Gwen Stefani suffers major 'cultural appropriation' backlash after declaring 'I'm Japanese'

The tone-deaf pop star made the comments to an Asian-American journalist

In today's world, you might expect that big stars have the common sense to avoid casual comments about cultures other than their own.

However, it seems that Gwen Stefani didn't get that memo, as the pop star has come under fire for comments she made in a recent interview.

As you may recall, Stefani went through a phase in the early 2000s where her style was heavily influenced by Japanese culture - most notably on her song 'Harajuku Girls', which even saw her singing in Japanese.

She went on to release a perfume called Harajuku Lovers and featured Japanese and Japanese-American dancers in her live set-up for some time. Some accused her of cultural appropriation at the time, considering she has no Japanese or Asian heritage herself - akin to an Irish person walking around Electric Picnic in a Native American headdress.

However, Stefani has further stoked the fire with recent comments that explained her pilfering from Japanese culture.

She said that as a child, her father worked in Japan and would bring stories back that influenced her, saying "That was my Japanese influence and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic; so much attention to art and detail and discipline, and it was fascinating to me."

Nothing wrong there, you might argue.

She continued on, saying that when she later visited the country for herself, "I said, 'My God, I’m Japanese and I didn’t know it'."

The journalist for Allure magazine, who is Filipina-American, noted an uncomfortable silence before Stefani insisted: "I am, you know."

She added: "If [people are] going to criticise me for being a fan of something beautiful and sharing that, then I just think that doesn’t feel right. I think it was a beautiful time of creativity… a time of the ping-pong match between Harajuku culture and American culture. 

"[It] should be okay to be inspired by other cultures because if we’re not allowed then that’s dividing people, right?"

The Twitter backlash was swift...