裏花火

おおお……、ノックスの45周年紙製リフィルがぴったり！同じく周年の活版印刷リフィルの星！竹尾ペーパープロダクツの特殊紙インデックス！………ぴったり。自己満足の極み……。文具オタクの幸せよ……。#私的手帳覚書

これもまた、戦いだよなあ。でもね、本当にひどいことを言う人は今のところひとりもいないよ。素晴らしいことだよ。私は人間の善意を信じたい。 この後すっごいたくさん酷いこと言われるかもしれないけど！だって、時差があるからね！

Because I couldn’t reply directly due to restrictions, I’m quoting and responding here. Exactly. I felt this was the key point of the issue, so I gathered the courage to ask. You said that when we Japanese paint our skin in cosplay, it looks as if we “don’t like” you, and that this is deeply hurtful and hard to accept. That makes me very sad. We also genuinely want to find a way to resolve this. How can we help you understand that this makeup has no intention to hurt or mock anyone? Even when we repeatedly say “we have no intention of mocking skin color or causing harm,” it doesn’t seem to get through, and we end up talking past each other. I think that’s the real problem. If we can somehow show that there truly is no harmful intent, wouldn’t that help resolve it? What I’d like to know is not “don’t paint,” but rather: if we take certain considerations, could the act of painting be received more positively? I am Japanese, and while I don’t cosplay myself, I have followed Japanese cosplay culture with affection for many years. I believe Japanese cosplayers have nurtured this culture out of love—earnestly wanting to make their appearance even a little closer to the characters they care about. I also draw illustrations. I particularly like brown-skinned characters, and when I create game avatars I almost always set the skin tone darker. This choice comes from affection for darker skin tones, with absolutely no intention of mocking them. (My own skin is typical East Asian.) We are sincerely trying to convey that we have no intention of mocking anyone regarding skin color. How can that message reach you? For example, would adding a note such as “This cosplay is intended for a Japanese audience” help? Or would a note saying “There is no intention to mock” make a difference? We do not want to fight. We want to understand each other. We do not want to hurt anyone. At the same time, we also want to protect the culture we have carefully nurtured. I hope this translation conveys my intentions gently and clearly. Thank you for reading. (And to my fellow Japanese people: I’m sorry for writing in a way that might sound as if I were speaking for all of us. If this caused any discomfort, I apologize.) I hope cosplay culture can continue to grow so that people around the world can simply say to one another: “Your cosplay looks just like the character you love! It’s so cool!”