Gwen Stefani is coming under fire for saying she is Japanese.
In an interview with Jesa Marie Calaor for Allure, the 53-year-old singer and fashion entrepreneur repeated the story of how she learned about Japan’s Harajuku subculture from her father Dennis, whose job at Yamaha required frequent trips to Japan over 18 years.
Stefani got to experience Harajuku for herself as an adult. “I said, ‘My God, I'm Japanese and I didn't know it,’” she said. “I am, you know.”
Stefani, though, was born to an Italian-American father and an Irish-American mother.
Calaor, who is Asian-American, wrote that Stefani “said more than once that she is Japanese … During our interview, Stefani asserted twice that she was Japanese and once that she was ‘a little bit of an Orange County girl, a little bit of a Japanese girl, a little bit of an English girl.’ Surely, she didn’t mean it literally or she didn’t know what she was saying?”
Calaor said she was contacted the following day by a rep for Stefani, who claimed she had "misunderstood what Stefani was trying to convey.”
Gwen Stefani, pictured in 2004. Kevin Mazur / WireImage/Getty Images
Stefani’s 2005 tour, in support of her debut album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. was called the Harajuku Lovers Tour, during which she was backed by dancers called the "Harajuku Girls."
As she has done previously, Stefani downplayed accusations of cultural appropriation. “If we didn't buy and sell and trade our cultures in, we wouldn't have so much beauty, you know? We learn from each other, we share from each other, we grow from each other,” she said.
“And all these rules are just dividing us more and more."