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Thread: yellow face/white washing.

  1. #91
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    I think very few people remember, or are even aware, that Daniel Dae Kim played a Shaolin monk in the 1991 film American Shaolin, by HK's Seasonal Film Corp. Corey Yuen and Yuen Tak did the fight choreography. It was one of the Seasonal Film's designed specifically to bring HK-style action to the American market. That role was the very first time I had ever seen Daniel Dae Kim, and I only remembered him much later when I recognized him in other stuff.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 09-12-2017 at 10:34 AM.

  2. #92
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    Ddk

    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    If this happens, I'd make an effort to support this film and I'm not that into Hellboy.
    Well, I guess I'm committed now.

    SEPTEMBER 13, 2017 12:08pm PT by Borys Kit
    Daniel Dae Kim Applauds Ed Skrein for Bowing Out of 'Hellboy' Amid Whitewashing Outcry (Exclusive)


    Getty Images
    Daniel Dae Kim, Ed Skrein

    In his statement to THR, Kim confirms his casting and applauds Skrein and the producers for "championing the notion that Asian characters should be played by Asian or Asian American actors."

    Daniel Dae Kim, officially confirming he has joined the cast of Lionsgate and Millennium’s Hellboy reboot, issued a statement thanking the movie’s producers and Ed Skrein, the actor who stepped aside so that a culturally appropriate person could take the role.

    “I applaud the producers and, in particular, Ed Skrein for championing the notion that Asian characters should be played by Asian or Asian American actors,” said Kim. “He could not have addressed the issue more elegantly and I remain indebted to him for his strength of character."

    Kim is playing Major Ben Daimio, a rugged military member of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense who, due to a supernatural encounter, can turn into a jaguar when angered or in pain. The character is Japanese-American in the Hellboy comics by creator Mike Mignola.

    In August, Skrein was cast in the part but, after an outcry over whitewashing an Asian-American character, made the unprecedented move to step down later that month.

    “It is clear that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voice in the Arts. I feel it is important to honor and respect that,” Skrein said in a statement at the time.

    In his statement, Kim now says, "I’m excited to confirm that I’ve officially joined the cast of Hellboy. We start shooting today and I’ll be playing Ben Daimio, alongside our very talented cast, headed by David Harbour, and director, Neil Marshall. Thank you for all the supportive tweets and comments, especially in light of the recent events surrounding its original casting."

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    I think very few people remember, or are even aware, that Daniel Dae Kim played a Shaolin monk in the 1991 film American Shaolin, by HK's Seasonal Film Corp.
    You know, I'm not sure I ever saw this. I was thinking about taht film when my Shixiong Matt Polly came out with his book American Shaolin, and I honestly can't remember anything about it, so maybe I never saw it. I suppose I should, huh?
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  3. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    You know, I'm not sure I ever saw this. I was thinking about taht film when my Shixiong Matt Polly came out with his book American Shaolin, and I honestly can't remember anything about it, so maybe I never saw it. I suppose I should, huh?
    It's a low-budget Shaolin ripoff of Karate Kid, but IMO it's more entertaining than KK. It's one of those 'so bad it's good' types of movies (like all of those American Seasonal Film productions). The fight scenes are certainly better. It IS a stereotypical white savior movie, and unfortunately Daniel Dae Kim only has a supporting role, but he looked good in the fight scenes he had.

    Overall, American Shaolin's target audience seems to be Caucasian-American nerds with yellow fever and fantasies of glory who were picked on by the jocks in high school, lol. The main bad guy/bully's name is 'Trevor Gotitall' (get it?).

    Last edited by Jimbo; 09-18-2017 at 05:10 PM.

  4. #94
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    Fullmetal Alchemist = too Japanese?

    Well, that's a twist.

    Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Director Criticizes The Live-Action Movie's All-Japanese Cast
    Brian Ashcraft
    9/20/17 5:00am



    The live-action Fullmetal Alchemist movie cast is all-Japanese, even if the characters are not. The anime’s director says this was “a bad idea.”

    While speaking at a recent stage show in Tokyo, Fullmetal Alchemist anime director Seiji Mizushima is quoted by ANN as saying, “It was a bad idea to only use Japanese actors.”

    Continuing, Mizushima added, “If you asked me whether I think the cast could pull it off, I’d say that no, they can’t.” He also said, “It’s hard for actors to capture the look and feel of the original manga.”

    He didn’t have kind words for the recent live-action Gintama adaptation, saying that it “just looked stupid.”

    That doesn’t mean Mizushima hopes the live-action Fullmetal Alchemist movie will fail. On the contrary, while he mentioned the merits of anime adaptations, he did say he was “rooting” for the Fullmetal Alchemist movie. Bad ideas and all, I guess.

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  5. #95
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    Sometimes it feels that people have forgotten that TRUE equality means the best people for the job REGARDLESS of race.
    Psalms 144:1
    Praise be my Lord my Rock,
    He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !

  6. #96
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    Thumbs up Our 'token' race thread...I'm glad it's civil

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    The main bad guy/bully's name is 'Trevor Gotitall' (get it?).
    Thanks for the link. Now I'll have to check it out sometime.

    Quote Originally Posted by sanjuro_ronin View Post
    Sometimes it feels that people have forgotten that TRUE equality means the best people for the job REGARDLESS of race.
    True but when the job has a race element intrinsic to the role, that gets complicated. There's a double standard for sure, but that's exactly the point. For example, you can't cast a white Othello, but you could cast a multi-racial Hamlet. Did you ever see the Peter Brook's The Mahabharata (1989)? It's the Indian classic, but Brook assembled a very diverse cast and it was amazing. It gave the tale a much more universal feel like it should have.

    Gavin Polone on Race, Business and the Real Cost of Hollywood Whitewashing
    6:30 AM PDT 9/21/2017 by Gavin Polone


    Illustration by: Lars Leetaru

    Should Arab Princess Jasmine be played by an Indian actress? No way, but when a ‘Hellboy’ actor gives up a role that had been reconceived for him, it sets a dangerous creative precedent that impacts Hollywood and could even stunt efforts toward inclusion.
    When I was 9, my mother took me to a production of The King and I that starred Ricardo Montalban as the King of Siam. This was prior to Montalban premiering in Fantasy Island and pitching the "fine Corinthian leather" of the Chrysler Cordoba in TV commercials, so my familiarity with him came from the original Planet of the Apes movies, where he played Senor Armando, a circus owner who is sympathetic to the cause of talking apes. As I watched the musical, I remember thinking it was disturbing that a man I knew to be Mexican was playing the king of an Asian nation. By that time, most people knew that white actors donning blackface was wrong, but I was in the minority with my discomfort with the idea that brown actors were thought to be like Type O blood and could play any ethnicity. The L.A. Times, writing about King and I, lauded Moltanban's racial pliability by noting, without irony, how he "has kept his name above the title for more than a quarter century by stamping his own interpretation on roles, playing Japanese, Greeks, Italians, Armenians, French, Indians, Germans and Turks."

    That a Mexican actor playing a Thai or Japanese character drew no further comment in 1974 isn't remarkable. That we're still trying to figure out, 43 years later, when a person of one race or distinct ethnicity should be cast as a character of another, is. The answer is pretty black and white: They shouldn't. Joseph Fiennes shouldn't have played Michael Jackson, even for a comedic TV anthology; Jake Gyllenhaal shouldn't have played the prince of Persia; Rooney Mara shouldn't have played a Native American in Pan; and the con*troversy surrounding the casting of Naomi Scott as Jasmine, an Arab, in Disney's remake of Aladdin is fully warranted. Maybe there aren't any Arab actresses as good as Scott, or maybe those in charge found her look more "appealing," but casting an Indian-British woman as an Arab can only come off as another example of "brown is brown," and that is unacceptable.

    While those examples are clearly improper, other cases of "whitewashing" land in the gray zone. As important as it is to call out obviously racist or insensitive casting choices, it is just as important to define what should be permissible when representing ethnicity onscreen and what isn't really a problem and should not be dragged into this discussion.


    From left: Zhang, Yeoh and Gong in Memoirs of a Geisha.
    David James/Columbia/Dreamworks/Spyglass/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

    In 2005, there was outrage in Japan for the casting of Chinese actresses Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li, as well as Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, as leads in Memoirs of a Geisha. Given the historical tensions that have remained since World War II, the obtuseness of these choices was clear (as was changing the eye color to blue of the Asian woman on the poster). But even without political tensions, is it OK that Randall Park, a Korean-American, plays a Taiwanese-American on Fresh Off the Boat? I could see that go either way. Can any Latino play the part of any Latin American? Can a Spaniard play a Peruvian? I'm not sure. Many Latin Americans are partly or wholly of Spanish heritage, just as most white Americans have European ancestors. What about a Brazilian playing a Chilean? I think the answer to all of those questions is, "It depends."

    Where the "whitewashing" label is misapplied is when a character is changed from an ethnicity in the source material to another to accommodate a specific actor. This is not the same as casting someone of one race to play a character of another. Much has been made of Scarlett Johansson's starring role in Ghost in the Shell, whose character in the original Japanese anime was, of course, Japanese; and Tilda Swinton being cast in Doctor Strange as the Ancient One, a character who was Tibetan in the comic. Neither of these examples was evidence of the distasteful racism of white actors playing a race other than their own, but rather the common business choice of adapting a property for a wider audience. The Ghost in the Shell filmmakers changed the location from Japan to a nonspecific future world, with the intent of making the premise more accessible to a global audience. In moving the location from Japan, the film didn't need its heroine to be any specific ethnicity (not to mention that she was a robot); what she did have to be was a big star capable of justifying a huge budget, and Johansson is that.

    Remaking a foreign property for a larger audience always involves changes. In 1960, when Yul Brynner, a Russian who won an Oscar for The King and I, remade Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, he didn't develop it as an English-language version of a Japanese samurai movie but rather as a Western, which was a more popular genre throughout the world. This wasn't "whitewashing," just smart business. Casting Eli Wallach, a Jew from Brooklyn, as a Mexican in the film was egregious "whitewashing," though.

    Marvel Studios claimed that it changed the Ancient One in Doctor Strange from a Tibetan monk to a Celtic woman to avoid the stereotype of an old Asian wise man. Of course, it could have changed that stereotype by keeping the character as Tibetan and not writing him stereotypically. My guess is that Marvel wanted to run from any connection to a Tibetan character, given the conflict between Tibet and the Chinese government. China is the second largest film market in the world, and Disney's theme parks there are visited by 17 million people a year. There is no reason to believe that this was anything other than a one-time instance of "greenwashing," rather than "whitewashing," and it is unrealistic to think that the world's largest media company should risk a huge financial hit to preserve the cultural integrity of a secondary character in a movie.


    Eric McCandless/ABC; Jay Maidment/Marvel; Courtesy of Photofest
    Park in Fresh Off the Boat, Swinton in Doctor Strange and Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia.

    It is unfortunate, though, that actor Ed Skrein felt he had to drop out of the new Hellboy movie because some disagreed with him being cast in a part that is Japanese-American in the comic. It's not as though Skrein would have been a better economic choice than Daniel Dae Kim, the Korean-American who replaced him. Actually, I think Kim is better from a marketing perspective. The filmmakers were making a creative choice in going with Skrein, and the outside pressure to change creative decisions because a fictional character was one race or another is a double-edged sword. After all, a similar creative decision led Marvel to change Nick Fury, who is white in the Avengers comic, and cast Samuel L. Jackson, which was an inspired move and led to greater diversity in the franchise. And if those who protested Skrein wanted true ethnic alignment with the comics, they should still be upset that a Japanese-American wasn't cast.

    Those who identify and protest "whitewashing" and push for realistic change are helping, for the most part, to move the industry forward in depictions of ethnicity. Studios and filmmakers need to listen for these cues from the community and make changes. And when it is unclear if it will be acceptable to cast an actor outside of the ethnicity of the character in question, there are always two possible alternatives: 1) cast the best actor available who is of the same ethnicity as the character; or 2) cast Lou Diamond Phillips. Phillips has played more ethnicities than almost anyone, from the Mexican-American singer Ritchie Valens in La Bamba to, yes, King Mongkut in The King and I. Phillips can do this because he was born in the Philippines to a Filipina mother of Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian and Spanish heritage and to an American father who was one-quarter Cherokee. So, when in doubt, LDP's got you covered.
    Gene Ching
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  7. #97
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    People should just stick to what was written.
    If its a bald asian man, it should be the best bald asian actor you can get.
    If its a blonde skinny girl with bog boobs it should be the best blonde skinny big boobed actor you can get.
    I saw the Death Note Netflex movie and it suck compared to the anime and not because it was whitewashed but because it wasn't very good, period.
    The obvious white/black washing made it worse for those that saw the anime,but only because the writers weren't smart enough to make the movie different, yet based on the premise, of the anime.
    Bad writing.
    Psalms 144:1
    Praise be my Lord my Rock,
    He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !

  8. #98
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    An insightful interview with Jake Choi on the emasculation/desexualization of Asian males in Hollywood:

    https://www.salon.com/2016/06/01/asi...erican_actors/

    This interview is relatively brief, and really only discusses the tip of the iceberg.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 10-02-2017 at 08:53 AM.

  9. #99
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    The Outsider

    The Last Samurai, Shogun, this...Do we need an indie thread for Gaijin movies?

    2.23.2018
    JARED LETO STARS AS A JAPANESE GANGSTER IN 'THE OUTSIDER'
    Wait, what?



    In the illustrious Hollywood tradition of movies about white dudes who are better at being Asian than actual Asians, here's your first look at the Yakuza period thriller The Outsider, in which Jared Leto becomes a Japanese gangster. Wait, whaaat? Yup. The Netflix original movie follows a white guy who works his way up the ranks to become a rare non-Japanese member of the fearsome Yakuza.

    The official synopsis reads: "Set in post-WWII Japan, an imprisoned American soldier (Leto) is released with the help of his Yakuza cellmate. Now free, he sets out to earn their respect and repay his debt while navigating the dangerous criminal underworld." I assume this means that the white guy will do a lot of way crazier **** than any of the Japanese guys, to prove his worth. And romance some Japanese ladies along the way, of course.

    Here's the trailer:



    Oh, brother.

    Directed by Martin Zandvliet, The Outsider also stars Tadanobu Asano, Kippei Shiina and Shioli Kutsuna. You know, in another grand Hollywood tradition of really great Asian actors playing supporting roles to white stars.

    We actually first heard about this movie back in 2011, when Warner Bros. originally acquired the script. I said this back then, as I've said many times before and since, and I'll say it again: Hollywood can make a movie set anywhere in the world, in any era of history... and always somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.

    The Outsider premieres on Netflix on March 9.
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  10. #100
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    I could accept a non-Japanese Yakuza being portrayed by an actor of Korean descent, because in reality, there are Japanese-born Koreans who are Yakuza.

    Jared Leto would have as much chance of becoming a high-level Yakuza as Tadanobu Asano would have of heading an Italian/Sicilian Mafia family.
    Last edited by Jimbo; 02-23-2018 at 11:17 AM.

  11. #101
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    Good one Jimbo

    Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
    Jared Leto would have as much chance of becoming a high-level Yakuza as Tadanobu Asano would have of heading an Italian/Sicilian Mafia family.
    Man, if only that film existed. I would watch the F out of it.
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  12. #102
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    Ranker is a wanker

    This is what happens when you let bots write your content.

    Christopher Lee. srsly?

    Full Cast of Hollywood Chinese Actors/Actresses
    Reference

    Hollywood Chinese cast list, listed alphabetically with photos when available. This list of Hollywood Chinese actors includes any Hollywood Chinese actresses and all other actors from the film. You can view additional information about each Hollywood Chinese actor on this list, such as when and where they were born. To find out more about a particular actor or actress, click on their name and you'll be taken to page with even more details about their acting career. The cast members of Hollywood Chinese have been in many other movies, so use this list as a starting point to find actors or actresses that you may not be familiar with.

    Items include everything from Christopher Lee to James Hong.

    If you want to answer the questions, "Who starred in the movie Hollywood Chinese?" and "What is the full cast list of Hollywood Chinese?" then this page has got you covered.

    This cast list of who was in Hollywood Chinese includes both lead and minor roles. (12 items)

    1
    Christopher Lee
    The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

    2
    James Hong
    Blade Runner, Airplane!, Chinatown

    3
    Joan Chen
    The Last Emperor, Judge Dredd, Lust

    4
    James Shigeta
    Die Hard, Mulan, Midway

    5
    BD Wong
    Jurassic Park, Mulan, Father of the Bride

    6
    Tsai Chin
    Casino Royale, You Only Live Twice, Memoirs of a Geisha

    7
    Ang Lee
    The Art of Action: Martial Arts in the Movies, Hollywood Chinese

    8
    Nancy Kwan
    Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Flower Drum Song, Lt. Robin Crusoe

    9
    Turhan Bey
    The Amazing Mr. X, The Adventures of Smilin' Jack, Dragon Seed

    10
    Luise Rainer
    The Great Ziegfeld, The Good Earth, The Great Waltz

    11
    Wayne Wang
    Hollywood Chinese

    12
    Justin Lin
    Hollywood Chinese
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  13. #103
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    Quote Originally Posted by GeneChing View Post
    This is what happens when you let bots write your content.

    Christopher Lee. srsly?
    Yes! Christopher Lee broke racial barriers as the first-ever non-Asian Chinese actor to play Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the mummy in Britain's Hammer Films, starting way back in the 1950s!!!

    Whoever compiled that list is obviously VERY young, and very lazy, stupid and/or not very savvy in researching their info.

  14. #104
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    Wait...we were white?



    THE CHINESE WERE WHITE – UNTIL WHITE MEN CALLED THEM YELLOW
    Europeans referred to East Asians as white until the end of the 18th century
    But as the Chinese and Japanese resisted cultural assimilation they darkened – both in Western eyes and their own
    BY MICHAEL KEEVAK
    3 FEB 2019



    How did East Asians come to be referred to as yellow-skinned? It was the result of a series of racial mappings of the world and had nothing to do with the actual colour of people’s skin.

    In fact, when complexion was mentioned by an early Western traveller or missionary or ambassador (and it very often wasn’t, because skin colour as a racial marker was not fully in place until the 19th century), East Asians were almost always called white, particularly during the period of first modern contact in the 16th century. And on a number of occasions, even more revealingly, the people were termed “as white as we are”.

    The term yellow occasionally began to appear towards the end of the 18th century and then really took hold of the Western imagination in the 19th. But by the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese were “darkening” in published texts, gradually losing their erstwhile whiteness when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion, and international relations.

    Calling them white, in other words, was not based on simple perception either and had less to do with pigmentation than their presumed levels of civilisation, culture, literacy, and obedience (particularly if they should become Christianised).

    Swedish botanist and physician Carl Linnaeus decided that varieties of **** sapiens could be similarly separated into four continental types, one of which was called **** asiaticus. The colour of that group, he said, was fuscus, which can be best translated as “dark”. This was in 1735.


    Linnaeus’ racial classifications from 1735. On the left, **** sapiens is divided into four kinds, one of which is H Asiaticus and identified as ‘fuscus’, or dark.

    Evidently there was some difficulty deciding on a precise colour for Asian Man, since the other three types, European, African, and American, could be “unproblematically” identified according to already accepted stereotypes of white, black, and red. In the tenth edition of Linnaeus’ taxonomy, however, published in 1758, fuscus was silently changed to luridus, meaning “lurid”, “sallow”, or “pale yellow”. The reasons for this alteration were never explained, although luridus also appeared in several of Linnaeus’ botanical publications to characterise unhealthy and toxic plants. Was Asian Man also to be viewed as sickly or dangerous?


    Swedish botanist and physician Carl Linnaeus decided that varieties of **** sapiens could be similarly separated into four continental types, one of which was called **** asiaticus. Photo: Handout

    Later theorists complained about Linnaeus’ overly rigid continental labelling but accepted the notion that mankind could be divided into groups, and that each group should embody a different colour. In 1795, the German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach offered a five-race scheme that featured what might be called our first unequivocal labelling of Asian yellowness, couched in a bizarre series of comparisons that stressed the relative decay or lifelessness of the so-called intermediate races. This human variety, he wrote, was “yellow [gilvus] or the colour of boxwood, halfway between grains of wheat and cooked quinces, or the colour of sucked out and dried lemon peel: familiar to the Mongolian peoples”.

    The most significant aspect of Blumenbach’s conception was that for the first time all the peoples of the East had been lumped together into an explicitly racial category, here called the Mongolian, which was to become just as menacing and fateful as its much more notorious sister term, Caucasian, which was introduced at exactly the same moment. It is crucial to understand that it was not simply that Asians had been coloured yellow in 1795; Mongolians had.
    continued next post
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  15. #105
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    Continued from previous post


    In the late 18th century, all the peoples of the East were lumped together into an explicitly racial category, called the Mongolian. Photo: Handout

    “Yellow” was thus a racial marker that had meaning only in relation to the other colours, all of which were defined as against white “normality”. In Blumenbach’s case, Europeans were in the centre of a racial tableau flanked by “Mongolians” and “Ethiopians” with “Americans” and “Malays” in between (Malay was a new, fifth race, comprising the inhabitants of the South Pacific and Australia, only recently discovered). The yellow race became invested with associations that insured that its physical and cultural features were different (or, rather, deviant) from the white European norm. And for other thinkers far more racially virulent than Blumenbach, the races became part of an explicit hierarchy with European white at the top and African black at the bottom, with the “intermediate” races somewhere in the middle. The problem was exactly where in the middle they were, and how to measure that supposed distance.


    Nineteenth-century medical research frequently attempted to define the ‘yellow’ race as embodying physical conditions that distinguished them from Caucasians, including the ‘Mongolian eyefold’ (a fold of skin covering the canthus or inner corner of the eye). Photo: Handout

    Nineteenth-century medical discourse did much to define the contours of the yellow race, although the emphasis here was on “Mongolianness” rather than colour. Medical research frequently attempted to define the race as embodying certain physical conditions that distinguished them from Caucasians, including the “Mongolian eyefold” (a fold of skin covering the canthus or inner corner of the eye), “Mongolian spots” (congenital bluish marks appearing in infants on their lower back or buttocks), and “Mongolism”, today known as Down syndrome. Each of these conditions was at first supposed to be endemic to the Mongolian race only (and hence their names), and much as in the anthropological obsession with human measurement, these conditions purported to show how the yellow race differed from the healthy and fully developed normality of white European bodies.


    ‘Mongolian spots’ were another characteristic said to belong to the ‘yellow’ race. Photo: Handout

    It was at the end of the 19th century that the notion of yellow became canonised in every European language (and East Asian ones). This was the invention of the so-called Yellow Peril in 1895, brought into worldwide circulation by an illustration made after a drawing by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and designed as a call to arms for European nations to protect themselves from the potential onslaught of East Asian military aggression, social degradation, and emigration to the West. The most immediate danger at this time, it was perceived, came from Japan, which had recently defeated both Russia and China in armed conflict and had begun to build an empire of its own.


    The invention of the so-called Yellow Peril in 1895 was brought into worldwide circulation by an illustration made after a drawing by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Photo: Handout

    It was also at this time that ideas about a yellow race began to be imported into East Asian cultures themselves, along with many other facets of modern Western science and technology. As might be expected there were a wide variety of responses, rejections, and incorporations, not only to the idea that there were yellow people but also to the contention that all East Asians could be lumped together into a single racial category. In China, for example, the yellow race was often seen as an appealing notion since yellow was such a significant colour in Chinese culture (such as the yellow river and the Yellow Emperor).

    Perhaps the Chinese were gold-coloured people, far superior to white Westerners, who were merely silver. In Japan, however, yellow carried no such positive associations and the colour category was frequently rejected. “The Chinese were yellow,” it was sometimes said, “not we Japanese, who are far superior to the Chinese and on a par with the Western imperial powers.” Many in the West agreed, even though the Japanese could not escape the stigma of being, after all, “coloured” people, maybe not as yellow as the Chinese but certainly not white.

    These stories of reception in the Far East require more research, but for now, it is clear the invention of yellow in Western racial thinking cannot be traced to a Chinese source. Yellow was a fantasy like all other racial groupings. It cannot be traced back before the end of the 18th century, and it had no basis in anything other than an attempt to distance certain peoples of the world from an equally fantasised concept of whiteness.

    Is it not time that we stopped using this term? Why are we still calling people yellow? ■


    Michael Keevak is Professor of Foreign Languages at National Taiwan University and author of ‘Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking’. This essay was excerpted from a paper titled Reconsidering Race
    I've always disdained the term 'yellow'. I prefer 'golden'
    Gene Ching
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