As one of the students who discussed at length the culturally appropriative nature of the ‘Tokyo to Kyoto’ theme with other East Asian students, the Trinity Hall June Event committee, and Trinity Hall’s BME officer, I was relieved (to say the least) to hear that the decision had been made to change the theme. But the tirade of criticisms that followed the release of the news has become exhausting to unpack: in part because of its lack of perspective and nuance, but also because of the apparently wilful shutting out of the meaningful conversations which we must continue to have.

To be honest, there is very little left to be said about how this theme was damaging, commodifying, and exploitative. If you came here looking for an analysis of why we simply could not accept 'Tokyo to Kyoto' as a June Event theme, see Hanna Stephens’ personal reflections on the theme’s fetishisation of Japanese culture, or Miaoxi Wai’s article dissecting this problematic event. What I want to focus on, however, is why this is such an important issue in the context of the University of Cambridge. 

It is often said that Cambridge is a bubble. I disagree: as I wrote last week, the immutability of history is such that this place can only be a bubble for those who do not on an everyday basis experience the weight of symbolic and structural violence. Cambridge is a remnant of histories of colonialism, imperialism, and orientalism: today, in a kind of cruel irony, many of us occupy the same spaces in which men of history made merciless, violent decisions about the worthlessness of our communities.  

It astounds me, then, that people can do their entire degree here without even considering that the context of Cambridge itself might make certain things problematic and downright painful to experience. Because while it is painful enough to feel alienated in a place where you are incommensurably Other, it is absolutely excruciating to have your culture – that is, the very culture that others alienate you for – reduced to synecdochic images and snappy slogans, put on a pedestal, commodified and fetishised from a comfortable distance. To watch strangers parade your origins for £100 a pop, while you are prevented from living authentically and comfortably as someone not-from-here for fear of criticism, derision, sanction, and further alienation. At its core, this is a modern modality of a historical form of oppression: Orientalism. And it is violent precisely because it appears innocuous to the outsider, only affecting those who have a historical understanding of its dark truth.

Bringing this back to the June Event itself, I do not understand how we could be asked to trust an event committee to appropriately represent an entire culture, an entire nation, to hundreds of people in a night of festivities, in which a theme is merely an “eclectic” appendage, a tool to elicit “oohs” and “ahs”.  It is moreover baffling to me that we could be asked to trust an arbitrary group of strangers to act appropriately towards a culture that they have never experienced at an end-of-year celebration, where the point is presumably to lose one’s inhibitions – to not think critically – after a year of hard work. This is not me dismissing people as “ignoramuses”. This is me being realistic about what May Week is about.

From the start of Trinity Hall’s original June Event announcement, there was truly nothing for me – us – to believe in. After looking at the reductive and stereotypical marketing of the event’s website together, we simply could not trust that the committee would be culturally sensitive; we could not trust that every individual who attended the Event would be receptive and eager to learn about Japanese culture. Proceeding with good faith and believing in the sincerity of intentions was impossible when one clear corollary was the infliction of symbolic violence and pain to an already oppressed group (evidenced not least by the many Japanese students who expressed their deep discomfort at the theme). In this way, I agree with another author that this theme was far from mac ’n’ cheese; it was a showcase in ‘eating the Other’, as described by bell hooks.

Ultimately, just as one cannot expect Newnham College’s ‘Cosmos’-themed June Event to expound on the complexities of dark matter, one cannot expect a June Event to be an appropriately-educative forum. If students really wanted to learn, to engage in dialogue, they would listen – really listen – to the students who protest against cultural appropriation, in all of its forms. They would listen to the students who are privy to its violence. They would attend forums explicitly designed as call-ins/discussion groups, on this subject; they would not wait to have a culture dished up and made palatable to them for a price.

NB: to all future event committees out there: if you’re looking for a theme, try this:

“Come aboard Thameslink as we take you on a journey from Bedford to Brighton. The sounds, sights, and smells associated with this love-letter to high-speed travel will blend seamlessly with the best in tinny overhead announcements. Experience everything from relentless sound of babies crying to the presence of sleepy commuters sitting in dusty compartments: the eclectic history of a nation funded by a history of colonialism and conquest.”