abroadinjapan

How to Completely Trash Your Reputation in Japan: A Kim Kardashian Masterclass

Added 2019-07-05 08:09:23 +0000 UTC

Until last week, when it came to the phrase “cultural appropriation”, I could confidently explain everything cultural appropriation is not, yet paradoxically struggle to explain what it is.

The phrase “cultural appropriation” gets thrown around so much these days, that I often find most people upon hearing it, tend to shake their heads in disagreement and express frustration upon its overuse, to the point it’s become an empty expression.

I recall a few years back Avril Lavigne drew criticism for the music video for “Hello Kitty”, in which she triumphantly parades through Harajuku shopping district in Tokyo, with a team of Japanese female fans dancing awkwardly like lobotomised robots to her aural atrocity of a soundtrack.

As songs go it’s the textbook definition of utter shit. So shit that upon playing the video to Natsuki for the entirety of its 3 minutes and 20 seconds, he threw me out of his beauty salon in a fit of rage and disgust.

Yet honestly, the only thing I hated more than the song was the backlash it received from certain critics who claimed the song was a great example of cultural appropriation, as it allegedly reduced Japan down to a checklist of stereotypes. It felt like a situation for lots of bored journalists for online websites to write about something and take the moral high ground on an issue that didn’t particularly exist.

If you watch the video for “Hello Kitty” (and I strongly advise you not to unless you plan to switch the sound off), Lavigne spends the full 3 minutes jumping around in colourful boutiques in Harajuku, chuckles with a chef in a sushi restaurant and waves to a handful of adoring fans.

All in all, while it’s a fantastically wasted opportunity to showcase Japan - given it’s a country Avril Lavigne regularly feigns to adore - there’s ultimately not a great deal of cultural appropriation going on. In fact, the song was a hit in Japan, with most Japanese people confused by the overseas backlash it received, given the video felt more like a homage to J-pop music videos as opposed to a calculated cultural attack.

The video did such wonders for her reputation in Japan, that today whenever I’m standing in misery on a cramped crowded subway train in Tokyo, I find myself gazing up in disdain as her smiling face pops on the video screens, as she promotes reasonably priced Japanese fabric softener for trillions of dollars.

In stark contrast to Avril Lavigne’s warm reception in Japan, this week I watched in surprise and adoration as hundreds of Japanese woman across the country participated in a highly rare protest in unified disappointment, upon hearing that a woman who’d risen to fame through a sex tape, was attempting to trademark an iconic piece of Japanese cultural heritage to profit from a new line of tacky underwear.

When people bombarded me on Twitter to hear my opinion on Kim Kardashian’s “Kimono” trademarked underwear, my initial reaction was one of mild anger. Most days of the week I believe in capitalism, but every time I see Kim Kardashian attempt to profit from a new scandal - usually with frightening success - I sigh once more and wonder if it’s time for us to throw in the towel and go back to moping in a dimly lit cave.

Last year, in a video discussing yet another of my desperate weight loss plans (“What Have I Secretly Been Planning”), I joked about using Kardashian’s appetite suppressing lollipops along the way, after yet another scandal in which she marketed the sweets as an alternative to eating to her millions of teenage fans.

After all, who needs ethics and morals when you can buy another sack of diamonds to flaunt across social media.

But then I saw something I rarely see in Japan; an online protest. Women across the country were proudly posting photos of themselves wearing their beautiful Kimonos and expressing the symbolic importance of the traditional clothing, educating the internet on the role of the Kimono in the lives of Japanese people. Worn for special coming of age events, meticulously crafted and passed down as heirlooms from generation to generation.

At one point even the Mayor of Kyoto got involved and sent a carefully worded letter, asking her to reconsider her decision and offering a free tour of the city.

Japan prides itself on retaining its traditions in a world where culture is all too easily steamrolled over in search of ever greater profits, and this episode finally made me realize the essence of the phrase cultural appropriation.

Just think, in the (admittedly rare) event that her trademark had succeeded, millions around the world would grow up having to sit being bombarded daily commercials on Facebookand Instagram news feeds for Kardashian’s Kimono range.

In time, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to envisage having a conversation with a teenager who’s definition of a “Kimono” is simply a tacky underwear brand sold by a multimillionaire instagrammer, with no association with its original meaning.

Seeing Japanese women rise up in protest online, was a genuinely distressing experience; to see something which has meant a great deal to millions of people for hundreds of years, suddenly face a threat of being intertwined with a woman who fucked her way to stardom in a conveniently leaked sex tape enabled me to finally grasp why the phrase cultural appropriation was created.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kim Kardashian ended up dropping the brand name, ultimately settling for the inspiring title of “Solution wear”. The internet already knew it was coming - and in fact I found myself being confronted by people lambasting me for bringing attention to Kardashian at all, as it was “all part of her great PR strategy”. And upon looking back at how the spectacle unfolded in the run up to the retraction, it’s hard to deny that’s probably likely (again, see above reference to conveniently leaked sex tape).

But I still felt it was an important thing to call her out on, as a Japan based filmmaker and someone who feels Kardashian represents the worst excesses of materialism. Whilst her fans and followers heralded Queen Kardashian as a hero of the people, showing cultural mercy to the people of Japan, for the rest of us the whole episode hopefully eroded another slither of her credibility.

Year after year, the scandals will inevitably follow and each one will boost her bank balance and infamy, but her legacy will be to stand as beacon to the worst excesses of capitalism and how low the bar can truly go when the only pursuit that matters is money.

For Kim Kardashian is a boss battle that’ll take many years to defeat.

But for every time one of her followers finally realises the horrifying reality of their idol, the world gets just that little bit better for us all.

That’s my two cents on it folks, but how did it make you feel? What are your thoughts on it all? I’m keen to hear your opinions in the comments below (even if you disagree - it’s always good to hear two sides to an argument).