I actually find it kind of disappointing whenever I see people take for granted this notion that the rise turtles necessarily should know Japanese, that they should have been written to know Japanese. And I understand where this impulse comes from, especially when you're viewing it in contrast with the other iterations. Like, in the 2012 version, while there isn't a lot of Japanese that is actively spoken, whenever it does come up, it's done in a way that you can surmise they speak it offscreen all the time. I honestly find it strange when people interpret Rise as having should have been done in the same way when so much obvious thoughtfulness went into this new approach for Splinter. Even stranger is that everyone clearly recognizes that everything going on with Splinter is a new approach, so seeing people be so casually dismissive of this element that seems so intentional to me is a shame.
While previous iterations have relied on certain stereotypes and tropes which present themes of being Japanese/of Japanese decent, rottmnt actively has themes of being a family of first and second generation Japanese American immigrants specifically. The experience of second and third generation immigrants not being able to speak their parents' or grandparents' first language isn't uncommon. Obviously that fact on its own is not where I expect anyone to pick up on this theme, but this specific part of it is actively addressed in the show. This element of immigration causing a devastating loss of culture and specifically language is something I rarely see portrayed in media despite the fact that second generation immigrants talk about it all the time. To the extent that there is a (kind of derogatory) term for Hispanic people who can't speak Spanish: no sabo kids*. The fact that Splinter actively didn't teach the turtles Japanese is canon and it was done so well.
Immigration is a difficult process that people don't decide to do casually. I feel like people trying to impose characteristics into him of maintaining certain elements of his culture seem to be dismissing that part of his character struggle.
Especially when people immigrate young, they often develop shame around their first country. Splinter may not have been as young as this often manifests, but he's still inexperienced and, as a person, very much values being liked (a similarity he shares with Leo). This was so much of his motivation towards becoming a celebrity. Maybe he wouldn't have developed a sense of shame about his culture if it weren't for his specific family situation. While he left in search of fame, his familial circumstances definitely drove him away, and while his family had it's own pressures and—in a sense—its own subcultural identity, it was definitely influenced by Japanese culture as a whole. There's an association there that—along with his drive for fame, the common perception of America as a land of opportunity, and his rejection of filial piety in the face of the social expectation—is going to lead to an overcompensation, in combination with the previously mentioned desire to fit in: the total (attempted) rejection of his culture isn't surprising. For Splinter this involved selling out his cultural identity entirely as Lou Jitsu.
It's not unheard of for people to reject their past lives entirely for the sake of building a new life (you don't need to be familiar with immigration stories in particular in order to recognize this), and—yes—even abandoning their first language in that pursuit. A first language can mean a lot to people, but for some, it is a weight. Imagine living such a difficult life that you decide to flee your home country, to a country with a very low population of people who speak your own language. You go through the effort to perfect the language as best you can just for the sake of being able to even just get a job. To get by. You have no support system, so you really need to be able to keep yourself afloat on your own and being familiar with the common tongue of your new country is your strongest tool. You try to speak it as much as possible while you're there for the first few years, because the best way to learn a language is through persistent practice, and you're already in this new country, and rarely have an opportunity to talk to anyone in your own language anyway. Until you do get the opportunity, and you find that after so long of not speaking it, not since you left where you were trying to escape, you find yourself right back there, mentally.
Immigrants get shit for not integrating well enough (you've all heard "This is America, speak English") and to see them work hard to manage overcoming what it takes to survive in a new country with no support system, work to keep bigots off their backs about it, only for supposed allies (and often luckier immigrants as well) to ridicule them for not doing it right. Not being of their culture enough. Some level of cultural drift is going to happen when adjusting to living in a new one, and something I do feel like people dismiss is the fact that Splinter may well have lived in the US for twice as long as he ever lived in Japan.
I understand where the impulse comes from (especially when you're aware of the fact these shows are mostly run by white people), to want to present the blatant Asian man as being somehow culturally uninfluenced by his time in America. As someone who might value preserving his culture. And I get why implementing their language is the most common way that people go about expressing that. Language can do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to maintaining cultural identity. Language is cultivated around it's culture and those ways of thinking. Occam's Razor tells us that it's an inoffensive, easy, and effective way of casually showing that a character is of their culture. But it's like no one stopped and considered that if it's so obvious, then why wasn't it implemented, and that's probably because most people can tell that it's even easier to just kind of ignore the Japanese language entirely. Previous iterations (like pretty much all of them) have basically just ignored it too after all (or in 2012's case, just subtly implied they were using it all the time in the background). The difference here is that there is an emphasis put on the fact that the turtles don't know Japanese, and it's like no one really questioned why.
Raph sounds embarrassed to ask Karrai what "Anatawa hitorijanai" means. It is embarrassing (look in the comment section of those sources already listed above and you'll see so many of them reflect how humiliating they find it). It's embarrassing to need your relatives to be translated.
It's also not super uncommon for this embarrassment to catch the parent(s) off guard, the parent who never taught their children language and customs, the parent who never thought teaching these things would be necessary. Who never expected their children to ever meet further distant relatives. We absolutely see this reflected in Splinter at Karrai's sudden arrival
A lot of immigrants operate with the understanding they may never see their family again, and obviously this was especially true back before the age of the internet, which was when Splinter would have immigrated. I think something a lot of people miss here is that immigration isn't a casual choice. It's usually done under duress. The fact that Splinter made the decision to move to America to me really serves to show just how crushing he must have found the pressure of being a Hamato to be. People have pointed out his similarities to Leo before and I think his teenage claim that he was going to America for the sole purpose of getting fame really parallels Leo's actions in the movie. They both didn't know how to tell their family (that they loved) how much the pressure that family was putting on them was hurting them so they lashed out and misbehaved and acted entitled. Leo did it in the hopes he would be deemed unfit for leadership and Splinter did it in the hopes they wouldn't miss him when he left. Because he cared about them.
There are lot of reasons someone might not teach their kids their language and culture, but with all that in mind, I do think we can surmise that Splinter associates his culture and first language with the pressure of being a Hamato. A pressure he never wanted to pass down to his sons. He is consistently very intentional about avoiding passing down his trauma (there are misses, yes, but the effort is obvious and I do think most people are aware of this). I think him going by a stage name probably adds to this. It was likely a choice made by his studio, but I'd bet really cemented these associations.
The theme of being confronted with the culture you wish you'd been taught all along is mostly relevant to the Shredder arcs. So much of the plot revolves around floundering with these expectations their heritage has of them and their lack of knowledge about it. It's also an element that is much harsher in the second arc, where those expectations are no longer limited to their dad, who still cushions them from the elements of his heritage he found traumatic. That cushion is no longer there. The exposure is raw and humiliating. It could be argued that the literal failure they're experiencing works well to reflect the way these cultural confrontations can make cultural decedents feel like failures for not fully grasping their own culture.
But while this theme really gets a spotlight in the Shredder arcs, it's pretty well baked into the show. This is seen primarily with the boys' obsession with Lou Jitsu. I know a lot of people interpret that they picked up their Lou Jitsu fascination from Splinter reliving his glory days vicariously, but frankly we never see Splinter just watching it on his own. He's way more drawn to trash game shows and soap dramas that presumably keeps his mind off of what was taken from him. I think more likely he hid them in the back of some closet, the boys found them and recognized Lou Jitsu as having the same accent and skill set as their father. Splinter wasn't going to teach them about their culture, the closest thing they have is this Americanized version written by white people in the 80s. Because sometimes that's all you have.
And while Splinter may have initially avoided the reminder his old life, I think his boys enthusiasm could get him past that. The fact that they're impressed with Lou Jitsu's skill (Splinter's skill that he does still have) it's something he's able to feel proud of again, instead of feeling the loss of his fame.
I think that idea really adds to the episode The Evil League of Mutants where Splinter says that he will train them, but only shows them more Lou Jitsu, because they've already been training through Lou Jitsu the whole time. They're indirectly asking for more than the cheap Americanized version of their culture, to be taught it directly from the source, from their dad. But he sees no reason for them to need to connect with that part of their heritage past Lou Jitsu, because he wants them to just be kids. If they really want to do this crime fighting thing then it should remain a game to them. It doesn't need to be all that serious. But it is that serious to them. They're having their heritage withheld from them and it's something they recognize (though you could debate how conscious that recognition is).
I've been seeing all the time lately, people talking about how we need less squeaky clean queer representation and how we need to "support women's wrongs," and while the struggle of having a complicated relationship with your heritage as a POC immigrant is something people have written stories about, and well received ones at that. But I've never seen this specific kind of narrative done. If you were to compare the Rise Hamato familiy to the EEAAO Wang family, Splinter would not be Evelyn, he would be Joy (in regards to his place in the overall Hamato clan). I worry that someone going through my sources might dismiss them as "Well these are kind of cherry picked stories, and not representative of the average experience of a first generation immigrant." And that's the mentality I'm trying to question. People ignoring Splinter's characterization as a person, as an individual, in favor of presenting him as part of a monolith. I don't expect that these specific stories of individuals I've sourced were the inspiration for Rise Splinter, but I do think that if you create the idea of a character and their individual psychology and then you go and apply the general mentalities that immigrants have in their responses to the migration, you can work out how that individual will respond to these factors. And looking at those individual stories that seem to reflect Splinter's so well, their conclusions about where it would take his character trajectory were accurate, if you compare it with the sources I've collected.
The thing that gets me about the casual dismissal of his lack of Japanese is that the explanation I've provided here isn't exactly speculative. It's just what's shown to us. It reflects the general experiences of definitely more than just the people willing to write about it. Something worth noting is that you don't get a lot of accounts from first generation immigrants who would have moved around the same time that Splinter did. This is because first generation immigrants often respond to the struggle of migration and their trauma, by shutting it out and not talking about it (unless it becomes completely unavoidable), yet another accuracy of Rise's depiction of Splinter as an immigrant.
They did such a good job of extracting the way immigration affects people in general, and applying that to how it would affect a certain character in particular. I highly recommend you watch the show with this theme in mind, with the boys yearning for the cultural connection their dad neglects them with. Why they might wear their masks, as a signifier of their heritage where they otherwise don't have any (as not only mutant turtles whose ethnic traits might not be visible, but also as people who never really get to socialize). Viewing their drive to learn how to fight better as an analogy for them wanting to connect with their heritage. Please watch the show with this in mind; it is so good.
*It wouldn't let me insert this link fsr https://www.tiktok.com/@/brandon.mindfulwander/video/7220616560061254955?
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