Man, you really need to read some nonfiction about Asia or Africa. I recomment The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan.

Thanks for the recommendation!

What exactly is your difficulty in writing about the Edo Period? The question doesn't make a lot of sense.

Personally, it's making a Edo era style of culture match in a setting based in European 15th century style. Knight meets Samurai! Also, Elder Scrolls.

One landowner warrior class meet another landowner warrior class. What exactly difficult?

My thought exactly. While the two socio-political systems weren't identical, they were largely comparable, and the technological gap wasn't that large.

If they use European as 15th century, then Edo Japan probably don't have really technological gap. No bigger then between some European powers.

No, the Edo period is technologically superior. During the later half of the Sengoku Judai and the beginning of the Edo period, Japan was in contact with 16th-century Europe.

Depend from what you mean under "technologically superior". Japan lack of firearms (at least European level) and their armour was, well, worse then European ones.

Japan didn't lack firearms they were just incredibly tightly regulated after the 1630s, there were tens of thousands of matchlocks fielded at Sekigahara for example. >armour was, well, worse then European ones. Except when they were using Western-style cuirasses. Their armour is pretty much equivalent to 16th-century european armour.

I don't trust myself to get the languages right. Japanese, maybe. Probably not Chinese. But also maybe. I'm very "modular" when it comes to processing the world and things have to fit together in a certain type of way for me to be able to work with it. I could maybe learn the modularity factor of the languages behind those mythologies, but there are so many more variables with things like the Chinese languages and different intonations and ways to transliterate into western alphabets. Plus, add to that the act of putting your own spin on the mythology or deciding to use them as they are originally, and there's even more variables. And they're interesting and complex enough mythologies that they deserve a level of respect and attention I'm just not capable of lending or affording them most of the time, so I kind of just leave it to someone better suited to the task. ETA: It comes to my realization this post was about races, as in people, and not, like, mythological creatures and folklore *from* those cultures! 😅 (Like kitsune or qilin/kirin, or...see, I'm already not sure if I'm getting it right.) *Races* are different. I'm definitely interested in that, and I've developed a few that are about as loosely-inspired by those ideas and imageries as my western-themed cultures are. (My elves aren't *German*, but they use heavily Germanic names and come from a world that was designed to be an in-universe explanation for where Germanic names and language elements come from, so their entire culture is themed around "what if this folklore sounded like German, but it was actually entirely original and fantasy-based". As a for instance.) The languages thing is an aspect of this too, though. *Avatar* (groan if you must) did a fun job with its naming schemes and themes for each culture, and with the recent work I've been doing on cultural development and expanding my horizons, I could *maybe* reach into it, but I would struggle again between deciding to do wholly original linguistic elements or using actual words (and turn them into something totally new, probably). I could probably get there. It's a lot of what I'm already doing, as I said, with western and European elements. (I even twist the "Germanic" elements into brand new words and names and concepts. "Westerhive", "Figholm", and "Agmore" are almost certainly not German or even fully Germanic, but they're different enough from the rest of the names and unique enough to *this* specific culture for it to also be "decidedly not German in-universe either".) It just takes practice. It's like a staircase, and representing/twisting into new shapes/taking inspiration from those cultures is at a level I haven't reached yet. But I'm putting the practice in, so maybe I'll get there at some point. 😄 Keyword is "yet". ETA 2: Doing something based on an even-*less*-commonly-presented cultural inspiration would be cool too. Fantasy Vietnam? Fantasy banh mi after fantasy France has fantasy influences? 😋 I'm doing mostly *original* cultures at the moment to try my hand at creating from whole cloth before going to more complex tasks like that, but it's worthwhile to think about! I'll have to consider all this stuff for the future.

Mythical creatures is welcome too! 😄  Thank you for your points!

For me I kinda had to stop myself and rethink and redesign my ideas for a Far East inspired faction because I eventually realised it was pretty much just a rehashed Ancient China. So now I’m taking in new ideas and looking at cultures all over the Far East and trying to come up with something new and truly fantastical instead of just “Discount Ancient China” or “Discount Feudal Japan”. Not that there’s anything wrong with that it’s okay to have obviously inspired fantasy vikings, samurai, knights etc I personally just like the idea of having something that’s deeply fantastical with a blend of different cultures so it’s not an obvious real world copy.

I see.

A complaint I have heard from people of Asian descent is that when non-Asians incorporate history/lore/etc for their version of "Japan", it tends to just be a cliched stereotypical Japan and China, fully of kung fu monks, ninjas, and samurai. Asia of course is a big place, But if you are someone not from those two regions you might as well not exist. So if you want to tackle East Asia in your setting I would advise taking a look at other parts of the world (Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, etc), or build off other eras of history. I mean I think having ninjas and samurai isn't bad in and of itself, it's only bad when that is all that exists. There is a pretty good Pathfinder RPG setting book that does just this that is either soon to come out or already has, if you want inspiration).

Why would it be hard writing "Eastern" characters? Just research if you lack familiarity? It's that simple, ennit? Even if it's about clashing aesthetics... *Dungeon Meshi* literally has feudal Asian-inspired characters in the otherwise feudal Europe-inspired story. Further, Forgotten Realms has both also (to less successful degrees). The idea that it's hard to mix these aesthetics really stems from the fact that you haven't researched the specific you want to include. This can be fixed through research.

That's what I said to my friend!

I’m writing a story with a setting that’s half in your typical medieval European fantasy setting, and half in a Chinese wuxia-esque setting. I can speak Chinese and have a better understanding of Chinese culture and history than the average person from a Western country, but even so I really fear ending up writing a story that just really sounds like a caricature of Chinese culture (and not in a good way). Even with all the years I’ve spent immersed in Chinese culture I don’t feel like I haven’t read enough Chinese wuxia stories and I don’t have a deep enough understanding of folk stories and myths or even Chinese fantasy tropes. Yeah, there’s going to be Chinese dragons in my story, but couldn’t I incorporate less well-known Chinese mythical creatures? How do I strike a balance between adhering to Chinese mythology while still add my own flavor to it (and not just ripping a whole idea from a Wikipedia article) Additionally, when world building, there’s a lot of difficult decisions I have to make when it comes to depicting “long long ago in China”, but not having totally anachronistic elements. I’m mainly basing my setting off the Ming dynasty, but there are some elements from other periods that I want to add. Then there’s even little details that I have to be careful with… for example when describing food, I might have to research what foods were common for the time etc. Because I’m not Chinese, I often feel a little blind. I can’t tell if my Chinese story elements would look totally inauthentic to someone from the culture, or if I’ve somehow actually hit the mark. Even though I’m not writing for a Chinese audience, depicting things in a way that doesn’t scream “Chinese story written by Westerner”is important to me because I’ve seen stories like that before, and I find them quite cringy.

I am not sure I understand your question. In my current work I am including people with looks of all kinds, but leaving their real-world cultures out of the story (just as I keep western culture out of it). It is a fantasy world that draws inspiration from everywhere but has no distinctive resemblance to any real world location. So I wouldn’t use any Asian language, clothing style or architecture just in combination with the Asian looking characters. Does that make sense? I don’t always like how different races get their own different countries / regions in a lot of fantasy settings, with “white/western” being the main showplace and all others being the exotic neighbors. So at least with my current project I am treating it as everyone just lives in one big merged culture/region

Interesting!

I suspect the main issues here are lack of understanding and research combined with to much reliance on tropes. A lot of "eastern peoples" in many fantasy works end up appearing as extremly clished carricatures of asian cultures, where both the inspiration but also the prejudices and the lack of understanding is obvious. But there is a very simple remedy: Do you research. Reading about cultures gives you more understanding of them and how you can write inspired by them without turning them into tired and boring carricatures.

You know the Chinese have over ten ways to describe Asian centric eyes within their own cultures. I think the best thing to do is research everything and if it’s used in the book site your references.

I feel like I’m lucky in this aspect. I don’t particularly write about Japanese people but I include some stuff inspired by Japanese culture in my work. What I have the luxury of doing is asking my spouse or friends. “Is this okay? Do you think this would offend regular people from here (Japan)? Is there something else I can add to make it more realistic or enhance what I want to portray?” I’ve been lucky enough to visit many museums, shrines, and temples here in japan, learn some old, old history, and ask questions to a lot of people to get the context that will inspire me. This is what I recommend if you can. Find communities of the area and just ask questions, do virtual museum tours if possible and don’t rely on clichés from media.

Outward perceptions are worrisome. I know the difference between all the East Asian cultures I reference, but by combining them into their own unique culture, I run the risk of appearing as if I don't.

My issues mainly stem from making sure I’m not mixing up cultures. China was different from Korea, and China and Korea are different from Japan. If I’m going to portray them in fantasy, I don’t want to just have one monolithic Wast Asian state that represents all of East Asia. Not only that, but East Asian cultures aren’t some foreign and super alien thing. They were very involved in world trade, especially China In the 17th century, China was probably the most advanced and metropolitan culture in the world (and it had been for 150 years prior and many years after) including the Americas which had not yet come into contact with Eurasia, Africa, etc… Contact between Europe and the Indian Ocean trading world (which included India, Middle East, Africa, Japan, China) mainly came through the Silk Road and Portuguese voyages around Africa, which makes sense. The Portuguese wanted to go around Africa and not through the Silk Road because the Silk Road to China was mainly controlled by 3 Muslim “Gunpowder Empires” that were too powerful to take on. These empires levied heavy taxes on luxury goods coming in from China as they had a monopoly, and people (especially Europe) wanted an alternative way to get to China. Europe is sort of the little guy at this time in history and no one cares about them. They have little to offer to the world in terms of goods. Around this time, Japan was also thriving. Japan isolated themselves from foreign powers (except for with the Dutch as the the Dutch were the only ones not interested in preaching their religion and just wanted to do business) in the 17th century when the rest of the world went to shit. This would be the Tokugawa shogunate, aka the Edo period. Korea was overrun by the Manchu who had also just taken China and established the Ching dynasty at the beginning/middle ish of the 17th century.

Not really sure tbh since I would have my fantasy world be inspired by different cultures in general and that includes eastern cultures. Especially since the endgame love interest of my MC would be from a country/kingdom inspired by eastern culture and not just Japan.

Personally for me it depends if they fit in the first place. In fantasy settings like Forgotten Realm,  Warhammer Fantasy or Elder Scrolls there is an obvious East Asian continent in the world where sure yeah it makes sense that some people came from there and migrated. Then you get settings like World of Warcraft where the China based continent of Pandaria is populated by Panda people which is fine but several expansions later players can customize human characters to genuinely look asian or african. Its a bit of an eyebrow raiser  for me to suddenly see multi ethnic human societies in a medieval fantasy setting unless there is an explanation for it because otherwise it looks pretty fake.

Duly noted!

> Its a bit of an eyebrow raiser for me to suddenly see multi ethnic human societies in a medieval fantasy setting unless there is an explanation for it because otherwise it looks pretty fake. Uh, why? Even IRL, you had the entirety of "the Mediterranean" which was pretty damn multi-ethnic, because it's only a short-ish boat trip from Africa to the Middle East to Europe, so you get a lot of visibly different people in trade towns, some of whom then put down roots. Travel along the silk road, and you'd get traders from all over. China itself is multi-ethnic, with various iterations of (proto-)China ruling over different parts and bringing the people together into a (proto-)nation-state. Even somewhere smaller like the UK is visibly multi-ethnic, with the Celts, then the Roman invasion (bringing over a lot of other Europeans), then the Norman conquest and so on. Even Japan itself is multi-ethnic, with the Ainu! (and, if it hadn't been for Japan sealing themselves away, there would likely have been a lot more Korean and Chinese immigrant communities). Somewhere that's mono-ethnic is normally some backwoods hicksville, that outsiders don't want to go to - any decent-sized trade-town is likely to attract travellers from some distance away, some of whom will settle down. Any natural transport routes (rivers, lakes, calm seas) emphasise this even more.

Really depends where it was and when. Lets not pretend that even during the time periods of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar, the populations of Greece and the Italian peninsula were not dominantly what we today would identify as European. Or during the Medieval period which a lot of fantasy settings like to take after, lets also not pretend that there somehow were a lot of Black, Asian or Arabic people living in say France, the British Isles or the Holy Roman Empire vs say Spain. Or how in China or Japan there was always one dominant ethnic group that either wiped out or absorbed other groups over time where if you go to both countries today there will still be a dominant ethnic group ruling the country. I agree with areas of the world where you did have a lot of intermingling sure you would see a lot of mixings with the people but I am sure there too were areas the people were fairly homogenous in terms of looks and appearances. For Fantasy settings like Elder Scrolls yeah it makes sense to have an entire towns populated by different races because it is part of the setting that for the most part the people of Tamriel were united under a single empire so it was easy to move around if you had the money for it. Skyrim which takes place in the homeland of the Nordic fantasy viking people does a great job with this by having several of the Redguards, a people with a clearly heavy Arabic African based culture make it clear that they moved to Skyrim or the obviously Roman Empire based Imperials make it clear they moved in from there homeland of Cyrodil. HBO's Game of Thrones I think is something that really got the casting right in a very subtle. Everyone in Westeros is something I am sure most people will consider as White with Dorne being very unique for having more mixed people people which makes sense as it is clearly a country based on Spain. Then we go to Daenarys side of things where her being surrounded by people of a lot of different other ethnicities helps emphasize the feel that she is a foreign princess in a foreign land. In both continents the countries that were being portrayed felt way more believable because of the people living there. Then we get shows like The Netflix's Witcher or Amazon's Rings of Power where lets face it, a lot of the casting choices were clearly for the sake of diversity first and foremost and both shows overall lets just say are not doing well now. In the Witcher the twins Tea and Vea are supposed to be these exotic foreign warriors where them being women really makes them stand out compared to everyone else and it would make sense for them to be played by Black actresses but since there are black people everywhere in the Netlix Witcher world, they lose that exotically foreign feel. In Ring of Power they really hamfisted the fantasy mixed race relationship between that one elf soldier and the human woman he was in love with by making the elf be played by a Black guy. It just really killed any of the subtlety they could have been aiming for with a message about how love knows no boundaries between races, especially between an immortal fantastical being and a mortal woman compared to the Peter Jackson movies where Aragorn and Arwen's relationship is a minor subplot but one that has helps the audience like both characters more. Having an explanation for why you can have societies with multiple races and ethnicities helps a lot with the world building of Fantasy settings because it helps make it more believable.

> populations of Greece and the Italian peninsula were not dominantly what we today would identify as European. Uh, since when was "European" a single ethnicity? You seem to be using a very modern, and _very_ narrow definition of "ethnicity", which is pretty much not true in any meaningful sense (China, for example, is home to multiple ethnicities, not just "Chinese". The UK alone has multiple "native" ethnicities, and many that immigrated generations ago, and a lot of crossover with neighbouring ethnicities). There would, especially in Rome, have been a LOT of other visibly different people. Egyptians, northern Europeans, Greeks, the middle east, Persians, and that's just the relatively close-by ones. > I agree with areas of the world where you did have a lot of intermingling sure you would see a lot of mixings with the people but I am sure there too were areas the people were fairly homogenous in terms of looks and appearances. Yeah - the backwater, shitty, poor parts, where travellers don't want to go. > people of Tamriel were united under a single empire so it was easy to move around if you had the money for it. You mean... like Rome? Or Persia? Or China? Y'know, fairly large chunks of time and space in real history? (and it doesn't even take a lot of money - it's _inconvenient_, but if someone just wants to leave, then they can move about 30 miles a day on foot and scrounge and scavenge on the way. Hard work, to be sure, but not some impossible thing, especially if there's drought or famine or some other compelling reason to leave!) > Or during the Medieval period which a lot of fantasy settings like to take after, lets also not pretend that there somehow were a lot of Black, Asian or Arabic people living in say France, the British Isles or the Holy Roman Empire vs say Spain. In a trading town? Yes, there would be - enough to have semi-stable populations. The HRE was pretty big, and pretty wealthy, which attracts people. England, as I mentioned, has multiple ethnicities _by itself_, despite being a small island, so unless you're using a very modern "white is an ethnicity", it absolutely did have lots of ethnicities. And go to London, and yes, you'd get a lot of different peoples around (there's been synagogues since about the 12th century). And even you're suddenly comparing that with Spain, which, last time I checked, was very much part of Europe! > Then we get shows like The Netflix's Witcher or Amazon's Rings of Power where lets face it, a lot of the casting choices were clearly for the sake of diversity first and foremost and both shows overall lets just say are not doing well now. Um, not really. The main human population is descended from extra-dimensional travellers who came through about 500 years ago, and then heavily interbred with elves. So there's no particular reason to assume they're all northern European, because they didn't evolve in place (and elves seem to follow broadly similar ethnicities to human). And there's very few descriptions given of characters (most people just follow game-looks, but the games aren't canon) - so yeah, why would they all be pseudo-polish, when they're interdimensional refugees that can have all sorts of different looks, and in 500 years, that's not long enough to erase them.

Every time I write a human who isn't a white American, I worry I'm doing it wrong. Still gonna do it and hope for the best.

> But it I am being honest, I've first heard the term from Tolkien's work and lore Can't relate, by age 2 or 3 I already knew that our carpet was Persian, and Persia was a cool and exotic Eastern country. Even though it's to the south of us. But whatever. One gets plenty of exposure to various non-traditionally European cultures in these parts, not to mention the recent popularity of Japanese/Korean/Chinese pop culture trends. The only idea you could pick up from Tolkien is how to view these influences through the eyes of an Englishman. Which is an interesting thought experiment, but, you know.. > Which to this day, probably inspire most of my cultures that reside in the East I fail to see a reason why you would choose to be inspired by him in this regard, instead of more diverse sources like, IDK, history.. reality.. or something. Tolkien was writing a very Anglocentric story and without blinking an eye had put folks who were kinda Slavic, kinda Arabic, and vaguely North African under the same banner. Behold the power of Sauron to transcend time and space. > But for some, it seems that many find writing a Eastern culture/race difficult due to time periods and plot reasons. As others have already mentioned, this isn't some insurmountable problem. Nobody was born with extensive knowledge of anything. It's an obstacle that you need to overcome via research.

My story is set in the West.