This is a follow-up to my former Q where I complained about cancel culture: Cancel Culture in Japan?
I have to apologize to people who read that Q. It was more of an intoxicated and knee-jerk rant rather than a level-headed and reasoned response. I completely lost my cool when I tried to cite Tanukana in an answer only to discover she had recently joined the list of cancel culture victims in ways where she not only lost all her sponsorships but also got kicked out of her E-Sports league.
I also poured myself a few glasses of whiskey and started chugging (a very poor habit I have when I get cranky that I'm trying to overcome), and I wasn't exactly all there in the head by the time I asked that Q. I don't know why this cancel culture bothers me so much. It doesn't affect my personal life or my loved ones in any way, but it seems to be a growing monster that seems like it could threaten someone I truly hold dear at some point.
Tanukana
Tanukana is the female gamer I cited in my original question. She excels at E-Sports and fighting games and apparently one of the few able to compete on a worldwide level against some of the top men (she was hardly the best, but at least able to hold her own). She's also hardly a millionaire able to live in luxury with her earnings so far. Her estimated income before she lost everything was something like $80k USD/year which isn't high by Japanese standards where the cost of living is so high.
She became the target of cancel culture for this part of her intimate stream in her apartment while baking cookies and eating them where she made derogatory comments against short men and women with very small breasts:
I'm No Fan
As a point of clarification, I am no fan of hers. I think she's actually even more stupid and reckless than I am. Even her Japanese sounds very crude and what we might call "low-call class and masculine" going by traditional stereotypes. She also delivers her edgy remarks and jokes in a very poker-faced way which I find almost completely devoid of charm. I'm also quite sure in the video above based on the speech patterns that she was at least a bit intoxicated.
When I try to defend a person from an outraged mob seeking to ruin their life, it has nothing to do with whether or not agree or approve of their expressed views or whether I like them as a person. I hope I'm decent enough to even be able to do that for someone who absolutely hates my guts, like some racial supremacist who considers me inferior on account of my race, because I am thoroughly convinced that this is the moral thing to do.
I see no hope of a better world if we're absolutely merciless and unforgiving. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, but this isn't merely an eye for an eye. This is like chopping off someone's hands -- their source of livelihood -- simply because we disapproved of what they said. There's no room for people to learn from their mistakes and become more tolerant if we're simply going to ruin anyone who says the wrong thing.
Context
One thing I find so disappointingly absent among those outraged by her remarks -- especially English-speaking audiences (who I suspect contributed the most to this controversy) -- is the context of her remarks.
She was complaining about a short Uber Eats delivery man who delivered food to her door while she was staying in Bali and persisted to stay at her door while she was trying to shut it persisting to ask her for her phone number and messaging details (it seems he was trying to ask her out on a date). To a Japanese woman, this is probably also a complete form of culture shock since it's inconceivable that a Japanese delivery man would ever do this (we would consider it unbelievably rude and unprofessional here).
She expressed not only anger over this encounter but also some fear of having to reject a man who knows her address. In fairness, this could have all been some misunderstanding (Tanukana barely speaks a word of English) while the man was doing his job but that was her frame of mind at the time she made these remarks.
This doesn't change the foolishness of what she said live on camera while flustered but it should be considered a vital piece of contextual information for anyone looking to judge her actions properly and not simply condemn her in an emotional outrage over some short video clip that completely misses the backstory.
As for her comments on small breasts, it seems her fans often tease her saying the only thing good about her is her large breasts. She's probably foolish and lacking in class for doing it but she tends to engage in banter with those commentators and makes her breasts along with women's breasts in general a constant source of banter and humor. It's not the wisest thing to do, but she tends to engage with even the most belligerent people who comment on her streams.
Lost in Translation
There also appears to be a "lost in translation" sort of issue going on here translating from Japanese so literally to English. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding revolving around her use of 人権 (jinken which means "human rights" when translated literally). Even Japanese in the comments for the original video are teasing her for her strange use of it including a top comment teasing her and saying she probably doesn't even understand what it means in a formal context.
人権 apparently has a slang use among the gamer community which isn't "human rights" in a constitutional or natural sense but takes on a very gamer-nerd context, like how a level 99 character in a role-playing game is so much more powerful and therefore has more rights in the video game than a level 1 character. So a closer approximation of what she said might be more like tall men and women with big breasts are "more powerful" rather than short men and women with small breasts deserving no "human rights".
To illustrate this "lost in translation" process to English speakers, I was rather culture-shocked when I set foot in the US only to see how often people said things like "go to hell" in frustration. The closest literal approximation of "go to hell" to Japanese might be しねばいいのに. That is incredibly offensive! Those are fighting words, basically, rather than irritable words. Yet in the US, saying "go to hell" is rude but not anywhere near as bad as calling a black person the N-word, but saying しねばいいのに to someone might be about as bad.
Take calling someone an "asshole" as another one. Taken literally, that means calling someone a hole in the derriere: an anus from where fecal matter comes out! Maybe we should fight to the death with people who say that to us if taken literally, but in English slang, that just means a "rude or obnoxious person", and not literally a hole in the butt.
Recently my sister and her American husband moved here to Japan and her husband was showing me this cool application called Google Lens on his phone which was able to translate a Japanese magazine to English just by pointing his phone's camera at it. The OCR technology is so impressive but I compared the English translation to the Japanese on the magazine and it was still rather poor. I especially think this is prone to enormous misunderstanding especially when trying to translate informal Japanese and slang.
Further Allegations and Lack of Fact-Checking
I think one of the issues that upset me most are these further allegations made against her on top of these remarks made about short men and women with small breasts, there are accusations that she's made racist remarks, homophobic remarks, transphobic remarks. The cancel mob is so eager to spread such gossip.
Yet I looked into these further allegations and I cannot find a single source to back these claims. I also encountered Japanese boards from people who have watched her streams constantly unable to find a shred of evidence to support these claims.
These claims also have a distinctly Western tone to them in ways that seem very uncharacteristic of a Japanese mindset. I've even had the misfortune with my limited interactions with English speakers on the internet encountering people who have called me racist, homophobic, transphobic, and sexist, for remarks that aren't any of those. That seems to be a primary weapon among Western people who perpetuate the cancel culture.
So on top of lacking a shred of evidence to back these further claims beyond that short clip above which is largely misinterpreted and taken out of context, I strongly suspect that all these further allegations are simply a weaponized way of trying to completely destroy not only her career but all credibility as a human being by conflating a foolish woman who could probably barely harm a fly with an Adolf Hitler or a Ku Klux Klan leader. The people most eager to do this don't seem to value what is actually true in order to spread these claims.
Beyond Tanukana
If it was just Tanukana here, I would be a little bit worried and still trying to do my part in correcting the injustice towards her, but this seems to be a growing phenomenon with no end in sight.
Take Dave Chappelle as another example. He is one of my favorite English-speaking comedians who has also become a target of this cancel mob.
Thankfully, he is too resourceful and popular to have his entire livelihood ruined by this. He seems to be able to formidably fight back. But far fewer victims of the cancel culture are so successful, wealthy, resourceful, charming, humorous, to be able to bounce back from it. There's no path of redemption for the small-timers. For Tanukana, her articles already refer to her as a "was" rather than an "is" as far as her career.
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