Tangled Strands and Fictitious Wigs

Photographer: Erika Kamano
Hair: Waka Adachi
Make-up: Yuka Hirac
Make-up Assistant: Beri
Models: Leiya, Nene, Tia
Creative Direction / Text: Leiya Translation: Noemi Minami
Edit: Lisa Tanimura
English Edit: Amina Mobley
Japanese Edit: Shawn Woody Motoyoshi

The Idea

Lisa’s idea - to photograph models of Japanese and Black descent (Nene, Tia, and I) in a traditional Japanese home - seemed like an opportunity to challenge and stretch the conventional visual lexicon of  “Japanese identity.” As a multiracial Japanese-Ghanaian, I’ve felt uncomfortable with the lack of dimensionality surrounding Japanese identity and culture. Despite Japan’s multiethnic past and present, the “monoethnic myth” continues to hold a stronghold within our collective consciousness. 

The emphasis on physical traits in identifying and representing Japaneseness has been a point of contention for me for years. People didn’t - and likely will never - “see” me as being  “authentically”  Japanese.  I am unnamed, other, marginal, peripheral, forever lacking the “right signifiers” to fit into the historically upheld view of  Japaneseness. I, like many other multiracial people, live acutely aware of the tension between the social construction and corporeality of Japaneseness. One’s subjective experience tends to be an afterthought, especially if it’s contrary to the preferred narrative of Japanese identity. 

There was one caveat, though. Lisa wanted the models to wear wigs in some shots—specifically, a silky, black-haired wig. I wasn’t entirely convinced that that would be a good idea. I was worried that we’d be perpetuating the idea that there are only a finite number of ways to depict Japanese identity by including the wig. I asked Lisa: What’s the point of having multiracial - specifically Black and Japanese - models if you’re going to put a wig on them? If the goal is to diversify the imagery surrounding the Japanese aesthetic, isn’t it more effective to photograph the multiraciality as is, with their natural hair in the shot? Isn’t styling them with a wig reinforcing the existing representational regimes of Japanese culture? 

Or does this illuminate something else? Might it help portray the arbitrary nature of physical markers of identity? I genuinely couldn’t tell. But the inner sociologist/media ecologist/cultural theorist in me got curious. I wanted to see what would happen if we tried Lisa’s proposal. The knot in my stomach was meant to be undone through experimentation. And what better way to do that than an early morning photoshoot in an old folk house, snacking on chocolates and cigarettes? 

The Questions

My discomfort with the wig stemmed from two recurring questions in my lifework: “What is culture?” and “What is racial identity?” Fellow multiracial and mixed-heritage individuals likely wrestle with these questions. To exist as any individual who exists at the intersection of identity markers, such as sexuality or nationality, is to live, or as Mary Douglas puts it, “matter out of place” – to be a trans-border, trans-categorical being is to exist outside the rigid, cold boundaries of human culture.      

But culture is a tricky thing to define. It means so much, yet it is impossible to locate. These days, it’s become somewhat of a catchall term that refers to any set of shared concepts and ways of being (think: internet culture, Y2K culture, Asian culture, otaku culture, bimbo spiritualism culture, queer culture, etc.). One might interpret culture as being static or, at the very least, semi-static. It’s got pinpointable qualities that can be categorized and classified. We tend to think of culture as an object that is acted upon rather than an active subject that acts upon itself and each other. 

An iteration of this can be said about identity, too. We tend to think of certain forms of identity, especially things like race, gender, and sexuality, as being fixed categories. But is this the case? Is there a way to create room for new dimensions of meaning and subjectivity? How can we reimagine the borders of identity through representation in media and art?

Newsflash: It’s All Fiction

These questions aren’t new. There’s a rich history of creative and academic contemplation that digs into the discursive nature of culture and identity. In this school of thought, culture is a way of worldmaking, and identity is socially constructed. I find worldmaking to be such an apt term for this because the storytelling impulse is at the heart of the practice of culture. There’s something magical about this definition of culture and identity because it captures the generative impulse of humans. In this interpretation, culture is subject and object, the work and the work-in-progress. To borrow Kwame Anthony Appiah’s words, “Culture isn’t a box to be checked on the questionnaire of humanity; it’s a process you join in living a life with others.”

Simply put, culture and identity are unfixed, mutable, fictional concepts. Neither of these things are fixed, naturally-occurring, pre-linguistic truths. Our innately human impulse creates identities to classify things we encounter daily. Our ability to identify and itemize differences and then give them meaning through shared symbols and code (i.e., language) is how we transformed the unnamed, tangled web of differences into communities of identification like nations, ethnic groups, sexualities, genders, and families.

To claim that identity and culture are fictional might sound like solipsistic or nihilistic pontification, but bear with me! When I say identity is fictitious, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist or isn’t material. Something being fictional doesn’t make it less accurate. For example, being a multiracial person in Japan has a visceral impact on an individual. Being a woman in a patriarchal society has practical, tangible repercussions. The affective experience of a narrative, be it fictional or non-fictional, is undeniably felt emotionally, physically, and materialistically. 

What I want to question here isn’t whether identity, culture, or race is real. It’s what happens when these fictions and systems of classification become linked to and controlled by regimes of power and control. I want us to consider which meanings we count as “normal”  or “natural” and which meanings we don’t. And more importantly, think about how certain “fictions” are naturalized to exclude, denigrate, or diminish certain groups of people. So, when I say the definitions of Japanese culture and racial identity are fictional, what I mean is we have to think through which versions of Japanese identity we accept and promote and which ones we render marginal or peripheral. 

It’s Floating Until We Give It Weight

In his profoundly poetic 1996 lecture, Stuart Hall described the symbols and signals we use to mark and classify differences as “floating signifiers.” He argued that floating signifiers do not innately have meaning but that these signifiers take on meaning in the context of the discourses that permeate our social and cultural frameworks. For example, skin color is a common signifier of racial identity. Although skin color is material, its meaning isn’t solid or permanent. It changes - it shifts and slides - depending on the context. 

This brings us back to the images in the editorial. Every part of this image - from the wig to the chabudai ( Japanese low table) - can be considered a fluid, semiotic marker, its significance shifting depending on what and who it’s interacting with.  The wig is devoid of meaning on its own, yet when styled and fitted onto someone’s body, it begins to signify something - in this case, Japaneseness. Its texture, length, and color become significant when worn by Nene, Tia, and I when it interacts with our bodies and their respective histories. 

Images are fucking everywhere

Images are everywhere. Like, literally, fucking everywhere. It’s the idiom of the modern world. From YouTube videos, TV series, and films to memes, AI-generated images, and TikTok videos, our world’s representational landscape is heavily influenced by the quality of the visual texts that inhabit our sociocultural ether. And more importantly, we’re all more directly involved with image-making than any generation that has come before. Image creation, distribution, and manipulation have never been this accessible and immediate. 

Being a resident of a symbolic, fiction-imbued material world means we’re all media practitioners. This means that we - photographers, commercial directors, magazine editors, content creators, or internet users - are all responsible for the stories we create and distribute. We must constantly pluck and prune the vast symbolic expanse, feeding it new imagery and text and workshopping different ways to express and represent our identities. The ubiquity of images doesn’t dilute the significance of their impact on our lives. 

These photos, to me, capture the fluidity of identity - the mobility and subjectivity of it. This series isn’t only about what the Japanese aesthetic can look like but what we thought it should look like. It asks us to push back against the narrative of “Japaneseness” that has been upheld and maintained by systems of power. 

In some ways, these images are an ode to the re-narrativizing powers of media and art. Our creations can shatter and reform even the stickiest, stubborn assumptions of order and normalcy. We must actively represent diverse subjectivities in our visual texts to move past the prevailing racial-purity mythology. To choose otherwise is to choose rigidity. And to choose rigidity is to exclude that which deserves to belong willingly. 

Donna Haraway says this so beautifully: “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”