners of cultural imperialism and that they’re silencing Japanese people who know better. These people need to start questioning whether they even have the right to critique anime/manga if they don’t know the cultural contexts behind it and why they’d rather criticize a foreign form of media before they criticize media of their own country, even though the latter approach would probably have more impact.
Edit (after some more thinking I wanted to add this):
While I am strongly against western gaze social critiques on anime, it’s important to note that hisanakagami’s arguments were also reblogged and taken up by anti-sj/anti-feminism blogs. Also, I see a lot of not anti-sj blogs on tumblr repeat diluted versions of hisanakagami’s arguments, and while they ultimately mean well, they’re still problematic. POC is not a term limited to the US/UK, discussions about race, sexuality, feminism, and imperialism are note conversations limited to the US/UK, these are terms and discussions that can and should be had worldwide, because this system of oppression that we are in is one that has been constructed worldwide for the past couple of centuries. US and Western Europe Capitalism? The US Military Industrial Complex? The Imperialist dominance of the UN and NATO? The Major News Agencies worldwide usually subscribing to a common Western-prescribed, western-approved narrative? The wide-spread distribution of US and UK media? The impact of Western Imperialism on Asian Countries, resulting in colonies, cultural assimilation, wars, infrastructural damage, effects that can still be seen today?
These structures should not be taken lightly. Western gaze social media has no place in discussions centering anime/manga, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be social justice discussions about anime/manga at all. There should. Anime/manga is a form of media and there should be discussions about the ideas it perpetrates and contradicts, etc. But those should be directed by those who are familiar with Japanese Culture and the historical and current socio-political movements occurring throughout Japan and East Asia.
