The City Imp & the Country Imp

So I came across some whitewashed art of Reon and Yamagata and I'm kinda appalled.... *MUMBLES* Actually a lot of appalled..

Sen: I would like to clarify that as a light skinned Asian, I am not in a position to give any sort of commands or the like, but I can simply give my opinion. With this answer, I intend to outline the view of black people in Japan and anime as well as a very short defense as to why this whitewashing may not be intentional.Japan is very Japanese. While here in the UK and over in the USA, people tend to pride themselves on their cultural diversity. To quote a previous post here:

“Japan was one of the last countries to open up to the West and this meant that Japanese culture developed independently of other countries in the East. The wider world started to have more influence during the Meiji Restoration and this brought quite a lot in such a short amount of time that Japan developed differently to the rest of the world.” 

As a result, the number of anime that involve black characters is very small; the number of black characters within anime that are protagonists are even smaller. This is simply due to the fact that Japan is full of Japanese people so they haven’t been fully exposed to the diversity that the West has due to colonisation. 

So then, we look to this image. Reon and Yamagata have light skin, much like many characters in Haikyuu. Published in October of 2015, this cover presents the Shiratorizawa boys with skin almost exactly the same to one another. There is a chance that the art you saw was created before August of 2016, where the designs for the anime made official and we had some big contrasts as to what we previously saw.

Furudate’s original design changed. Even Kawanishi was affected in terms of his hair colour. People were pretty adamant on insisting that Kawanishi’s hair really should have be blonde but nobody would bat an eyelid over how Yamagata and Reon’s skin was darkened. 

A similar incident of “white washing” happened to artist ‘Gashi-Gashi’ who received backlash for drawing a ‘Steven Universe’s’ Garnet with lighter skin. This artist received mostly attacks from Western fans and never the Japanese fandom. His comments on this was:

“After I uploaded the image the response was huge. Mostly from the foreign country side (tumblr), but there was nothing special in response on pixiv,” said Gashi-Gashi on his personal Twitter, when describing the difference in impressions. “As a result, you can clearly see the difference in how people in Japan and those outside of it think about the drawing. I’m thankful that most of the people affirmed my response. I received an acrimonious and harsh repudiation message from one part of the group.”

Gashi-Gashi even went on to say “Because I’m Japanese, I never had that kind of conversation near me. That’s not the kind of excuse I want to make. But after making some fan art in my own style, I got this kind of response. This isn’t impossible. I know that now.” A lot of the time, stylistic choice is an important factor in debacles such as this. Though this can be seen as a stark contrast, I have to disagree because none of the characters that have been mentioned in this post are strictly of a different ethnicity (Garnet shouldn’t even have an ethnicity as a rock) so it shouldn’t be entirely demonised.In conclusion, I don’t think we should be attacking artists for the skin colours of Reon and Yamagata. In fairness, Furudate has drawn them with lighter skin as well as darker skin. Though, I would encourage that they were drawn with darker skin due to the fact that it’s more accurate to their official designs (within the anime), disregarding the thought of their ethnicity as potential hafus, since it hasn’t been really been confirmed or touched upon. As Western fans, we do not have a complete understanding of the way Japanese society works so we can’t force our ideals onto them. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether or not it’s right for characters to be drawn with a different skin colour but in my personal opinion, I would say no since minorities have their identities erased enough as it is.

This post does not mean you are allowed to attack people for ‘whitewashing.’ 

First of all, check! Was this art posted before the official colourisation or after? Are there any other factors that could have made it look this way such as lighting or stylistic choices? This is ultimately up to your own judgement as there is no one way of interpreting offence. I do suggest that we do our research before we are quick to judge what we first see.