heads up to all you tumblr kids who think japanese people are all anime-pale (and especially to those people who consider hiro hamada of the upcoming disney’s big hero 6 “not japanese enough” because of his skin tone)

the japanese culture has an inherent internalized classist shadism pervasive through most of asia; lower-class people have to work outside and get tanned, upper-class people get to stay inside and remain pale. classical japanese beauty, especially for women (who are still hugely discriminated against in the still-misogynistic japanese culture), makes pale skin the standard. japanese people, like every other people of every other nation on earth, have varying natural skin tones. pale skin comes up most often in japanese art and anime because it is the long-lived beauty standard. pick up any book on japanese culture.

this beauty standard results in:

• many anime characters having very pale skin
• skin whitening product existing in almost every beauty product from japan
• bronzer being nonexistent in japan
• the ganguro counterculture fashion, characterized by excessive tanning and drastic makeup, meant as a rebellion against japanese cultural norms
• the popularity of purikura apps to edit selfies, with very obvious skin-whitening, contrast-increasing functions
• skin whitening in selfies in general, especially for cosplay shoots (see top section and ignore the ‘proud asian cosplay’ text; this girl is certainly not as pale as she looks in her photoshopped cosplay pic)

here are some japanese people. japanese politicians. a japanese girl group (note the varying skin tones). hayao miyazaki. heck, look through the famous people in wikipedia’s article on ryukyuan people (southern japan). you see a variety of skin tones. just like every other country on the planet.