To write about a different culture is not easy. There are many things to consider and it might be hard to spot what you might have written wrongly about other cultures because you simply have no idea how they are like.

An easy way to train this is to look at how other cultures write about your own culture as this is something you know and can spot the differences and easily understand where they come from.

I’m going to go through some of these differences I have encountered when reading east asian literature and comics like manhwa and manga to show what I mean.

1.    Views on marriage and dating

I have encountered several stories where east Asians has put out western stories with very strange ideas on marriages. At least from a western viewpoint. It might be a modern setting with arranged marriages for example. Getting married after one date or marrying a complete stranger because your family said so.

Needless to say, this is not western culture where you date for at least one year, move together for another before you even consider marriage. Arranged marriage just doesn’t exist even among the elites such as royalty and hasn’t for at least a hundred years and even then it was first a lot of dating before you even considered marriage. 

We can here see a very different dating culture from the western and asian continents and it is easy to forget that not all cultures view marriages and dating the same.

2.    Collective punishment and public shame

This is very present in historical novels or mangas. Maybe one person intends to overthrow the king of a made up western country and suddenly their entire family is killed and whoever survived, often children, has to live in eternal shame. Or in a modern setting it might be a person marrying outside her status or marrying your own gender and suddenly your entire family has to bear your shame.

This concept is very east asian where everything is connected to family and name. There is no, or at least very little, such thing. Western countries emphasize individuality and has done since the introduction of Christianity where every soul bears their own sin. Your father’s sin is not yours so to speak.

That means that the killing of an entire family because one person in that family did wrong is not a western phenomenon even if it was in east asia and I have encountered this in east asian stories about western culture far too often for them to just have forgotten. It’s more likely that they believe this is something we western folk do or at least did.

Not to mention public shame, where in east asian stories the shamed party almost always end up fired and unable to get a job which is pretty unheard of in western cultures where you can’t fire people easily since we have laws against it.

3.    Status

Now, most who has any encounter with east asian culture knows that they have a stricter view on status that we in west do. This can be seen when east asian depict western cultures as well as they tend to forget or not understand certain aspects of how we see titles and status.

A common misconception among asian literature seem to be the differences between their emperors and our kings or their CEOs compared to ours. In asian culture power and wealth is everything and you can get away with murder. It’s a given there, but not so much in western culture. There are times where higher ups might be able to buy yourself out of punishment, or at least get a easier punishment then a poor person but it’s still considered a crime.

For example, the concept of an emperor being put on trial would be quite ridiculous. But there are several kings who was put on trial and even executed. Charles I was executed for high treason, and Gustav IV Adolf was arrested by nobles and forced to abdicate because of his crimes. It wasn’t common, but kings had to stand trial often losing their crown for their incompetence and this was a given. The reason why we see far less bloody crimes among kings in West compared to east asia is because even kings was under scrutiny of the law. They couldn’t just accuse and have people executed without trials. It might happen but those cases were very few.

Even nobles could be punished for killing a servant as this was considered a crime as well. The amount of east asian stories I have read where the noblemen whip and kill servants without anyone is ridiculous. Now there are exceptions here in Europe, but the exception was not because it was allowed to kill those of lower status, it was because they hadn’t gotten caught yet. Some famous examples of this are Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Gilles de Rais. The amount these people killed comes from their high status but in the end, they were caught and punished for their crimes despite all that.

4.    Language and the meaning of words

This one is easiest to spot. One example I can give is the manhwa “ The monstrous duke’s adopted daughter”. So what’s the problem? Well, the duke in question is a woman. With other words, the correct term would be duchess. Other examples are names. The amount of female names on men or male names on women is ridiculous. Girls named Emir (meaning prince), or boys named Alice or Helen.

Not to mention the use of titles such as duke without understanding the meaning behind it. Dukes are rare and is a title only given to the siblings of the crown prince, the direct children of the king. Not to random families and Archdukes is even more rare. Most countries has never had one. In certain stories, such as The Male Lead’s Little Lion Daughter, there isn’t just one duke family. It’s several and none has any relation with the king.

Though some of these can be understandable some can be easily solved with a search on the internet.

5.    Diversity and acceptance

Now I want to end it on a more positive note. East Asian stories often depict the western world as a diverse utopia. Especially in BL genres such as Shounen Ai. They have no prejudices and different ethnicities live in harmony.

Though nice and see, and in some cases such as sexuality it might be true compared to east Asia but knows about the tension between ethnicities. Not only the white European disliking everyone else and being racism but the hate and prejudices the minorities has for each other or the white majority. There is also still a lot of negative opinions on gay people, especially in America.

The misunderstanding here comes most likely from east Asians having nearly no diversity so the problems arising from diversity is not present and homosexuals are treated much better in Europe and America so it is understandable that they think we are far mor open about it.

Conclusion

These are just some of the things I noticed and as I mention and there are more such as how other cultures often get historical and modern clothes of different western cultures wrong. But I felt those was often obvious to spot. I wanted to mention the more easily missed ones.

The purpose is to read these and consider am I doing the same thing just with other cultures? Am I depicting lengthy dating and romances in a society that has a culture of arranged speed marriages? Am I depicting a culture far more accepting than it actually is? Might this culture see society differently than me? If any of these is yes, then it might be time to look up the differences.

I doubt you can get it perfectly, and frankly, I don’t believe you need to get it perfectly. I can still enjoy East Asian’s try of depicting western culture even if they get some of it wrong. The problem comes when the other party isn’t even trying to get it right and just show a shallow version of that culture.

Despite all the criticism, especially when westerners depict other cultures, I do think it is interesting when it happens if only because it gives inside in how another culture views your own culture. Whether its correct or not can be discussed but it gives us a new point of view which cannot be depicted if a person writes about their own culture.

With Kind Regards

Senefer.