One of the key creative figures behind the popular video game Tekken 7 got in some hot water a month ago for a harmless joke he made at the expense of social justice warriors. A fan asked him if the swimsuit skins would be added to Western versions of the Japanese game, he replied with: “Ask your countries SJWs. HAHAHAHAHA,” Katsuhiro Harada responded.
Needless to say, people were triggered, namely a Playstation Magazine writer and an IGN video producer.
Garbage man makes garbage tweet (about his utterly garbage game) https://t.co/UV0RSRbKB7
— Gav Murphy (@cymrogav) July 8, 2016
Now in an interview with Eurogamer Harada is firing back against what he sees as “ill informed” Western critics who judge Japan by their own cultural standards.
“The swimsuits was a good example,” he told Eurogamer. “People who don’t even play the game, they maybe just hear that there are swimsuits in it and then they say, ‘Woah, you have these girls in sexy swimwear, what’s wrong with you? You’re such male chauvinists etc.’
“But what they don’t know is that it started off in the arcade and it’s a season line, like you do for Christmas, Halloween or whatever. And it’s not just the women. Robots have them, Kuma, Panda, the male characters have swimwear. It’s not like we’re trying to sexualize the female characters at all. But they don’t go and look for that info before they criticize. So that is pretty frustrating.”
Censorship is a legitimate problem when Japanese games come to the West. The much-lauded Tokyo Mirage Sessions had a number of bizarre minor changes to desexualize the female characters, many that didn’t make actual sense.
@CensoredGaming_ #TokyoMirageSessions Not only did they remove her cleavage, but they also removed her vagina bones. pic.twitter.com/lrTXuU99tZ
— Sebban (@Sebban_E) May 13, 2016
Gamers who just want to play a game the way the original creators intended are often left disappointed by the censors.
“Well, I guess people forget that the game goes through very strict ratings in various countries, and the level of severity kind of changes depending on the country,” Harada continued.
“But Tekken has cleared those and been released. So people who actually look into the game content have seen it and it is fine. And so, as such, as long as it passes those kind of censorship or whatever for that country, as judged by their government or an official organization and not some random guy on the Internet, then obviously we want to release the content so as many people can enjoy it as possible.”
There is no word yet if swimwear will be released in the U.S. version of the game, but if it does you can be sure that a vocal minority of prudes on the internet will whine about it.
Harada’s comments on censorship speak to a broader issue of ethnocentrism among Western progressive culture critics. They love to chastise those who would judge Muslim countries and customs by Western values, but in the same breath will condemn Japan for their sexy video game characters. Vice Gaming even went so far as to accuse Japanese game developers of Orientalism.
If we end up not getting those swimsuits in Tekken 7, at least we know whom to thank.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks.
