What am I doing: Quirks of cosplaying in Japan (one of many)
The great thing about going to Japan is that there are some moments that are just like the clouds part and everything becomes clear. The first time was when I really understood the “I vs We” concept of Japanese society; another was when I was walking to school and it was just snowing sakura petals because they are EVERY WHERE and are so delicate just the barest wind sends them flying. When I went back this past time, I wasn’t planning on doing anything new, so I wasn’t expecting any great revelations. But boy did I get one and it changed the very basis of how I look at cosplay.
I think I mentioned before, but my friend who I went with, Lisa, speaks fluent Japanese and has quite a few Japanese friends who both draw doujinshi for or cosplay from Hetalia. Several of them were in town for Comiket, so we went out to an izakaya for dinner the night before we were going to the con.
The great thing about drinking is it really is a GREAT ice breaker. Your language skill vastly improves, their inhibitions about being polite vastly decreases, and things usually go swimmingly from there. In this instance, it only took about a drink before we were pulling out phones to show each other our cosplays. It took another before I finally asked a question that had been grinding on me for YEARS. Note: the following conversation is how I remember it going but it was a combination of English, Japanese & Lisa translating when I just didn’t have the vocab.
“Okay, please explain to me why Japanese cosplayers use velvet for the Revolutionary outfits!” I asked, gesticulating with my third screw driver. “It’s supposed to be wool! And the designs! They don’t even try to make them look historical!”
“Well of course they don’t,” Cotton-san said, looking at me as if I were asking why the sky was blue.
“… Wait what?”
“If they make them historically accurate that might offend someone,” she said, again, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
So here’s how it goes down, guys. When a manga/anime/whatever is based off of a historical person (or in Hetalia’s case, full armies), it is widely considered polite to make it obvious that this is an interpretation of the person by changing their appearance and dress from what it was so that no one mistakes it for being an actual historical representation. The cosplayers also don’t want to offend anyone by wearing actual uniforms from another country/time period, so they don’t even bother trying to make them historically accurate.
To say that my mind was blown was a complete understatement, but it was definitely one of those things where everything just kinda clicked. Why Rose of Versailles is hilariously inaccurate. Why Takarazuka doesn’t even really attempt to make their actors look like an individual if it’s a historically based play (I’ll have to show you there take on McArthur, LoL). Why there is lace on military uniforms where there should NEVER BE LACE.
So, just remember, when you’re looking at that reference and tearing your hair out and screaming, “What IS that?! Why is that there?! No one would ever wear that at this time!”, they know and it’s completely on purpose. Because they don’t want to offend you.
Oh. Damn.
whoa
Interesting!
HOLY. SHIT.
I will figure out how to properly tag this for this blog later, but a definite must-read for cosplayers. It provides a very interesting perspective.
proof that there are people who dont cosplay to offend people! The Japanese are simply geniuses.
