Is It Cultural Appropriation for My Daughter to Wear a Kimono for Cosplay? What I Learned
It was 10 PM on a school night, I was wiping crumbs of chocolate chip cookie off our kitchen table and my 13-year-old Lila leaned over her laptop, Demon Slayer wallpaper glowing on the screen. She’d been planning her first cosplay for a local anime convention for three weeks, and that night she finally pulled up a listing for a vintage silk kimono on Poshmark, then bit her lip and looked up at me. “Mom, my friend Mia in art class said if I wear this it’s cultural appropriation. I don’t want to be rude. I just really love Kanao. Is it okay?”
I froze. I’d scrolled enough hot takes online to know there were people on both sides screaming—one side said any non-Japanese person wearing a kimono is automatically offensive, the other said it’s just a piece of clothing, get over it. I didn’t want to shut down her excitement for no reason, but I also didn’t want to send her off accidentally hurting someone. I told her I didn’t have the answer right off the bat, but I knew someone who would. I texted Aiko, a Japanese American friend who leads cultural literacy workshops for local middle schools, and we met for coffee at the corner shop by the library the next morning.
Aiko stirred her matcha latte and didn’t give me a hard yes or no, which was exactly what I needed. She said context matters more than any blanket rule. “If she was throwing on a kimono to be a ‘geisha’ for Halloween, that’s one thing—you’re reducing a whole living culture to a gimmicky costume. That’s appropriation. But cosplay? She’s dressing up as a Japanese character created by a Japanese creator. She’s not stripping the kimono of its meaning to use it as a prop; she’s honoring the character she loves. That’s not appropriation.” She went on to say what actually counts isn’t being perfect, it’s being intentional. Small acts of respect go a lot further than following some random online rule.
When I got home, I told Lila what Aiko said, and we walked through those small intentional steps together, the same steps any parent can do if you’re stuck on this question. First, we spent 10 minutes watching a short video from a Japanese creator living in Tokyo who breaks down basic etiquette for people wearing casual kimono outside of Japan. Lila scribbled one note in her cosplay binder: left side over right. Right over left is only for funerals, that’s a small detail most cheap mass-produced costumes get wrong, and getting it right took less time than it takes to tie her soccer cleats. Second, we stuck with that vintage kimono listing on Poshmark. It was being sold by a Japanese American woman in Portland who was clearing out her late aunt’s closet, not a big fast fashion brand selling cheap “kimono costumes” that mock the actual garment. A week later it showed up, with a handwritten note from the seller saying her aunt wore this to her daughter’s wedding, and she hoped Lila had fun at the con. Lila taped that note to the inside of her cosplay binder right next to the left-over-right reminder.
Con day came, and I dropped her off with her friends, then wandered the artist alley killing time. A couple hours later she came bounding over with another girl trailing behind her—this girl was Japanese, cosplaying Kanao’s sister Shinobu, and she stopped me to say how much she loved Lila’s kimono. “Most people just buy the cheap Amazon one that’s all wrinkled and wrapped wrong,” she said. “This is gorgeous.” They swapped Instagram handles and made plans to go to the next fall con together.
I’ve thought a lot about this question since then, because so many of these small cultural questions pop up when you have a teen with online hobbies, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the all-or-nothing takes. I don’t have some grand universal answer, but I do have three concrete, low-effort things I’ll do the next time I’m stuck on a question like this. First, ask the context question straight up: Is my kid engaging with a character, story, or tradition from that culture, or are they using the culture as a generic gimmick for a party? If it’s the first, you’re already most of the way there. Second, do that 10-minute learning step: watch a short video from a creator from that culture, jot down the basic respect points, it’s not hard, and it turns a simple yes/no question into a real learning moment for your kid. Third, when you can, source what you need from people from that culture, instead of buying cheap knockoffs that exploit the culture for profit. You don’t need to spend a fortune, even buying from a small native Japanese seller on Etsy instead of Amazon makes a difference, and it teaches your kid that the people who created the culture get to benefit from it.
It’s not like this answered every question I’ll ever have. Last week Lila asked if she can get a temporary henna tattoo for her friend’s birthday party, and I’m already texting my neighbor who does traditional henna for community events to ask what the ground rules are. I don’t think you have to be perfect every time. What matters is that you stop, don’t just default to “it’s all fine” or “it’s all wrong” without thinking, and teach your kid to care enough to get the small stuff right. Lila’s already planning her next cosplay, a yukata-wearing character from Spirited Away, and she’s already looked up three different videos on how to tie an obi correctly. It turned a simple question about a costume into the kind of learning that sticks, and I’ll take that over a neat yes/no answer any day.
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