Blackfacers

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Blackface is originally "a style of theatrical makeup that originated in the United States, used to take on the appearance of an archetype of American racism." In Japan, the term takes a different connotation.

Japan is known for being very pride of its homogeneity in terms of ethnic groups and language. However, Japan has adopted many different African American musical genres such as jazz, funk, rock ‘n’ roll, and more recently, hip hop. In fact, the circulation of medias and the tendencies of listening to African American music have evolved into a phenomenon known as Blackfacing. Its purpose is to create a new identity that contradicts the well-established white image of Japanese people.^[1] Thus, in a highly conformist society, these youth (especially the females) promote and aim to adopt the African American "coolness" by darkening their skin as a form of rebellion. In one hand, this concept has attracted many artists and people because it allows the people to be different for once but on the other hand, it is very controversial because some Japanese hip-hop artists fear that Blackfacing will be tied to Japanese hip-hop in general and make it unauthentic. Those artists believe that Japanese hip-hop has its own style and is certainly not reproducing, nor imitating American Hip-hop and thus, they make fun of the "black wannabes."^[2] Some popular Japanese groups known for wearing blackface makeup are The Boot Camp Clik and The Gosperats.

Indeed, blackfacers in Japan lay claim to a very important and controversial social space. While it may seem that their sole motivation to dress and look the way they do is to identify themselves with African Americans, hoping to reflect the notion of African American "coolness," there are other, less obvious reasons at work. For one, when blackfacers tan themselves and dress in a stylistically hip hop fashion, they are able to partake in a mainstream hip hop culture, from the outside of which is seemingly exclusive and, thus, very appealing. At the same time though, their style can be seen as a form of political defiance and an affirmative embrace of black culture. For example, when asked during a post-performance interview by Patrick Macias how wearing blackface made him feel, a member of the blackface group Gosperats replied, "strong. Like a light that's been turned on." ^[3] And, according to Ian Condry, author of the book "HIP-HOP Japan," it was "when Japan began its march toward modernization, imbibing the ideologies of Western imperialists, [that] prejudices toward blacks were imported..." ^[4] Therefore, conservative Japanese people tend to view the blackfacers as very inauthentic and embarrassing. These traditionalists, because they sometimes view African Americans as inferior, associate blackfacers within the hip hop culture as an inauthentic embodiment of blackness, a blackness which, according to them, should not be embodied in the first place. These racist views are right on par with Japanese homogeneity, which just may be what blackfacers seek to target with their overt cultural politics. Joe Wood, author of an article entitled The Yellow Negro, corroborates this idea when he concludes that "the source of Mikako's sincerity, her belief in the mask of Japanese homogeneity, had to be the very thing blackfacers were poking fun at with their silly get ups."^[5] This presents a nearly unanswerable question within Japanese hip hop culture about what it means to be real. Just as there are blackfacers who embrace blackness and get derided for their inauthenticity, there are also artists who rap in Japanese and identify themselves as Samurai who are viewed as equally inauthentic with respect to an expressly African American hip hop form. Ultimately though, relative perspective on this issue will inform perceptions of hip hop realness and legitimacy.

Evidence exists that suggests Blackfacers in Japan may have taken on this method of tanning and painting their faces black as a carryover of the long time tradition of the Japanese to wear masks and have painted faces during forms of entertainment like bunraku puppet theater^[6]. A more direct form of mask-wearing in Japan was introduced when white minstrels arrived in 1853 and painted their faces black to play the part of a black man. “Just as the white/White Negro acted out his racial and sexual fantasies in a bid to transcend Whiteness; so the current Japanese obsession with blackness allows Japanese youth a freedom of expression they are unable to experience in their circumscribed social role as ‘Japanese’”^[7]. While the core of Japanese hip hop stems from American artists, there are a few artists who are from Japan as well. One such artist is Banana Ice^[8]; however, rather than black-facing himself, he instead raps about the disgrace that young people bring to their ancestry when they try to imitate a different race and culture than their own. Banana Ice “released a song in 1995 called ‘Imitation + Imitation = Imitation’ in which he ridicules young hip hop fans who darken their skin as a sign of respect toward African American musicians” ^[9]. He raps with the frame of mind that a Japanese youth “can never be the black person (they) want to be.”^[10].

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