17 ms·

Why do the Japanese draw themselves as white?

186 points by soyelmango 16y ago

Arun2009 16y ago
What is striking about this entire affair is just how politically incorrect it is to suggest that East Asians want to look White, whereas, say, to suggest that East Asians want to look African would sound merely quaint. Substitute East Asians with any other 'race', and it's the same story. Man, have we some issues to work through!
KoZeN 16y ago
Just out f curiosity, what kind of people are asking this question? I've been an anime fan for years and this question has legitimately never crossed my mind despite being cynical and critical of almost every single factual inaccuracy I come across. Interesting article all the same!
- hasenj 16y ago
  Exactly. I was baffled by the title. Anime characters never ever looked like "white" (Caucasian) people to me.
- edanm 16y ago
  I had the same question. I didn't think it was a big deal, since I figured that other people ask the question and it just never occurred to me. Then I came across the last sentence of the article: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." After that kind of sentence, I really expect some evidence that someone, somewhere has this view.
  - senki 16y ago
    Look at this: http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:answers.yahoo.com+Japanese+worship+white+people http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:answers.yahoo.com+J...
    - shaunfs 16y ago
      Look at this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site%3Aanswers.yahoo.com+why+cant+white+dance&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=site%3Aanswers.yahoo.com+why+cant+white+dance&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=6052204b889acdd8 http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&... What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area. Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AAtrZSE http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AA...
      - senki 16y ago
        You are right. edanm asked for some evidence that there are idiots who think Japanese worship white people. It seems there are many, so the article really targets an existing problem. That's the point.
        edanm 16y ago
        I was specifically looking for evidence that scholars believe this. I don't doubt there are idiots who believe all kinds of things! And by the way, what's up with the people posting that Yahoo! question? If it's not a joke, I'm seriously worried about the state of humanity.
        senki 16y ago
        Voila: "The ultimate reason for the lower Japanese body esteem may perhaps concern broader cultural and historical perspectives. Being part of the West, but non-Caucasians, Japanese people seem collectively to experience high incongruence between their Western-oriented bodily ideals and the perceptions of their own body. " Japanese body image: Structure and esteem scores in a cross-cultural perspective by Rotem Kowner, University of Haifa, Israel, in: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2002, 37 (3), 149–159 http://www.sjsu.edu/people/jennifer.anderson/courses/c5/s1/Kowner_Japanese_Body_Image.pdf http://www.sjsu.edu/people/jennifer.anderson/courses/c5/s1/K...
- stonemetal 16y ago
  Putting "why are anime characters white" turns up a large number of hits so evidently it is an actual question out there. When the show has giant robots and aliens it never occurred to me to wonder what race the humans were.
- stuaxo 16y ago
  Me too... as he says in the article, the white people are obvious because of their exagerated features... I've never thought the rest of the characters were (well... never found myself wondering about race as I watch them at all really).
- brazzy 16y ago
  Wehn I was into anime (about 5-15 years ago), it was a very, very common question from any "outsiders" who came into contact with the (then much less mainstream) medium.
- ugh 16y ago
  The funny thing is that Scott Pilgrim [+] looks Japanese to me even though he is a very Canadian hero. [+] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim
  - bitwize 16y ago
    Scott's eyes in that image resemble those of Link from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In most drawings of him they are rounder. Oddly enough -- in 2001 some test footage from Wind Waker was released, showing a Link with some very almond-shaped eyes. The appearance of Link was retooled so they look less almond-shaped and more mukokuseki.
    - ugh 16y ago
      The cover of the first volume isn’t really all that representative, that’s right. Here is a page from the fourth volume: http://www.scottpilgrim.com/images/previews/v4pre/v4pre__027.jpg http://www.scottpilgrim.com/images/previews/v4pre/v4pre__027...
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Me. Yesterday. Never thought of it this way, either, and I'm not white.
dawgr 16y ago
I think I read once that Asian people pay more attention to the eyes than other facial features when they are reading emotions. The hypothesis was somehow based on the fact that the emoticons Asians use tend to mostly show the eyes. Since it's difficult to show emotions on a cartoon, perhaps drawing big eyes started as a way to make it easier for the artist to express anger, happiness,... on what they drew. They might look whiter than Asian, but it probably has nothing to do with Asians wanting to be white. You can probably test what the OP said by asking a villager in Africa which race those cartoons belong to assuming he's seen an equal share of whites and Asians.
- araneae 16y ago
  Everyone pays attention to the eyes when they are reading emotions. That's why eyes are called "the window to the soul."
  - jcl 16y ago
    No, he's right. There is at least one eye-tracking study that shows that people from Asian cultures pay greater attention to the eyes when reading expressions. Relative to the Asians in the study, the Caucasians relied more on other parts of the face. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-expressions-arent-universal.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-exp... It's not clear whether it might be influencing different art styles, though.
BobbyH 16y ago
The post makes a good point, but it does overlook the fact that the "Godfather of Anime", Osamu Tezuka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka) was heavily influenced by Walt Disney and American animation. For instance, the Wikipedia article notes: "The distinctive "large eyes" style of Japanese animation was invented by Tezuka, drawing inspirations on cartoons of the time such as Betty Boop and Walt Disney's Bambi and Mickey Mouse." You can see how Bambi was drawn with large eyes here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bambi http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bambi You can see Betty Boop here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=betty+boop http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=betty+boop You can see Mickey Mouse here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=mickey+mouse+classic http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=mickey+mouse+classi... You can compare the style of those eyes to Tezuka's Astro Boy, first published in 1952: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AstroBoyVolume1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AstroBoyVolume1.jpg
- Sukotto 16y ago
  Those characters have big eyes and foreheads for two reasons. Firstly, to make them cuter... like babies. All baby humans have proportionally big heads/eyes to the rest of their bodies and we're hardwired to think of those characteristics as simpler, cuter, and deserving of our attention. Secondly, to give the animator a face that is both simpler and larger which makes it much easier to draw expressions These two things make it much easier for the audience to relate to the animated character and for the artist to draw it
  - edanm 16y ago
    I once took a Psychology course which had another explanation for the large eyes. Apparently, when humans are sexually aroused, their pupils get larger. This makes people with larger pupils more sexually appealing, leading to all kinds of tricks to making your pupils larger (for example, candlelit dinners; also, in some older civilizations, women used to use eyedrops to make their pupils larger). All of this leads to people thinking larger pupils look better, and in the case of small cartoon characters, look cuter.
c00ki3s 16y ago
This "article" seems to be very light on basically anything. Especially facts. How much karma does it take on HN to vote things down?
- stonemetal 16y ago
  You can't vote articles down you can just flag them as not belonging on the site.
- powrtoch 16y ago
  I was okay with it until here: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." It's a red flag when you preemptively declare all of your opponents racists before they've even had a chance to respond. Maybe someone will disagree for a non-racist reason? Just maybe?
  - dgabriel 16y ago
    It's not racist as in kkk-style, overt hatred of another race, it's more like culture-blindness, or ignorance, or a misplaced belief that one's culture is dominant in an area where it is not.
    - powrtoch 16y ago
      I'm not complaining about the type of racism, but the general trend of presupposing that all arguments against you will be of a certain misguided type and therefore illegitimate. Like if I said "Mac is better than PC, and if anyone disagrees with me, it can only because that person is a pedophile". Obviously that example is unrealistic, but you see the issue.
      - dgabriel 16y ago
        That's a non-sequitur. In the context of racial appearance of drawn characters, and the incorrect attribution of race based on the viewers biases, it's an appropriate, if somewhat incendiary, term. If someone counters that Japanese definitely draw white people because Japanese people think Americans are awesome (and there are some arguments of this type floating around out there), then it's a culturally myopic, borderline racist stance.
Keyframe 16y ago
What struck me as odd in Asia were all the skin whitening products. Even regular cosmetics had "Whitening" plastered over it.
- byoung2 16y ago
  You see a lot of that in the Philippines especially. Everyone wants to be as white as possible, so they carry umbrellas to block the sun, and use whitening lotions and soaps. Contrast that with the US, where people want to be tan, to the point of using tanning salons and spray-on tans.
  - christonog 16y ago
    Yes, I'm Filipino and light skinned, and the first thing people notice about me when I'm there is how light skinned I look. They associate this with beauty. People over there have this obsession with being white, with all the heart throb celebrities looking light skinned and "mestizo," and all the comedians and funny characters looking dark and more malay.
    - byoung2 16y ago
      How's this for irony...My fiancee is Filipina, and she has become more tan since living in the US (we go to the Caribbean about once every two months). When we went to the Philippines this past May, she got lots of compliments on her tan from Filipinos. It turns out that her tan skin and the fact that she's with me (a light-skinned Black American) made her look more American, so being tan was more desirable in their eyes.
      - christonog 16y ago
        That is indeed ironic. I've never heard of Filipinos complementing on how tan someone is, though there is a certain shade of tan called "kayumangi" that sort of exemplifies "Filipino Beauty." Filipino views on the various shades of skin color can get kind of confusing.
  - 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
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nightlifelover 16y ago
Simple because paper is white?
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  LOL. Japanese paper is white too ...
- soyelmango 16y ago
  Your common sense reply shows how easy it is for us to get distracted by issues of race, culture, westernization.
- protomyth 16y ago
  I'm with you. I always thought it was a cost issue and saved you time since you didn't have to fill in the skin tone with ink.
bitwize 16y ago
This phenomenon is acknowledged enough by the Japanese to where it has a name: it's called "mukokuseki" which is Japanese for "no nationality". Basically it amounts to this: characters are drawn in an ethnically neutral way so that they have universal appeal, and it makes it easier to export these media works into foreign markets. Maybe the foreign markets thing was not a concern in Tezuka's early days, but it certainly is now.
- lotusleaf1987 16y ago
  Just a thought, but how is drawing them white ethnically neutral? It seems like something more beige/brown would be, seeing as how most of the world as tan-skinned.
  - Qu4Z 16y ago
    I think it's largely because the page is white. How do you color someone beige/brown in a black-and-white medium? Specifically black and white, not grayscale. A question to you: What is it that makes them drawn specifically white, other than eyes? Is it only the fact that they're on a white background, or is there more there that I am missing.
    - lotusleaf1987 16y ago
      No that explains it. I guess I was assuming they were drawing them in color to begin with and that they were scanned into b&w.
kingkawn 16y ago
cmon, its a little off that when Goku goes super saiyen he turns blond and blue/green eyed, no?
coliveira 16y ago
I think it depends on what you consider white. If you are just talking about the color of skin, Japanese are as white as Europeans. In fact, my personal view is that they are closer to white, European's skin color has a pink tone that you can't see on Japanese people.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Europeans have more pheomelanin than Japanese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheomelanin#Pheomelanin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheomelanin#Pheomelanin). A clear indicator of this is to check the softer skin tissues, like the lips and nipples. Europeans tend to be pinker in these places, not browner like most humans.
- slantyyz 16y ago
  Reminds me of a funny story a professor told me. Back in the days of apartheid, someone told a Japanese friend of his that in South Africa, that he'd have the same status as a "white", to which he retorted "Why would I want to be white?"
  - patio11 16y ago
    Relatedly, "Asian" is a category which exists in America a heck of a lot more than it exists in Asia. (I was helping one of my friends with a grad school application. He got to race, asked me why a school would need to know this -- silly Japanese person, how would we run our racial discrimination departments without sorting you first -- and couldn't find Japanese on the menu so he picked Other. Quote, "The closest I saw was Asian American, but I think that's for Chinese people, right? Whatever, I'm certainly not American.")
    - slantyyz 16y ago
      I never considered Oriental a pejorative (heck, I called myself Oriental back then) until I was corrected by my American cousin who was taking Asian Studies in uni in the late 80s: "We're called Asians. Oriental is considered offensive." In the 90s, I was totally baffled by the popularity of the 'Azn' movement.
GBond 16y ago
I hope part 2 explains why anime villains are almost always drawn to look like girls and assumed male.
shaunfs 16y ago
I have to admit, I always wondered why Naruto was a blue-eyed blonde white kid. This article helped me consider some of my own reasoning. I had just assumed Naruto had characters that reflected a mix of races instead of one race. The last sentence of this article is offensive though. It's a derogatory generalization. Personally it doesn't matter to me what the characters look like and I don't see why someone relating to a character is a negative.
- derefr 16y ago
  Actually, he's blonde for the same reason that a lot of male ankle protagonists are: because, as an asian teenager, dying one's hair blonde and showing up starkly against a sea of black hair marks you as rebellious--and thus, in Japan especially where "the nail that stands up gets hammered down", gets you treated with a bit more disdain by both peers and elders. For younger kids who feel out of place for all the regular reasons of childhood and pubescence, a naturally blonde-haired character feels like someone they could identify with.
  - derefr 16y ago
    (And, in case anyone is confused: iPhones don't know the word anime.)
pradocchia 16y ago
I recommend the author's blog, http://abagond.wordpress.com/ http://abagond.wordpress.com/ Programmer, West Indian, NYC area, writes 500 words a day on whatever he likes. Also a father. Studied Classical Greek and Comp Sci in college: People told me studying ancient Greek was a waste of time, but I learned far more about life and the world from the Greeks than from anything in computers. I read a few posts and enjoyed them all.
Jun8 16y ago
I have always pondered this question so I quickly went to the link and was confronted with a really weak and half-baked argument. First, this is not a question of American audiences; I'm not American and love anime but they don't look Japanese to me either. "The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed." This may be true but it has very little to do with anime. As others have pointed out (i) anime artists have been influenced by their Western counterparts (anime is not a traditional Japanese art form, you know) and (ii) commercial considerations play a role, i.e. very Japanese looking characters would have less appeal to a large audience. But forget about that and just think about the argument to see how faulty it is: In its essence it is trying to show how lop-sided white Westerners see the world but it itself is also very prejudiced. Do you think when a Chinese person looks at an anime character they think it's Chinese (because "otherness" isn't marked)? This sort of thinking is typical of a lot of mumbo-jumbo that comes out of English departments under literary criticism. If Japanese didn't have to mark "otherness", why are the characters in traditional Japanese paintings look very Japanese (slanted eyes, hairdo, etc.). In the end the article states: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." This is another common tactic: when someone raises a problematic viewpoint, label them as racist, misogynistic, or worse (e.g. see the Summers episode). How can you explain that a lot of Japanese women go through cosmetic surgery to get rid of the slant in their eyes to make them look more Western? Why is baseball so popular in Japan? Japan has had a long love/hate relationship with the US (and Westerners in general). I'm not saying some form of American idealization is at the heart of anime styles but I think it has definitely influenced it. EDIT: For similar over the top ideas about race and culture and to see how politicized the debate can be, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controver...
- edanm 16y ago
  Honestly, Japanese anime characters do not look western to me. They look Japanese, but that's probably because I'm used to seeing them in anime! I don't see how classic Japanese drawings have anything to do with it; different styles of drawing grew up in different cultures, I expect, and not just because of the different look of people from those culture. As for the baseball question, I don't think it makes much sense. Soccer is popular almost everywhere in the world except in the United States, so it's obviously not a Western thing, and there are other sports highly popular in some countries and not in others. It has more to do with history than with any fascination. For example, cricket and snooker are extremely popular in countries that used to be parts of Great Britain, but that's just history, not any "worship" of England.
js2 16y ago
Originally posted as http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/ http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese-...
mwerty 16y ago
isn't it less work?
derefr 16y ago
I'm going to give what is probably a very contrarian view here: scientific studies show that Caucasian features allow for a higher standard deviation than Asian features. (That is to say, both Asian and Caucasian test groups think two randomly-sampled Asians look more similar than two randomly-sampled Caucasians.) When you have 10 or 20 characters, and want them to be recognizable at a glance (for brand ownership), even when appearing completely out-of-context alongside characters of similar ages and styles from other series, and even when drawn minimally and potentially badly by a subcontracted art studio--it's logical to make them whatever race has the widest "visual range." It's also logical, for the same reasons, to give them technicolor hair.
- jseliger 16y ago
  Something I learned in a journalism class relates to this: "I'm going to give what is probably a very contrarian view here: scientific studies show that Caucasian features allow for a higher standard deviation than Asian features." Don't just claim "scientific studies say X;" cite studies Y, Z, and A. I'm not saying that your claim is wrong, but it sounds implausible to me, and I suspect that, if such studies exist, they probably indicate that whites find it easier to differentiate other whites and Asians find it easier to differentiate other Asians (I'd be curious: are such studies done solely in the United States? If so, they'd be worthless).
  - derefr 16y ago
    You're quite right, of course--but I think that, in any case where the person actually has access to a study they mention (and isn't, say, typing this reply on a phone while in gridlock on public transit), they would simply cite it, as it would strengthen their argument at no cost. Thus, you can take any assertion, including mine, that mentions that "studies say", as simply positing that there could be studies of such a type, and exploring the any implications made possible by that assumption. In this particular case, I believe the best I can give you is that I heard it from a science podcast of some sort.
- klipt 16y ago
  If you want greater variance, why stick to a single subgroup when humanity as a whole will always be more variable?
olavk 16y ago
The more a stylized a cartoon character is, thee more it look like you. E.g what ethnicity does this character have: ☺ ? I bet it has the same ethnicity as you!
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >what ethnicity does this character have: ☺ ? I bet it has the same ethnicity as you! It has no ethnic origin beyond unicode. Just like it has no eye colour, no skin colour (no skin), etc.. Am I weird about this? I really can't say I've ever thought of a stick figure as coming from a particular place or having a particular identity. But then I don't really identify with a particular location, I'm just happy to be in it in preference to other places.
rubashov 16y ago
I find it more interesting that the female models you see on billboards and such in Japan are distinctly more caucasian looking than the population: rounder eyes, narrower face. The popularity of actual caucasian models in advertisements is also interesting.
najirama 16y ago
This whole thread reeks of nonsensical, "things-we-cannot-say", Politically Correct, bullshit. Let us call a spade a spade shall we? Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics. http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.whitening/ http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.wh... http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26 Couple the skin-whitening phenomenon with the double-eyelid surgery explosion with the open-air admission of the Asians' who elect to do these procedures that the so-called "Hellenic" features are more desirable than their own - and you have more than circumstantial evidence for the proposition "The Japanese draw themselves as white." ...And that isn't even mentioning the fact that the characters they draw, by any reasonable appraisal look about as white as Christmas in Nebraska. If the truth offends your sensibilities, then it is your sensibilities that need adjusting.
- lhorie 16y ago
  >> Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics. I'd be inclined to think you're painting targets around bullet holes there. There are procedures/products that are designed to make people look more caucasian, but you can't just ignore everything else and call it a bias. To give an example, the practice of wearing yukatas to matsuris is distinctly non-caucasian and far more common than, say, eyelid surgery.
ianb 16y ago
The post features four anime characters. Two of the characters are clearly blonde... and I'm pretty sure this isn't my whiteness just projecting blondeness. Very few Japanese people are blonde. Is it racist for me to notice this?
po 16y ago
This is a nice thought-provoking article. Pale white skin has a history here in Japan much longer than anime. Look at geisha for example. On the other end of the spectrum, there were Gangaru walking all around tokyo at one point too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro Japanese women especially are well aware of their skin's natural ability to change color and often treat it as a fashion decision. A heavily tanned caucasian can be much darker than an asian, latino, african american, etc... I think many westerners would be surprised that caucasians don't always have "white" skin if they actually looked around the world with a critical eye.
adlep 16y ago
I know for sure that all of the Manga style drawings DO NOT look asian, so there was a marketing element to it. Seems like Japanese creators wanted to make Manga universal and appealing to everybody - and of course they were successful at it. So, rather than drawing asian looking characters, they have created a "universally appealing" characters. This is equal to "bigger audience".
DannoHung 16y ago
I am seriously disappointed with how the skin tone issue was blown off in about half a sentence. I understand that there is great variability in Japanese ethnic skin tone, but it seems like the majority of Japanese have a dusky skin tone while the majority of anime characters have a very pale skin tone.
c00p3r 16y ago
Cat-like faces or baby-style faces - big eyes, small nose, triangle-shaped with small chin. Everywhere in the world children love kittens. There is no deep psychological, let alone political influences.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
bluedanieru 16y ago
Counterpoint: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/11/07/2003999607.jpg http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/11/07/2003999607...
inboulder 16y ago
This doesn't explain or even address why the Japanese favor 'large round eyed' actors in ads for beauty products, why darker skinned Japanese women are not featured on TV, and why the current depictions of beauty in Japan eschew many traits common to classical Japanese portrayals of beauty. It is glaringly obvious that European ideals of beauty have enormously affected the Japanese aesthetic, especially including anime; almost any Japanese person you meet will readily admit to this, to claim otherwise takes willful ignorance.

186 points by soyelmango 16y ago

Arun2009 16y ago

What is striking about this entire affair is just how politically incorrect it is to suggest that East Asians want to look White, whereas, say, to suggest that East Asians want to look African would sound merely quaint. Substitute East Asians with any other 'race', and it's the same story. Man, have we some issues to work through!

KoZeN 16y ago

Just out f curiosity, what kind of people are asking this question? I've been an anime fan for years and this question has legitimately never crossed my mind despite being cynical and critical of almost every single factual inaccuracy I come across. Interesting article all the same!

hasenj 16y ago
Exactly. I was baffled by the title. Anime characters never ever looked like "white" (Caucasian) people to me.
edanm 16y ago
I had the same question. I didn't think it was a big deal, since I figured that other people ask the question and it just never occurred to me. Then I came across the last sentence of the article: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." After that kind of sentence, I really expect some evidence that someone, somewhere has this view.
- senki 16y ago
  Look at this: http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:answers.yahoo.com+Japanese+worship+white+people http://www.google.com/search?&q=site:answers.yahoo.com+J...
  - shaunfs 16y ago
    Look at this: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&site=webhp&source=hp&q=site%3Aanswers.yahoo.com+why+cant+white+dance&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=site%3Aanswers.yahoo.com+why+cant+white+dance&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=6052204b889acdd8 http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&... What's the point. I bet there are a million bigots, immature kids, and ignorant people asking questions on Yahoo Answers. Unfortunately every country has people like this, it's not exclusive to one area. Let's just all read this and decide collectively that Yahoo Answers should never again be used as debate source material: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AAtrZSE http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100317231952AA...
    - senki 16y ago
      You are right. edanm asked for some evidence that there are idiots who think Japanese worship white people. It seems there are many, so the article really targets an existing problem. That's the point.
      - edanm 16y ago
        I was specifically looking for evidence that scholars believe this. I don't doubt there are idiots who believe all kinds of things! And by the way, what's up with the people posting that Yahoo! question? If it's not a joke, I'm seriously worried about the state of humanity.
        senki 16y ago
        Voila: "The ultimate reason for the lower Japanese body esteem may perhaps concern broader cultural and historical perspectives. Being part of the West, but non-Caucasians, Japanese people seem collectively to experience high incongruence between their Western-oriented bodily ideals and the perceptions of their own body. " Japanese body image: Structure and esteem scores in a cross-cultural perspective by Rotem Kowner, University of Haifa, Israel, in: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 2002, 37 (3), 149–159 http://www.sjsu.edu/people/jennifer.anderson/courses/c5/s1/Kowner_Japanese_Body_Image.pdf http://www.sjsu.edu/people/jennifer.anderson/courses/c5/s1/K...
stonemetal 16y ago
Putting "why are anime characters white" turns up a large number of hits so evidently it is an actual question out there. When the show has giant robots and aliens it never occurred to me to wonder what race the humans were.
stuaxo 16y ago
Me too... as he says in the article, the white people are obvious because of their exagerated features... I've never thought the rest of the characters were (well... never found myself wondering about race as I watch them at all really).
brazzy 16y ago
Wehn I was into anime (about 5-15 years ago), it was a very, very common question from any "outsiders" who came into contact with the (then much less mainstream) medium.
ugh 16y ago
The funny thing is that Scott Pilgrim [+] looks Japanese to me even though he is a very Canadian hero. [+] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Pilgrim
- bitwize 16y ago
  Scott's eyes in that image resemble those of Link from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In most drawings of him they are rounder. Oddly enough -- in 2001 some test footage from Wind Waker was released, showing a Link with some very almond-shaped eyes. The appearance of Link was retooled so they look less almond-shaped and more mukokuseki.
  - ugh 16y ago
    The cover of the first volume isn’t really all that representative, that’s right. Here is a page from the fourth volume: http://www.scottpilgrim.com/images/previews/v4pre/v4pre__027.jpg http://www.scottpilgrim.com/images/previews/v4pre/v4pre__027...
JabavuAdams 16y ago
Me. Yesterday. Never thought of it this way, either, and I'm not white.

dawgr 16y ago

I think I read once that Asian people pay more attention to the eyes than other facial features when they are reading emotions. The hypothesis was somehow based on the fact that the emoticons Asians use tend to mostly show the eyes. Since it's difficult to show emotions on a cartoon, perhaps drawing big eyes started as a way to make it easier for the artist to express anger, happiness,... on what they drew. They might look whiter than Asian, but it probably has nothing to do with Asians wanting to be white. You can probably test what the OP said by asking a villager in Africa which race those cartoons belong to assuming he's seen an equal share of whites and Asians.

araneae 16y ago
Everyone pays attention to the eyes when they are reading emotions. That's why eyes are called "the window to the soul."
- jcl 16y ago
  No, he's right. There is at least one eye-tracking study that shows that people from Asian cultures pay greater attention to the eyes when reading expressions. Relative to the Asians in the study, the Caucasians relied more on other parts of the face. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-expressions-arent-universal.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17605-human-facial-exp... It's not clear whether it might be influencing different art styles, though.

BobbyH 16y ago

The post makes a good point, but it does overlook the fact that the "Godfather of Anime", Osamu Tezuka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osamu_Tezuka) was heavily influenced by Walt Disney and American animation. For instance, the Wikipedia article notes: "The distinctive "large eyes" style of Japanese animation was invented by Tezuka, drawing inspirations on cartoons of the time such as Betty Boop and Walt Disney's Bambi and Mickey Mouse." You can see how Bambi was drawn with large eyes here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bambi http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=bambi You can see Betty Boop here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=betty+boop http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=betty+boop You can see Mickey Mouse here: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=mickey+mouse+classic http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=mickey+mouse+classi... You can compare the style of those eyes to Tezuka's Astro Boy, first published in 1952: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AstroBoyVolume1.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AstroBoyVolume1.jpg

Sukotto 16y ago
Those characters have big eyes and foreheads for two reasons. Firstly, to make them cuter... like babies. All baby humans have proportionally big heads/eyes to the rest of their bodies and we're hardwired to think of those characteristics as simpler, cuter, and deserving of our attention. Secondly, to give the animator a face that is both simpler and larger which makes it much easier to draw expressions These two things make it much easier for the audience to relate to the animated character and for the artist to draw it
- edanm 16y ago
  I once took a Psychology course which had another explanation for the large eyes. Apparently, when humans are sexually aroused, their pupils get larger. This makes people with larger pupils more sexually appealing, leading to all kinds of tricks to making your pupils larger (for example, candlelit dinners; also, in some older civilizations, women used to use eyedrops to make their pupils larger). All of this leads to people thinking larger pupils look better, and in the case of small cartoon characters, look cuter.

c00ki3s 16y ago

This "article" seems to be very light on basically anything. Especially facts. How much karma does it take on HN to vote things down?

stonemetal 16y ago
You can't vote articles down you can just flag them as not belonging on the site.
powrtoch 16y ago
I was okay with it until here: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." It's a red flag when you preemptively declare all of your opponents racists before they've even had a chance to respond. Maybe someone will disagree for a non-racist reason? Just maybe?
- dgabriel 16y ago
  It's not racist as in kkk-style, overt hatred of another race, it's more like culture-blindness, or ignorance, or a misplaced belief that one's culture is dominant in an area where it is not.
  - powrtoch 16y ago
    I'm not complaining about the type of racism, but the general trend of presupposing that all arguments against you will be of a certain misguided type and therefore illegitimate. Like if I said "Mac is better than PC, and if anyone disagrees with me, it can only because that person is a pedophile". Obviously that example is unrealistic, but you see the issue.
    - dgabriel 16y ago
      That's a non-sequitur. In the context of racial appearance of drawn characters, and the incorrect attribution of race based on the viewers biases, it's an appropriate, if somewhat incendiary, term. If someone counters that Japanese definitely draw white people because Japanese people think Americans are awesome (and there are some arguments of this type floating around out there), then it's a culturally myopic, borderline racist stance.

Keyframe 16y ago

What struck me as odd in Asia were all the skin whitening products. Even regular cosmetics had "Whitening" plastered over it.

byoung2 16y ago
You see a lot of that in the Philippines especially. Everyone wants to be as white as possible, so they carry umbrellas to block the sun, and use whitening lotions and soaps. Contrast that with the US, where people want to be tan, to the point of using tanning salons and spray-on tans.
- christonog 16y ago
  Yes, I'm Filipino and light skinned, and the first thing people notice about me when I'm there is how light skinned I look. They associate this with beauty. People over there have this obsession with being white, with all the heart throb celebrities looking light skinned and "mestizo," and all the comedians and funny characters looking dark and more malay.
  - byoung2 16y ago
    How's this for irony...My fiancee is Filipina, and she has become more tan since living in the US (we go to the Caribbean about once every two months). When we went to the Philippines this past May, she got lots of compliments on her tan from Filipinos. It turns out that her tan skin and the fact that she's with me (a light-skinned Black American) made her look more American, so being tan was more desirable in their eyes.
    - christonog 16y ago
      That is indeed ironic. I've never heard of Filipinos complementing on how tan someone is, though there is a certain shade of tan called "kayumangi" that sort of exemplifies "Filipino Beauty." Filipino views on the various shades of skin color can get kind of confusing.
- 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

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nightlifelover 16y ago

Simple because paper is white?

JabavuAdams 16y ago
LOL. Japanese paper is white too ...
soyelmango 16y ago
Your common sense reply shows how easy it is for us to get distracted by issues of race, culture, westernization.
protomyth 16y ago
I'm with you. I always thought it was a cost issue and saved you time since you didn't have to fill in the skin tone with ink.

bitwize 16y ago

This phenomenon is acknowledged enough by the Japanese to where it has a name: it's called "mukokuseki" which is Japanese for "no nationality". Basically it amounts to this: characters are drawn in an ethnically neutral way so that they have universal appeal, and it makes it easier to export these media works into foreign markets. Maybe the foreign markets thing was not a concern in Tezuka's early days, but it certainly is now.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago
Just a thought, but how is drawing them white ethnically neutral? It seems like something more beige/brown would be, seeing as how most of the world as tan-skinned.
- Qu4Z 16y ago
  I think it's largely because the page is white. How do you color someone beige/brown in a black-and-white medium? Specifically black and white, not grayscale. A question to you: What is it that makes them drawn specifically white, other than eyes? Is it only the fact that they're on a white background, or is there more there that I am missing.
  - lotusleaf1987 16y ago
    No that explains it. I guess I was assuming they were drawing them in color to begin with and that they were scanned into b&w.

kingkawn 16y ago

cmon, its a little off that when Goku goes super saiyen he turns blond and blue/green eyed, no?

coliveira 16y ago

I think it depends on what you consider white. If you are just talking about the color of skin, Japanese are as white as Europeans. In fact, my personal view is that they are closer to white, European's skin color has a pink tone that you can't see on Japanese people.

philwelch 16y ago
Europeans have more pheomelanin than Japanese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheomelanin#Pheomelanin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheomelanin#Pheomelanin). A clear indicator of this is to check the softer skin tissues, like the lips and nipples. Europeans tend to be pinker in these places, not browner like most humans.
slantyyz 16y ago
Reminds me of a funny story a professor told me. Back in the days of apartheid, someone told a Japanese friend of his that in South Africa, that he'd have the same status as a "white", to which he retorted "Why would I want to be white?"
- patio11 16y ago
  Relatedly, "Asian" is a category which exists in America a heck of a lot more than it exists in Asia. (I was helping one of my friends with a grad school application. He got to race, asked me why a school would need to know this -- silly Japanese person, how would we run our racial discrimination departments without sorting you first -- and couldn't find Japanese on the menu so he picked Other. Quote, "The closest I saw was Asian American, but I think that's for Chinese people, right? Whatever, I'm certainly not American.")
  - slantyyz 16y ago
    I never considered Oriental a pejorative (heck, I called myself Oriental back then) until I was corrected by my American cousin who was taking Asian Studies in uni in the late 80s: "We're called Asians. Oriental is considered offensive." In the 90s, I was totally baffled by the popularity of the 'Azn' movement.

GBond 16y ago

I hope part 2 explains why anime villains are almost always drawn to look like girls and assumed male.

shaunfs 16y ago

I have to admit, I always wondered why Naruto was a blue-eyed blonde white kid. This article helped me consider some of my own reasoning. I had just assumed Naruto had characters that reflected a mix of races instead of one race. The last sentence of this article is offensive though. It's a derogatory generalization. Personally it doesn't matter to me what the characters look like and I don't see why someone relating to a character is a negative.

derefr 16y ago
Actually, he's blonde for the same reason that a lot of male ankle protagonists are: because, as an asian teenager, dying one's hair blonde and showing up starkly against a sea of black hair marks you as rebellious--and thus, in Japan especially where "the nail that stands up gets hammered down", gets you treated with a bit more disdain by both peers and elders. For younger kids who feel out of place for all the regular reasons of childhood and pubescence, a naturally blonde-haired character feels like someone they could identify with.
- derefr 16y ago
  (And, in case anyone is confused: iPhones don't know the word anime.)

pradocchia 16y ago

I recommend the author's blog, http://abagond.wordpress.com/ http://abagond.wordpress.com/ Programmer, West Indian, NYC area, writes 500 words a day on whatever he likes. Also a father. Studied Classical Greek and Comp Sci in college: People told me studying ancient Greek was a waste of time, but I learned far more about life and the world from the Greeks than from anything in computers. I read a few posts and enjoyed them all.

Jun8 16y ago

I have always pondered this question so I quickly went to the link and was confronted with a really weak and half-baked argument. First, this is not a question of American audiences; I'm not American and love anime but they don't look Japanese to me either. "The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed." This may be true but it has very little to do with anime. As others have pointed out (i) anime artists have been influenced by their Western counterparts (anime is not a traditional Japanese art form, you know) and (ii) commercial considerations play a role, i.e. very Japanese looking characters would have less appeal to a large audience. But forget about that and just think about the argument to see how faulty it is: In its essence it is trying to show how lop-sided white Westerners see the world but it itself is also very prejudiced. Do you think when a Chinese person looks at an anime character they think it's Chinese (because "otherness" isn't marked)? This sort of thinking is typical of a lot of mumbo-jumbo that comes out of English departments under literary criticism. If Japanese didn't have to mark "otherness", why are the characters in traditional Japanese paintings look very Japanese (slanted eyes, hairdo, etc.). In the end the article states: "Some Americans, even some scholars, will argue against this view of anime. They want to think the Japanese worship America or worship whiteness and use anime to prove it. But they seem to be driven more by their own racism and nationalism than anything else." This is another common tactic: when someone raises a problematic viewpoint, label them as racist, misogynistic, or worse (e.g. see the Summers episode). How can you explain that a lot of Japanese women go through cosmetic surgery to get rid of the slant in their eyes to make them look more Western? Why is baseball so popular in Japan? Japan has had a long love/hate relationship with the US (and Westerners in general). I'm not saying some form of American idealization is at the heart of anime styles but I think it has definitely influenced it. EDIT: For similar over the top ideas about race and culture and to see how politicized the debate can be, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controver...

edanm 16y ago
Honestly, Japanese anime characters do not look western to me. They look Japanese, but that's probably because I'm used to seeing them in anime! I don't see how classic Japanese drawings have anything to do with it; different styles of drawing grew up in different cultures, I expect, and not just because of the different look of people from those culture. As for the baseball question, I don't think it makes much sense. Soccer is popular almost everywhere in the world except in the United States, so it's obviously not a Western thing, and there are other sports highly popular in some countries and not in others. It has more to do with history than with any fascination. For example, cricket and snooker are extremely popular in countries that used to be parts of Great Britain, but that's just history, not any "worship" of England.

js2 16y ago

Originally posted as http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese-draw-themselves-as-white/ http://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-do-the-japanese-...

mwerty 16y ago

isn't it less work?

derefr 16y ago

I'm going to give what is probably a very contrarian view here: scientific studies show that Caucasian features allow for a higher standard deviation than Asian features. (That is to say, both Asian and Caucasian test groups think two randomly-sampled Asians look more similar than two randomly-sampled Caucasians.) When you have 10 or 20 characters, and want them to be recognizable at a glance (for brand ownership), even when appearing completely out-of-context alongside characters of similar ages and styles from other series, and even when drawn minimally and potentially badly by a subcontracted art studio--it's logical to make them whatever race has the widest "visual range." It's also logical, for the same reasons, to give them technicolor hair.

jseliger 16y ago
Something I learned in a journalism class relates to this: "I'm going to give what is probably a very contrarian view here: scientific studies show that Caucasian features allow for a higher standard deviation than Asian features." Don't just claim "scientific studies say X;" cite studies Y, Z, and A. I'm not saying that your claim is wrong, but it sounds implausible to me, and I suspect that, if such studies exist, they probably indicate that whites find it easier to differentiate other whites and Asians find it easier to differentiate other Asians (I'd be curious: are such studies done solely in the United States? If so, they'd be worthless).
- derefr 16y ago
  You're quite right, of course--but I think that, in any case where the person actually has access to a study they mention (and isn't, say, typing this reply on a phone while in gridlock on public transit), they would simply cite it, as it would strengthen their argument at no cost. Thus, you can take any assertion, including mine, that mentions that "studies say", as simply positing that there could be studies of such a type, and exploring the any implications made possible by that assumption. In this particular case, I believe the best I can give you is that I heard it from a science podcast of some sort.
klipt 16y ago
If you want greater variance, why stick to a single subgroup when humanity as a whole will always be more variable?

olavk 16y ago

The more a stylized a cartoon character is, thee more it look like you. E.g what ethnicity does this character have: ☺ ? I bet it has the same ethnicity as you!

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>what ethnicity does this character have: ☺ ? I bet it has the same ethnicity as you! It has no ethnic origin beyond unicode. Just like it has no eye colour, no skin colour (no skin), etc.. Am I weird about this? I really can't say I've ever thought of a stick figure as coming from a particular place or having a particular identity. But then I don't really identify with a particular location, I'm just happy to be in it in preference to other places.

rubashov 16y ago

I find it more interesting that the female models you see on billboards and such in Japan are distinctly more caucasian looking than the population: rounder eyes, narrower face. The popularity of actual caucasian models in advertisements is also interesting.

najirama 16y ago

This whole thread reeks of nonsensical, "things-we-cannot-say", Politically Correct, bullshit. Let us call a spade a spade shall we? Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics. http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.whitening/ http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/05/13/asia.wh... http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26 http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/26/local/me-whitening26 Couple the skin-whitening phenomenon with the double-eyelid surgery explosion with the open-air admission of the Asians' who elect to do these procedures that the so-called "Hellenic" features are more desirable than their own - and you have more than circumstantial evidence for the proposition "The Japanese draw themselves as white." ...And that isn't even mentioning the fact that the characters they draw, by any reasonable appraisal look about as white as Christmas in Nebraska. If the truth offends your sensibilities, then it is your sensibilities that need adjusting.

lhorie 16y ago
>> Asians have a considerable and measurable white bias when it comes to aesthetics. I'd be inclined to think you're painting targets around bullet holes there. There are procedures/products that are designed to make people look more caucasian, but you can't just ignore everything else and call it a bias. To give an example, the practice of wearing yukatas to matsuris is distinctly non-caucasian and far more common than, say, eyelid surgery.

ianb 16y ago

The post features four anime characters. Two of the characters are clearly blonde... and I'm pretty sure this isn't my whiteness just projecting blondeness. Very few Japanese people are blonde. Is it racist for me to notice this?

po 16y ago

This is a nice thought-provoking article. Pale white skin has a history here in Japan much longer than anime. Look at geisha for example. On the other end of the spectrum, there were Gangaru walking all around tokyo at one point too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganguro Japanese women especially are well aware of their skin's natural ability to change color and often treat it as a fashion decision. A heavily tanned caucasian can be much darker than an asian, latino, african american, etc... I think many westerners would be surprised that caucasians don't always have "white" skin if they actually looked around the world with a critical eye.

adlep 16y ago

I know for sure that all of the Manga style drawings DO NOT look asian, so there was a marketing element to it. Seems like Japanese creators wanted to make Manga universal and appealing to everybody - and of course they were successful at it. So, rather than drawing asian looking characters, they have created a "universally appealing" characters. This is equal to "bigger audience".

DannoHung 16y ago

I am seriously disappointed with how the skin tone issue was blown off in about half a sentence. I understand that there is great variability in Japanese ethnic skin tone, but it seems like the majority of Japanese have a dusky skin tone while the majority of anime characters have a very pale skin tone.

c00p3r 16y ago

Cat-like faces or baby-style faces - big eyes, small nose, triangle-shaped with small chin. Everywhere in the world children love kittens. There is no deep psychological, let alone political influences.

deleted 16y ago

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bluedanieru 16y ago

Counterpoint: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/11/07/2003999607.jpg http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2007/11/07/2003999607...

inboulder 16y ago

This doesn't explain or even address why the Japanese favor 'large round eyed' actors in ads for beauty products, why darker skinned Japanese women are not featured on TV, and why the current depictions of beauty in Japan eschew many traits common to classical Japanese portrayals of beauty. It is glaringly obvious that European ideals of beauty have enormously affected the Japanese aesthetic, especially including anime; almost any Japanese person you meet will readily admit to this, to claim otherwise takes willful ignorance.