this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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This got a report for xenophobia and, to my mind, it is xenophobic. It could totally be interpreted a different way where it's inviting you to consider the cross-cultural nature of cuisine that gets boiled down into a single name, but it seems like most people, myself included (having seen how some other "Yes, but" comics go), don't.
I think it's worthwhile to leave this post up because the comments surrounding it are worthwhile and actually transform this into something insightful.
or it could be that the larger majority doesn't see it that way and people are being overly sensitive and that can apply to both the person reading this, and the intentions of the og artist
I have a different take on this.
long answer:
Japanese cuisine uses certain methods and ingredients, even specific ratios and recipes, some of which are passed down generationally either within a family or in apprenticeships or in education and training programs that give official certifications, or even just OJT.The thing is that Japanese culture places a lot of value in excellence and attention to detail. Traditional Japanese cooking is comparable to traditional French cooking in that regard (and yes, I'm aware that not all japanese cuisine is high-class traditional fare, but even a basic dashi stock or a ramen broth are things that people take pride in and pass on their recipes, complete with regional variants and a lot of subtlety and nuance).
Anyway, I lived in japan for a few years in my twenties and I traveled around and tried a lot of different regional specialties and variants on some of the classics. I also frequented a lot of chains like Sukiya, Yoshinoya, and all the different konbinis. So my description isn't limited to fancy kaiseki-ryori in centuries-old ryokan villages. Japanese food, even the basic stuff, has a certain quality to it, which is hard for gaijin to imitate unless they train for years with a Japanese chef.
I preface this with all that so you don't assume I'm speaking from ignorance. Since returning to the US, I've been disappointed with the quality of "Japanese restaurants" here. I've been to a couple in New York that were good. I could tell the owners and staff were Japanese by the quality of the food alone. Overhearing them speaking Japanese to each other only confirmed it.
But there isn't much of a Japanese diaspora in my area, and the "Japanese restaurants" around me are all run by Chinese families. I've stopped expecting Japanese-quality Japanese food from these. Sometimes I still go just to get my fix. But it's not the same. The ingredients are different. The ratios are off. The love and care, passion, pride, and everything else that goes into Japanese food just isn't there, and it shows up as different tastes, different textures, different aromas, etc.
Not to mention it's just hard to find some things here. Famima chicken just isn't a thing here. Even Karaage is hard to find. Oden might as well not exist. All the different kinds of yakitori (quail egg, cartilage, horumon, etc.), matsuri specialties like okonomiyaki and takoyaki, taiyaki, and so much else; the little shops outside the train stations and all the smells and tastes that go along with them; so many regional dishes like motsunabe, okinawa soba, etc.; and just so much else (donburi, ebi furai, chawanmushi, onigiri, korokke, katsu curry, soba/udon shops and all their interesting toppings.). Ugh, I'm drooling just thinking about it all. But I digress.
Obviously no one shop could do all of that, but "Japanese food" outside of Japan is typically very limited in options. Some sushi, mostly westernized variants. It's rare to find many options for nigiri, or any at all but I've never seen a kaitenzushi in the US. Occasionally a ramen shop (if you're lucky, but even then the broth just isn't right, the chashu and shoyu tamago just aren't right; and good luck finding moyashi namuru!). Other than that, you're probably limited to a few things listed as appetizers. Maybe gyoza, edamame, and a couple other things that are considered popular in the west.
It's just not the same though. It's not just the selection, it's the quality. The ingredients, the recipe, everything is just off.
tl,dr: Japanese cuisine has a certain quality, which is a deeply cultural phenomenon, but the "Japanese" restaurants near me are all run by Chinese families, and as someone who spent years in Japan I can tell the difference in the quality of the food.
I don't see how it isn't considered cultural appropriation. If a white guy tries opening a Japanese restaurant people will say it's cultural appropriation (and probably call him a weeb). So how is it any different when a Chinese family opens a Japanese restaurant? I don't see any way you can reconcile those two things without implying that Asian people are all the same, which is racist.
about the other nationalities:
I don't know why the picture in the OP shows the Filipino, Korean, and Thai flags. The Korean and Thai places near me are all run by Chinese people too. And there might be a couple Filipino grocery stores but I don't know of any Filipino restaurants in my area.Korean, Thai, and Filipino food are all amazing, by the way. I've been to all three of those countries too. And just like with Japanese cuisine, each one has so much variety that just gets lost in the US. They substitute a lot of local ingredients which just aren't the same, they don't offer dishes that seems too strange to the western palette, they tweak a lot of dishes to make them more suitable to the average westerner, etc. I've never had a pad kra pao in the US that even came close to measuring up to how it is in Thailand.
For what it's worth, Chinese food is good in its own way. I don't have anything against the Chinese diaspora. I just don't see how it isn't cultural appropriation for Chinese families to run Japanese or Thai restaurants.
Its the execution that determines if its appropriation, or appreciation. Appropriation of Japanese is something I'm closely familiar with because my interest in Japanese craftsmanship, knives and blacksmithing
If someone is using the culture to sell a mediocre, tangentially related product, disrespecting the original culture, is appropriation. If the product itself is executed faithfully, with dignity and respect to the culture it comes from, or is inspired from, then it's appreciation.
There are a lot of Japanese knife scams that poorly attempt to imitate somebody the features of Japanese knives, made out of junk steel, mass produced in China. These are appropriation.
There are some western blacksmiths who are genuinely as skilled as their Japanese counterparts, who make excellent Japanese style knives, faithfully recreating all of the details, features and quality as authentic examples. This is appreciation.
Thank you. I hate seeing people say that if a black woman from Queens opens a Mexican bread shop that it is appropriation.
It depends on how much they care. If the chinese people running the restaurant are just half-assing japanese food and using japanese culture for the name and clout, its disrespectful. Effectively just trying to profit off the culture. Whereas if those chinese people are trying their best to understand and replicate the culture, it's fine.
Hot take: a japanese person can "appropriate" their own culture. If they just take advantage of their name and ethnicity, without actually learning about the culture. This is just really rare in practice because people of any ethnicity are usually forced to learn about their own culture when growing up
Personal experience:
Right now I live in an extremely multi-cultural city, and generally wildly multi-cultural country. The best Japanese restaurant I've been to was a Ramen restaurant stationed in another city that is ran by an actual Japanese chef that (presumably) does not speak any other languages.
In the town I am stationed right now all Japanese restaurants I've been to were okay. But nothing even close to that Ramen place. Day and night. Fact is, many Japanese, Thai and Korean Restaurants are ran by Chinese business people and mostly staff. Not all, but I've been to few.
To add, Kepab is common back in my homeland, but 99% of the time it was never made by Turkish cook cause we don't get many foreigners back there. Kepab in the city I live right now is almost always made by Turkish or middle-east-descent person. AND IT IS DELICIOUS! I've tried many different joints at different prices and none of them was even remotely as bad as the ones I've used to eat back at home.
I've learned to prefer cultural food cooked by the person relating to that culture. Chinese, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Slavic (Polish, Ukraine, Czech, etc.) is always tastes better if it was made by someone who is from that country. It just how it is.
I mean the best Japanese restaurant around for a while was run by a Vietnamese couple. Just, when people wanted "oriental food" (love how language changes due to bad faith arguments around the word occident?) their options were Japanese and Chinese for the longest time. Like, the county u grew up in (of then 500kish people) had exactly one Indian/Pakistani restaurant (which is Asian but not Oriental fight me) until like fifteen years ago. I'm not sure all y'all yoots understand how good we have it now. Hell, said county didn't get a Greek/med restaurant until 30 years ago. I would have to wait until the annual Greek festival to get gyro. What kind of life is that.
I am Asian. There are Japanese restaurants in my city run by white people and I don’t consider it cultural appropriation. Cultural acceptability is a wide spectrum.
Interesting. Good to know, thank you.
If you don't mind me asking, how much does your personal identity weigh being Asian compared to whichever specific nationality/ethnicity you are?
Sorry if that's phrased weird. I mean like for example if you're Korean, how much do you identify as "Korean" versus "Asian"? Or does it not matter to you?
I'm sure it's different for everybody, and it might depend strongly on factors like generation and how frequently you use the language in daily life. But I like to ask people for their personal perspectives because it's better than either assuming, or generalizing based on what sounds right. If that makes sense?
I know for instance people living in Asia are more likely to identify with their nationality or ethnic group, or the language they speak, rather than thinking of themselves as simply "Asian." But among the diaspora, I'm curious to know how much it blends together into a multicultural "Asian" identity.
Cause I don't want to be insensitive and say just "Asian" if that sounds overly reductive. But I also don't know the polite way to ask someone what country their family is from...
It's not that there are specific polite ways. Sometimes people ask where you are from because they want to know the exact racism and bullshit to hit you with. Let me talk about a specific type of the other times. Gran was a nurse in a town by a military base. She asked everyone where they were from because there was a good chance they weren't from said town. Gran wasn't. It was an opportunity to share and connect (and distract the patient from whatever awfulness they were feeling).
If you're looking for a rule, it's pretty much the same one to live life by: be excellent to each other. Approach the conversation in good faith and with kindness and you tend to get good results.
They’re about even. Offline, people can obviously tell I’m Asian so it doesn’t make much sense to say “I’m Asian”. On the internet, I prefer a certain level of anonymity so I just go with Asian.
It’s super diverse in my city. So identifying with my ethnicity is generally an easy way to connect with others. They don’t even have to share my ethnicity. People love to ice break on ethnicity and I don’t mind that as long as they’re not trying to be weird about it.
That makes sense. It can be a touchy topic for some people though so I'm usually too nervous to bring it up, even though you're right it can be a pretty good icebreaker.
Like I'm socially awkward but I can talk about food somewhat comfortably, so if I know someone's cultural heritage I can ask them about certain dishes or relate my experience with those dishes. But if all I know is that they're East Asian, I can only guess whether they're Chinese or Japanese or Taiwanese or Vietnamese or Korean based on how they look, but that's not always accurate and is dangerously close to stereotyping.
I can go off their name if it's a traditional one, but if they have a western name then that's not much of a context clue. So that makes it a lot harder to connect about food, and then I'm left scraping my braincells for something to say that won't sound weird, and after a few seconds' hesitation with my eyes rolling up into my head people tend to get weirded out anyway and walk away...
One of the best sushi meals I ever had was in Japan, and prepared by a Chinese chef. If he opens a restaurant in the US, is that cultural appropriation? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly fine for anyone to learn and embody the culinary technique of another culture. Just don’t claim that sushi was invented in China.
Food is one of those things that doesn't have cultural appropriation. Food has sharing.
Yep, cultural appropriation is a myth created by white women to put down other white women. I've never seen it in any other circumstance.
Damn, I really took it to heart several years ago when I started finding out almost everything I liked was considered cultural appropriation (I always thought it was cultural appreciation, and it's not like I was profiting off of anything, but nope I was a white dude so apparently it was a problem if the pattern on my shirt looked a little to meso-american. I just liked the shirt).
Like, people were downright cruel about it. It really killed me on the inside, just day-by-day learning all these new things that I wasn't supposed to like, even though I had liked them for a long time. I didn't know what to like anymore. Music, clothes, food, etc.; just crushed me more a little each day because it was so cool to gang up on the white guy I guess.
But I wanted to do my best, be a good person, examine my biases and overcome my ignorance, etc., so if I argued with it much at first I didn't for very long and after a while I started giving up a lot of things I previously enjoyed...
Cultural appropriation is a western weird idea. Nobody outside the western world cares.
Yep. There are definitely some lines though, like I would be offended if I saw Americans tattooing a moko because they thought it was cool. It's a sacred symbol and has meaning. But wearing generic clothes, cooking food, etc, using parts of every day culture, that's just culture spreading because people appreciate it. That keeps culture alive.
Ripping on a white girl because she wore a Hindi styled dress achieves absolutely nothing. And I never see those people attacking Koreans for wearing suits or driving cars, which are very much European culture.
Well you know what those people can go suck a soft boiled egg. All of them at the same time, just one egg it'll have so many diseases.
Good to see a mod comment not being a pile of human garbage. Served as a gentle reminder we're not, in fact, on reddit.
me: sees reddit.com
me: lemmy can I have some reddit?
lemmy: we have reddit at home.
reddit at home: https://lemmy.world/c/reddit
Appreciate this very thoughtful mod response. It’s easy to get too wrapped up on yes/no answers when reality is far more fuzzy and complicated than that.
As an AAPI, I didn’t see anything more to this than a funny little nod to the people who actually prepare ethnic cuisines in countries not of their origin.
Yeah. We're all called chef in the kitchen. It's respect. Who cares where you're from if you can cook it with love (or, as the occasion calls for, salt)
I saw it for the humor too. As a joke, at steakhouses - my southeast Asian wife used to demand "authentic" Texan bbq from REAL Texans. She'd say things like, "He looks like he's from Wisconsin. I can tell."
Brutal rare insult
I clearly didn't interpret this comic the same way as everyone else has, and if you think it would be better to delete it, I will.
I've seen this joke in many forms before, and it's usually more like "it's a little humorous when this happens" rather than some sort of xenophobic criticism. Like the cowboy themed restaurant in Fresh off the Boat or Bobby's Japanese/German restaurant in King of the Hill:
I don't think it's better to delete it. I like to interpret it as the Bobby Hill Japanese fusion restaurant thing too even if I don't think that's what was intended by it. All the discussion here is really nice.
You are nice.
I need to watch the new season(s?)
It's different, but I really enjoyed the new season.
Been a long time since I've watched King of the Hill - is the second picture Bobby?
Yeah, they started up again recently after many years, and there was a time skip. Bobby is an adult now, and this is his restaurant.