Cultural appropriation, cultural authenticity, second languages

In November, my editor and I got to discussing books, and on the subject of Samurai Shortstop, I said, "He didn't do enough research." Now, normally I actually think about the words that are going to come out of my mouth before I say them, and I could have considered that it might be unkind to criticize the books my own house puts out, so I don't know what happened there. And here's the thing: I was wrong. He did a lot of research. I can't say he should have done more without setting up a standard that I would consider unreasonable. But the way that the main character talks to his father! It's the same thing you see when a lot of Americans try to write Japanese characters. They can't quite decide whether the characters are Klingons or Americans chafing against the restrictions of Klingon society. And piling on the research into the factual details of history doesn't change that. (Do I know more about what it's like to be a 19th century Japanese boy than Alan Gratz? Hm? Surely not, but I can believe in Soseki's people, and Tanizaki's people, and Mori Oogai's people, in a way I can't believe in Toyo. Luckily, Gratz's book has no female characters in it that I can remember, and I don't have to contemplate whether he can write female Japanese characters that are more believable than Murakami Haruki's.)

So, when we talk about cultural appropriation, certain people always want to turn the topic towards Research, Doing Enough Of It. ( But if that were what it was about, <i>Samurai Shortstop</i> would be a culturally authentic book. )