Well, I just watched Blue Eyed Samurai. Been spotting several positive clickbait thumbnails of it, so even though I didn't have high expectations based on the trailer, I gave it a go. And well, it was what I feared it was. I still enjoyed it though! And it's an engaging story, just not what I wish it was. Anyways, I wrote a comment on Reddit about it, which I thought I'd repost here.
Edit: I ended up going in and reordering some paragraphs under headings, as people on Reddit replied to by comment. Noticing people are nitpicking the historical accuracy of my commentary, which wasn't really what I was concerned about. It's more that certain cues in these stories make me expect certain things.
The main point of much of this text is to look into what makes Blue Eyed Samurai a noticeably American story, by comparing it to other jidaigeki stories with a similar setting made for and by Asian people, and stories set in Asia made by Americans (for Americans).
🚧 NB! I'm still working on the text. Text marked in cursive are just notes, so please ignore them for now! 🚧
Asian stories
So, this isn't the first time we've gotten an Asian story told by Americans (for Americans). And that in of itself doesn't necessarily make the show unwatchable. Beyond the cases of whitewashing and yellowface in Hollywood, we can also find a few love letters to Asian media.
For China, we have Kung Fu Panda, a love letter to Kung Fu movies with a Chinatown aesthetic. For Asian ethnicities overall, we have Avatar the Last Airbender. And for Japan, we have stories like the Ghost of Tsushima and Shogun.
As a period drama fan, what I expect coming into these shows are generally other pieces in the same genre, that is Asian stories told by Asians. Perhaps due to the lack of any relevant Asian American genre. In the case of Blue Eyed Samurai, I was expecting a jidaigeki more in the lines of Azumi, Oshin or Princess Kaguya. However, I felt that Blue Eyed Samurai fell short, even by the standard of other Asian stories told by Americans for Americans.
Overall, the story's theme is two fold: action and feminism.
Action and martial arts
While Blue Eyed Samurai throws around words like samurai and honor, it doesn't appear to actually understand what these entail. Instead, it feels like it only focuses on the superficial badassery of it. In contrast, Ghost of Tsushima did a great job with its Japanese localization. Although some parts was a little bit off still, they salvaged this by centering their themes around bushido culture and made references to terms used there, and the visuals references Japanese aesthetics of the transient seasons and impermanence, which is commonly used in haiku poetry. It features seasonal environments such as ginko leaves, reed, maple, and spider lilies to mention some. The same can be said for Shogun, which is more about the tension being lost in translation, and where especially Mariko recited actual Japanese poems at several occassions.
Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda also has the tropes and artefacts of Chinese wuxia story, but it is ultimately based on Chinatown. A theme park-esque idea of China designed by and to cater to white people, as a Chinese American defense mechanism. Yet, it stands on its own as an American love letter to Chinese kung fu films.
In the west, many use Kung Fu Panda as an argument for successful orientalism. However, Accented Cinema points out, it may have more to do with China's own failure in representing themselves, and that Kung Fu Panda's lesson was just what China needed at that time: To stop doubting and to learn to love themselves. Even in the face of the traditional Chinese fantasy genre (wuxia and xianxia) losing foothold in Asia, they can still stay themselves as a new generation reinvents the genre. And the new stories coming out of China seems to have taken this classic hollywood message to heart.
I'll use this opportunity to shoutout some stories by China to come out of this new era: The Legend of Hei, the White Snake, The Untamed, Black Myth: Wukong, Genshin Impact, etc.
In contrast, Blue Eyed Samurai has the same attention to detail when it comes to the artifacts of a jidaigeki story. But it falls short, because it lacks in as meaningful a message as Kung Fu Panda had, and somehow lacks in the tropes (or whatever it's called?) that you'd expect to see in a jidaigeki. Instead, it focuses on superficial badassery and western feminism, and it feels like it clearly caters to white people's ideas and desires.
But overall, great choreography and compositing, engaging story and characters ... Blue Eyed Samurai is good, but does veer into the uncanny valley for me, which I know was an issue Asians had with ATLA. Guess I felt it a little bit more with Blue Eyed Samurai due how much (unrealistic) violence and (meaningless) sex is glorified, and made me question what exactly the overall moral message of the story was supposed to be beyond simply "revenge plots are cool but also destructive." As somebody else said, it's giving "guts and tits for the people."
I was hoping for something like Azumi
I do not mean that I wanted Blue Eyed Samurai (BES) to romanticize bushido and samurai. However, I did want it to explore these concept, because they made such a big deal out of it. The closest comparison I can make and what I was actually hoping for when going into BES, was something more like the manga Azumi.
The main character of both series, Mizu and Azumi, are similar in several aspects. Both are orphaned women who grew up to become fearsome assassins, whose sworsmanship is so incredible that they're able to fight off hordes of men singlehandedly. Additionally, both are mixed race, though where Azumi only has blue-ish eyes, Mizu has actual blue eyes. Additionally, both work as assassins during the sakoku policy, though while Azumi lives around the time of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the 16th century, at the start of the policy, Mizu lives further along in the 17th century.
Azumi is a gritty look into (among other things) both shinobi and samurai that does not romanticize either, and has won an award for its exploration of these concepts in relation to buddhism. In fact, everyone in Azumi suffers. The only one who is perhaps glorified is Azumi, who many critics compare to a boddhisattva.
Throughout the story, Azumi has learnt to not be too attached to earthly comforts, but still suffers because of her attachment to her companions. As Azumi completes her pruning missions for her boss (the Buddhist monk Tenkai), she accumulates a lot of bad karma in the form of endless waves of people pursuing her for either revenge, the bounty on her head, the thrill of defeating a master swordswoman, etc. Because of it, 90% of her closest companions SPOILER die, and many of her friends are raped or permanently maimed, and has to deal with the trauma and practical inconveniences of it. Often because they are caught in the crossfire between Azumi's targets or those who pursue her.
By the end of the story, Azumi still ends up making new companions like usual and her boss continues wanting to send her on pruning missions. But she decides to leave them all behind, so that those she cares about will not be affected by her bad karma again. She knows she will have to stay on the road indefinitely and will never really be able to enjoy the comforts of settling down, because of her pursuers. The series makes the buddhist argument that earthly attachment in general causes suffering, and Azumi is enlightened by abandoning those attachments and by facing her karma, although that does not mean she will not end up with a violent death. The story ends openly with Azumi wandering off into obscurity.
Mizu is not a samurai
We could argue that she is a ronin, but then she'd technically must've been serving a lord as a samurai in the past. She should be at least be a tiny bit concerned with chivalry; At least enough to discuss or talk about it, which we know isn't the case. Mizu is closer to being a shinobi/ninja, since her goal is to assassinate her 4 maybe fathers. Another thing Mizu shares with shinobi is that both are often criticised by samurai because of their penchant for ambushes and lack of concern for bushido / warriors code. Yet she breaks the mold of being a shinobi, since she doesn't really sneak around in (civilian) disguise and will openly brawl her way through a dojo and into a fort. In this aspect, Azumi is much more like a shinobi.
While Mizu's motivation is simply revenge for the injustice she and her mother suffered at the hands of the gaijin faction, in Azumi the motivation is to prune the country like a bonsai tree off individuals which may threathen a new age of peace, and prevent the country from slipping back into the civil war that marked the Sengoku period.
But where characters in Blue Eyed Samurai is heavily protected by plot armor, allowing Mizu to be an almost invincible pin cushion, no one is safe in Azumi and injured characters requires months to recover and heal from cuts.
While writing this, I recalled that in episode 5, they interjected a story about a samurai marrying and fathering a child with a woman who descended from an enemy clan. He kills both her and their son, which turns her into a onryō. Mizu being an Onryō works, but I am left questioning how this fits into the story beyond its symbolism, as there's been no explicit supernatural elements in the story. Mizu is bullied for being the (devil) spawn of a quote "white devil" in childhood, I think it would be more interesting if they called her a "white ghost," since onryos (which could represent Mizu) are a type of vengeful female ghost. Furthermore, Taigen often compares Mizu to a dog, esp. when she does not live up to the samurai standards he holds her to. Not sure where that fits in either..
Orientalism
So the statement about samurai criticising shinobi was called out as orientalist. This was my reply:
As for orientalism, I guess Blue Eye Samurai is being orientalist then, which I was kinda feeling while watching but didn't really put into words. It's pretty stereotypical to connect Japanese with honor and samurai after all, contributing to why I felt the show was very American.
In the sense of samurai simply meaning warrior, then we can consider Mizu a samurai. But Taigen (and Akemi) connects being a samurai with honor and complains about fair play. By making this connection, he invokes bushido/chivalry and excludes people who ambush others like assassins from the definition of being a samurai, and by extension criticises assassins like ninjas for not shying away from "dishonorable" ambushes. To restore his honor, Taigen wants to arrange a formal duel and even writes up a challenge letter (hatashijou), which makes sense in terms of the dojo trope. But well, the series does contradict itself a lot in favor of cool one liners, and what it means to be a samurai or knight has changed throughout history.
Time period
Some people began nitpicking the historical accuracy of my commentary, which wasn't really what I was concerned about. I am open to artistic liberty. However, with BES it was a little bit harder, since they made so many historical references and leaned into the jidaigeki genre, but then broke it in ways that came off as uncanny to me. Looking back, I guess this uncanny feeling was the orientalism letting itself be known, though I couldn't put it into words back then.
As jidaigeki is a subgenre of historical stories, certain cues does make me expect certain things. Like when I see an English-speaking gaijin with such a vile attitude as this as the antagonist, I would make the connection that this story is probably set sometime after the Americans forced Japan to open up for trade in the 1800s. Yet this expectation is then contradicted when I learn that no foreigners are allowed in Japan yet due to the Sakoku policy, which makes me wonder what this Irishman is doing here all alone centuries too early and how he even managed to climb to such a powerful position while being so isolated.
Gaijins as antagonists
Why an Irishman as the gaijin antagonist? It'd make more sense if it was a portuguese or dutch. If Blue Eyed Samurai is set in 17th century Edo Japan, it's a long time off when the Americans forced Japan to put down the sakoku policy, and even then, why Britain/London? If anything, Japan and Britain liked each other enough later on to form an alliance for their shared fear of Russia.
Why not other colonial powers who were actually active in Japan and Asia overall at the time (the Dutch) or the ones who caused Christianity to be banned during the sakoku (the Portuguese).
My first thought of a precedent goes to Konishi Shizune, the Christian revolutionary leader in Azumi who's also mixed race like Azumi, which is based on the historical Amakusa Shiro.
(Depictions of Gaijins: Americans during postwar Japan in Hajime no Ippo. Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Solid)
Japanese in Europe
With Mizu heading to Europe, I came across people discussing the plot armor and how Mizu wouldn't stand a chance against the guns nor London police. It came off as kind of white supremacist, and the entire thread was locked because of unsolicited opinions from outsiders.
To be fair, Japan had guns too at the time. According to Netflix themselves, Blue Eye Samurai takes place in the 1600s. If that's the case, it means that the guns were mostly muskets, rifles and pistols which took time to load, so people did still use swords even in Europe. And only a century earlier in the 1500s, when Dreamwork's El Dorado is set, people would still use firearms and crossbows side by side. Oda Nobunaga also used firearms in his own warfare during the sengoku period.
Also, the police didn't exist yet, since the UK police were created in the late 1700s. As for the London battalion or royal guards storming her, it'd either amount to when she was stormed by the hand claw guys. The plot armor in the first season was a lot imo even then though. But sneaking up on them depends on the terrain and context, so I can see it happening.
Furthermore, it's not unrealistic for Japanese people to travel to Europe, because there's historical precedence for this. In 1613, Hasekura Tsunenaga was sent on a diplomatic mission to negotiate with the pope and the king of Spain, and some of his men even stayed behind to form the Japon clan in Spain. The expedition took 7 years, and ironically enough, once he returned, christianity had already been banned in Japan. The people who still kept the Christian faith in spite of this came to be known as kakure kirishitan.
Debauchery means it's for adults ..
The way characters (esp. Mizu) will throw out badass oneliners as if on a treadmill, only to contradict exactly what she said as short as 5 seconds later does mess with my suspension of disbelief.
The story also goes into prostitution and patriarchy, though it also felt superficial to me. If anything it feels like an excuse for fan service, similar to Game of Thrones in a sense. Like they know that sex sells, and that's what "the audience really wants." That said, again I enjoyed both GOT and Blue Eye Samurai, even though some may laconically break the former down to "dragons and tits" and the latter to "guts and tits".
Token representation
Mizu's apprentice was born without hands, which could have brought about an interesting exploration of disability. But instead, he's relegated to being a quirky sidekick and comedic relief.. Even though he's disabled, he is shown to act like other people who are not, except when it's in the favor of a joke. Ringo comes off as somebody who does not need help and is able to manage without anybody. To me, this comes off as dismissing the struggles that disabled people go through to remain high-functioning in a society that is not designed for them, which I again struggle to suspend my disbelief for.
I had hoped that BES would feature disabled characters as well as Arcane did: Viktor, Sevika, and Isha are all great characters, who are shown to fully work with their disability throughout the story. For example, Sevika loses her arm in Powder's explosion, and replaces it with a powerful mechanical arm fueled by shimmer (drugs). However, when her arm is put out of action, she will retreat as she knows she's at a disadvantage. And Isha is seemingly deaf and mute, though it does not stop her from bonding with other characters and rushing into action. And yet, she is still a child that needs protection, and somebody who struggles to communicate at the same level as a fully able-bodied character. These characters are badass and amazing, even if they're very clearly not invincible and clearly show that they need accommodations.
BES is an American story
Blue Eyed Samurai has all the visual motifs of a Japanese samurai story (jidaigeki), but the tropes and logic is extremely American. It does get the artifacts and set dressing of a jidaigeki story right (surprisingly accurate at some points), which is why it triggered the uncanny valley for me sometimes. When certain artifacts and set ups appeared, I expected it to follow certain tropes I'm used to from jidaigeki, but it didn't really do that.
Patriarchy and gender roles
While I understand and appreciate your critique, I don't think the narrative is grounded in realism. It's more like expressing the need that women do have to see themselves in the shoes of a physically invincible protagonist. Also the motivation isn't simply revenge - what has happened to Mizu has convinced that her very existence is suffering. She's internalized the hate to an extent that it no longer matters whether she lives or dies. She will slowly change as a person and her motivations will also change, which I hope we get to see . All the characters are somewhere trying to rebel against their gender roles, and that I feel is the 'message'. Also as far as the right antagonist to show goes, Fowler seems an indictment of British colonialism a few centuries too soon, but his attitudes aren't unfamiliar. At all.
Blue Eyed Samurai doesn't explore the concepts it references or markets itself with, but seems to throw them around because samurai and honor sounds cool and is a stereotypically Japanese/Sinosphere thing. Instead it'd rather explore gender roles and patriarchy. And the character Blue Eyed Samurai primarily uses to explore these themes with isn't the titular protagonist, but rather Princess Akemi.
But Akemi's struggles with patriarchy, also comes off as more a Western suffragette story than a Sinosphere one.
The Princess as a Caged Bird
Other stories about gender roles and patriarchy in ancient Japan to which we can compare this to is probably Isao Takahata's Princess Kaguya, though this one is probably set long before BES in the Heian period.
Like in Kaguya, the ohaguro set is presented as a symbol of oppression for Akemi. However, instead of being explicitly oppressed by outside forces like Akemi, Kaguya is instead pressured by her father's idea of happiness, as he internalizes society's idea of happiness as being the perfect princess. Throughout the film, Kaguya questions what it is all for and even counters against her governess that "a princess is not a human then!"
Princess Kaguya as a roadside flower. To be plucked in a moment of fancy, and neglected once savored and bored. Merely a trophy to be won and stowed away in a display cabinet.
The film explores what makes life worth living, by exploring the difference between humanity and moon people.
Filial piety. Fulfilling your own dreams through your offspring. Showing off achievements to relatives. accumulating merit.
Geisha and maiko in contrast to the Oiran of the red light district. Streetwalkers. Prostitution - the world's oldest profession.
Oda Nobunaga's younger sister in Nobunaga Concerto and Azumi.
Hypergamy. Tradition of men being adopted into the wife's household. The Fujiwara clan of the Heian period, who continuously married their women into the imperial family for generations. Attitudes around cheating and monogamy (Genji Monogatari).
The Fallacy of the Stereotypical Asian woman
Oshin - Resilience and endurance.
Asian women as firecrackers. There's a reason why the stereotype of Tiger Mom even came to be, because Asian women and people in general are not weak and strictly submissive, although they are often mistaken as doormats.
Honne and tatemae
Yamato Nadeshiko
While writing about this, I ended up going on a tangent about Asian women, which you can read here: The Fallacy of the Stereotypical Asian Woman.
Gender roles in Genderbender
Kaze Hikaru
Ryou
Torikaebaya Monogatari, where a brother and sister in the Heian period is gender mixed at birth, to fulfil gender roles they're more "suited" for according to societal expectations. Another Heian period text about a guy who crossdresses as a woman to get close to a woman he has a crush on.
Gender fluidity has been the norm throughout most of history.
A wolf in sheep's clothing
I guess the show is more concerned about gender roles and patriarchy. I'm actually not all that concerned with historical accuracy, but I couldn't help but be thrown off by how it felt like vastly different time periods (and thus different expectations in terms of jidaigeki tropes) were meshed together. I still stand by that the show is a very (overseas Asian/) (Asian) American narrative, which made it uncanny how accurate it still was in terms of getting the artefacts etc. of a jidaigeki right. Sort of like a "wolf in sheeps clothing," though that doesn't make it a bad thing. For example, Akemi feels more like a Western suffragette, rather than an Asian feminist. Yet the ohaguro set etc. may be a reference to Isao Takahata's Princess Kaguya, which is about feminism.
The story came off as stereotypical to me. Yet it does get the artifacts and set dressing of a jidaigeki story right (surprisingly accurate at some points). I did cringe at some points or feel the uncanny valley, but again overall the show was engaging and enjoyable.
I've enjoyed other orientalist stories before, such as Kung Fu Panda and Avatar the Last Airbender. I've also enjoyed occidentalist stories like mohuan and isekai. Yet something with Blue Eye Samurai made me cringe sometimes. Comparing it to the others I've mentioned, perhaps it's because it's set in a more non-fantastical setting as opposed to a jianghu of sorts idk. Blue Eye Samurai is still entertaining though, and may be the start of a new genre.
It's hard to explain what it feels like for people who don't have the same cultural references, so here's an example of occidentalism. I noticed that when Genshin Impact (a Chinese game) released the new Fontaine region where they decided to mix Britain, Italy, France etc., which people claimed is just plain weird haha. But Fontaine has still been well received regardless it seems. On the other hand, I still cringe every time I see Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Solid.
Historical references
Random, but here's a list of different artifacts and set dressings that appeared in the show. The little theatre play about the ronin and his wife uses kurogo (black clad actors) to manipulate the dolls, which was novel to see. Previously I've mostly watched kurogo being used to manipulate perspective such as in this Matrix Ping Pong skit and the Tokyo 2020 pictogram opening ceremony. Traditionally, Kurogo is used in Kabuki to create special effects and are supposed to be invisible to the audience.
Mizu's husband uses a naginata, which is basically a spear. Although also used by warriors in general, it was often used by women.
But that would be a poor counterpoint to the internet essays and YouTube videos that accused Cyberpunk 20777 being orientalist.
I obviously love Cyberpunk 2077 a lot. I enjoyed "cyberpunk as a genre" mostly through anime and manga than Hollywood or western literature.
But I also spent a significant amount of my life studying the history of the British Imperialism of Southeast Asia in the 19th century and the Japanese Occupation of Asia Pacific in the 20th century because like most of the people within Asia Pacific, we all struggle with intergenerational family trauma. I wanted to understand why.
Therefore, I felt compelled to address a couple of troublesome shallow criticism specifically against this game and I want to call out a particular dangerous subtext within some of the articles that I've read.
This post is very lengthy.
What is Orientalism?
Orientalism was a body of fact, opinion and prejudice accumulated by western academia. It argued that colonialism was a system of political rule and an all-round worldview that believed the west was superior to the east. It involved the power to disseminate knowledge to collaborate with the western power to justify their domination of the east.
This term was coined by Edward Said who was a Palestinian-American professor of literature and the founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. His criticism was against the norms of the western academia and against corroborating with systems of power and giving the justification for centuries of colonization and subjugation particularly against the people in the Near East particularly the Islamic world.
What is Japanese Imperialism?
During the Sengoku period when Japan was just an island with a lot of warring Samurai clans. Through political and military might, Toyotomi Hideyoshi united Japan in 1590. In 1592, he launched invasions against the Joseon dynasty and it's proxy, the Ming dynasty. They failed spectacularly but this left an indelible mark against the collective psyche of Japanese people for several centuries.
Japanese imperial ambitions resurged around the end of Tokugawa Shogunate and the start of Meiji Restoration. Factored in by the span of the relatively peaceful Edo period under various shoguns, the push to end Japan's isolationist policies (Sakoku) from within and outside (European powers and mostly, USA), the start of Bakumatsu and the dreams of constitutional absolute monarchy. All of contributed to the complete disintegration of Japanese feudal caste-based society fueled by the discontent of peasant class wanting social mobility, the disaffected samurai class and the prosperity of the merchant class during the industrialization period which lead to Zaibatsu emergence; conglomerates of families controlling certain aspects of Japanese economy.
With the desire for international prestige, pressured to sustain their newly oiled capitalistic machine with the expansion to overseas foreign markets while maintaining dominance within domestic politics; Japan realized that they lack the necessarily resources within it's own borders. It began to look toward it's neighbour again; Joseon (Korea).
Thus, the start of Sino-Japanese War (1894) which lead to Russo-Japanese War (1904), then the invasion of Manchuria (1931-1932), the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937) and the expansion throughout the Asia Pacific during World War II (1941-1945).
What is Self-Orientalism?
This was a willful conscious and/or unconscious attempt of using stereotypical portrayals by accepting and performing them to suppress own authentic representations. This also happened to regions on the outset of Eurocentricsm, (cultures and people who have been colonised, subordinated or simply influenced), becoming more globalized and becoming available to western projections about what is or should be other. Thus many learned to accept and appropriate orientalism as a strategic method to gain benefits, recognition and position themselves especially within the Western-dominated global economy, system and order. (i.e: entertainment industry, tourism industry, etc)
What is Occidentalism?
Occidentalism was an inversion of Orientalism. Defined as the distorted and stereotypical views against the West by the East. But even with the current political climate, the true use and influence of Occidentalism have limited applications.
The more robust Orientalism operated within global asymmetrical power relations resulting in the hierarchic othering process by the western hegemony. We don’t live in a world where the complete opposite happened to have the true form of Occidentalism.
Currently, the term was mainly used to describe the anti-European or anti-American ideology by Islamist fundamentalists or Chinese and Japanese nationalists (including North Korean nationalists and Russian Imperialists).
What is Japanese Occidentalism?
As a former-imperialist and current-capitalist power, Japan occupied a unique position where it was currently seen almost as an equal to the modern western world. Occidentalism manifested through their WW2 war propaganda against the western allied forces.
But Japan was briefly occupied by the United States of America from 1945 to 1952. That forced the Japanese people and the nation to reconstruct itself around it's own national tragedies (the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and to reestablish itself as a formidable nation that was desperate to salvage whatever remained of it's own pride and identity.
Sometimes distorted portrayals of the west manifested itself in popular culture or criticism against the west’s intervention into current Japanese politics but never quite carry the same impact especially to the modern Japanese people.
Or except for a few.
What is Japanese Historical Revisionism?
Much like Holocaust deniers in the US, there was an ongoing revival of ultranationalism project to revise and sanitize the history of Imperial Japan in the 20th century. It was done under the impression that these factual atrocities that happened not so long ago to our grandparents’ generations was just a product of historical distortion and anti-Japanese sentiments by the West. Under this line of thoughts; any negative historical portrayals about the Japanese people was simply assumed as Japanophobia.
Not surprisingly. This is still an active and thorny political issue between many nations subjugated by Imperial Japan particularly between South Korea and China. From the enshrinement of war criminals and honoring the dead soldiers in the Yasukuni Shrine to the lack of reparations and official apology to the survivors of wartime sexual slavery to the attempts at rewriting history books that minimize the scale and significance of Japanese war crimes and the complicity of United States' government and it's muddled foreign policies in this region.
***
Emperor Akihito of Japan; during the National Memorial Service for War Dead in 2015 :
“Reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse over the last war, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated. Together with all of our people, I now pay my heartfelt tribute to all those who lost their lives in the war, both on the battlefields and elsewhere, and pray for world peace and for the continuing development of our country.”
Former Crown Prince and the current Emperor Naruhito of Japan in 2015 :
“[I] did not experience the war … it is important today, when memories of the war are fading, to look back humbly on the past and correctly pass on the tragic experiences and history Japan pursued from the generation which experienced the war to those without direct knowledge.”
***
Why does all of these matter when discussing or criticizing portrayal of Japanese people and culture within Cyberpunk 2077?
Because having the larger picture mattered when discussing real world history and politics into Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk.
Orientalism placed the particular importance of imbalance of power dynamics between the East and the West. Particularly, how the distorted representation and process of dehumanization of people and their culture would justify the Western hegemonic superiority against its lesser Eastern counterpart.
Pondsmith's Cyberpunk is an alternate timeline where technological advances diverged into a dystopian dark future where megacorporations ruled humanity. This is also a world where the collapse of superpowers of all major nations on the planet.
Unlike the story of our world where Japanese Zaibatsu were mostly dissolved during Allied Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan (1942-1952), Arasaka Zaibatsu survived through the modern era and into the 21st century; mostly led by a former Japanese Imperial soldier and heir to Arasaka family; Saburo Arasaka.
They were Imperial Japanese relics from 20th century that could only survive through fictional portrayal. They were not meant to be the representative of Japanese people or culture or society. In fact, the larger part of the nefarious elements within the storytelling was the purposeful appropriation of Japan and it's people by the villain himself.
This felt very purposeful and added a lot of depth into the character because this was what I imagined when I read and listened and empathized with the survivors' account of having to work for the Japanese Imperialists during the occupation. How they need to survive. It was all meant to inspire this feeling of inward hatred for working with the enemy who have very little respect or empathy for you as a human being.
Arasaka used self-orientalism to rebrand themselves with the Japanese identity, values and mythology to further it's own corporate ambitions. It have it's own self-styled royal family, appropriated the legends of Izanami and Izanagi, created their own digital underworld and used Japanese ultranationalist elements to justify it's rule against the world but primarily the subjugation of Night City and it’s people.
Personally, I became very impressed with the way Cyberpunk 2077 immediately present all of these elements within the introduction of Corpo V storyline. From the talk with Jackie, the way V's colleagues reacted to them with either disgust or suspicion. I immediately felt sickened when I watched the elevator's wall documentary glorifying this imperial Japanese soldier who happened to be the chairman of the company itself.
And then I began to recognize a lot of elements that I associated with 20th century Japan. Karayuki-san. Comfort Women. Comfort Stations. The treatment of women within Arasaka's society. The weaponism of Bushido. There was also this hint of Japanese occidentalism against the West. Then everything made sense for me. All of this was the world created by Saburo Arasaka. A world where his Japan never lose the war against the US. A world where he was the emperor and have the power to set the destiny of his own people and his enemies.
Saburo reimagined his own Japanese identity, his national history that placed his ideals of Japan being more superior in a screwed up selfish way and everyone suffered for it.
It felt like a living nightmare because it was intended to be.
The exploration of an alternate world where Japan seemingly won WWII was nothing new. I read Phillip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle as a teenager and followed the 2015′s Amazon television adaptation. Back then I realized not everyone was exposed to this aspect of Imperial Japanese history either through history classes or fictional portrayals. There was also a tendency to magnify American involvement and the push for sympathetic portrayals of Imperial Japanese Army and it’s government while giving little attention given to the lived realities of people brutally victimized by them (which included prisoners of wars from UK, Australia and other countries). Compounded by the need to be kinder to this region of history meant there was less interest in media unlike the constant popularity of the WW2′s Axis counterparts.
But Cyberpunk TTRPG and Cyberpunk 2077 did more than just reimagining an alternate history. By using cyberpunk's convention, you're forced to be within the perspective of the oppressed rather than the oppressor. This act of humanizing the narrative of the little people struggling against an oppressive system was important because it was easier to desensitized against them. To pretend ignorance about the unrepresented because there was enough suffering in the world already.
For this alone, Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most important post-colonial work that examined WW2 Imperial Japan as a cautionary tale.
TL;DR : But really, is Cyberpunk 2077 orientalist?
No.
I don't think CD Projekt RED and R. Talsorian Games willfully does that...? I haven't yet read the official statements, but I felt CDPR are all well-aware of the content of their game and familiar with the concepts of Orientalism, Self-Orientalism and Occidentalism. Which was then applied to their works; visual narrative, story and characters etc.
It can be debatable whether each of those post-colonial academical concepts were clarified enough within the Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk but these terms by themselves are subjective. Whether they would attract more academic interest into this game, be my guest.
Was it cultural appropriation...? Yes. Because that was the whole point of the settings, the story and the fictionalization process.
The term Orientalism itself was tied to the western power dynamics and perpetuating and disseminating a false but dominant worldview. In Cyberpunk, the west have been decimated and most nations have all collectively been disempowered including USA. But taking offense about negative portrayals of people with the context of historical elements or a setting portraying an aesthetic based on certain culture; that was never what criticism of Orientalism being about.
For internet essayists, be aware that these academic terms weren't meant to be derogatory either to the creator or against the the consumer. When criticizing what you felt as “negative portrayals/Japanophobia”; understand that not even Japanese people are incapable of orientalist cyberpunk works; Psycho-Pass: The Movie was horrible at portraying Southeast Asians and it won Best Picture and Screenplay in 2015. Also, keep in mind about historical revisionism that seek to minimize anything about Imperial Japan in the 20th century.
Also, CDPR did the localization in South Korea and Mainland China.
More references :
While I can only speak for myself as a Malaysian with close families who survived the Japanese Occupation but shouldn't something like this blew up even worst? Like in the scale of international incident? Wouldn’t there be more articles especially by born and bred Asians like me who would readily speak out especially with all the sensitive nature and topics?
Or maybe, Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk have done something right after all?
1. Edward S Said’s Orientalism
2. Edward S. Said’s Culture and Imperialism
3. Occidentalism in Japan
4. Towards Critical Occidentalism Studies: Re-inventing the 'West' and 'Japan' in Mangaesque Popular Cultures
5. Forgiving The Culprits: Japanese Historical Revisionism in a Post-Cold War Context
6. The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War
7. The Rise and Fall of the Zaibatsu: Japan's Industrial and Economic Modernization
8. The Meiji Secret: The Emergence of Zaibatsu Dominance in Japan
I didn’t really know why I didn’t like Vivi from this season, but now I think I know a little more. Which is, that I dislike what Vivi represents. As one of the characters for this reality tv show, it’s natural that she’s in the center of attention. But I’m just so tired of seeing white girls take on a show as a heroine. I’m so tired of white girls who are placed on pedestals for being that girl who’s chasing her dream, innocent, strong-willed and some may even say, independent. When she talks her opinion, she’s applauded, sugoi might be the word Japanese may use, as if she did something heroic. When she does get emotional, it’s cute and precious and, kawaiso. I’m tired of seeing white girls be placed as the heroine of any tv show, but especially on an asian tv show. Sure it is a depiction of Tokyo life, but where are all the other minorities. Where are the non-minories with different views? This got me to thinking, is Terrace House racist? My impression of what the characters in Terrace House represent is romanticised internationalism and chasing the celebrity dream. Where are the Chinese, Korean and Phillipinos that have the largest ethnic groups in Tokyo? I don’t personally dislike Vivi, but I dislike what she represents. She gets on my nerves, which is not to say she isn’t a “good” person. Sure, she’s not mean or inhumane, she’s a “good” person, but she gets on my nerve. And, it gets on my nerves for Japanese people to obviously ignore what she represents because of the color of her skin. So, is Terrace House really the “savior” of this genre, or is it literally just a racist Japanese version made un-racist from a person who only knows Japanese culture on a basic level?
The tome of hegemony lives on, circulates
in our libraries and our memories. One day,
a girl like me may come across it on a shelf,
pick it up, read about all the ways her body
is a thing. And I won’t be there to protect
her, to cross the text out and say: go ahead—
rewrite this.
I think one common brainrot among liberals (and progressives!) everywhere in the world really is that western societies' relative progressivism somehow indicates some kind of superiority over the "less progressive societies". This is not true. Microwave that in your head until it makes sense.
we need someone to play every reed instrument that isnt saxophone on cheesy pop cover albums, then we need to get those album to play at braums n see who notices
