A swastika isn’t an acceptable costume; the rising sun shouldn’t be either.
Over at Nerds Of Color (an amazing website I just discovered), Keith Chow discusses a disturbing trend in comic book depictions of Japanese characters: they’re all wearing the Imperial Japanese rising sun flag from WWII.
Why’s this a problem? Well…
“The problem is people don’t know their history. Anyone with knowledge of World War II will have the same negative reactions to that flag. But people know about Nazis; they probably don’t know about what Japan did in China and Korea.” – DC Comics artist Bernard Chang
For context: an estimated 20 million Chinese (mostly civilians) were killed by the Imperial Japanese army. During the Japanese Imperial Period (1910-1945), Japan sought to crush Korean culture, force the men into labor, and the women into prostitution.
Fly on over to Nerds of Color and read the rest of the article.
Photo— Flickr/ Future Atlas