{"id":46146,"date":"2019-05-15T14:51:47","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T18:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=46146"},"modified":"2019-05-16T12:34:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T16:34:04","slug":"paige-asuka-defend-use-and-meaning-of-kabuki-warriors-tag-team-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/05\/15\/paige-asuka-defend-use-and-meaning-of-kabuki-warriors-tag-team-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Paige, Asuka Defend Use and Meaning of Kabuki Warriors Team Name"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday night&#8217;s edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2019\/05\/15\/smackdown-live-highlights-rundown-kevin-owens-enlists-an-old-friend-for-help-5-14-19\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em><strong>SmackDown Live<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, the new pairing of <strong>Asuka<\/strong> and former NXT Women&#8217;s Champion <strong>Kairi Sane<\/strong> were officially given a tag team name, when their advocate <strong>Paige<\/strong> called them the <strong>Kabuki Warriors<\/strong>. It set off a chain reaction of comments from fans around the world who immediately felt it was a cultural stereotype in branding them something so clearly Japanese, but also a tad bit ignorant, considering that\u00a0<em>kabuki<\/em> theater in Japan is solely performed by male actors, and has for centuries.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Kabuki Warriors vs. Mandy Rose &amp; Sonya Deville: SmackDown LIVE, May 14, 2019\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9DQQ9oNNxd0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But as the backlash continued throughout the night, Paige took to her Twitter to clarify that the seemingly racist name that everyone was blaming WWE for assigning to the two Japanese wrestlers was actually a name chosen by Asuka and Kairi themselves. Apparently, the duo had originally wanted to be called Kabuki Girls (perhaps a nod to the legendary All Japan Women&#8217;s tag team <strong>Crush Gals<\/strong>), but that it was slightly altered to change &#8220;girls&#8221; to &#8220;warriors&#8221; to give them more strength.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">You know it was the girls who chose their name right? Well technically they wanted \u201ckabuki girls\u201d but it was changed to kabuki warriors. Chill <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2p5TAspX9h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/2p5TAspX9h<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; PAIGE (@RealPaigeWWE) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RealPaigeWWE\/status\/1128571756472668160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 15, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But Paige wasn&#8217;t the only one. Asuka herself took to her own Twitter to explain that the reference was not based around the\u00a0<em>kabuki\u00a0<\/em>theater name, but the root itself,\u00a0<em>kabukimono<\/em>, which translates to &#8220;strange things&#8221;. Asuka explained that people who were considered\u00a0<em>kabukimono\u00a0<\/em>were &#8220;eccentric who attracted public attention with their eye-catching clothes, peculiar hairstyle, and weird behavior.&#8221; Another meaning of\u00a0<em>kabukimono<\/em> were that of rogue samurai (or\u00a0<em>ronin<\/em>) who would work together in gangs.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Kabukimono \u50be\u5947\u8005<br \/>Sengoku or Edo-period eccentric who attracted public attention with their eye-catching clothes, peculiar hairstyle, and weird behavior <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/HcdruoYQti\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/HcdruoYQti<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; ASUKA \/ \u660e\u65e5\u83ef (@WWEAsuka) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWEAsuka\/status\/1128509214429573120?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 15, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Much like how many Westerners have shown some disgust over the use of the term Ringkampf for WALTER&#8217;s stable in Germany&#8217;s Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw) (many associate <em>kampf\u00a0<\/em>with Adolph Hitler&#8217;s autobiographical\u00a0<em><strong>Mein Kampf<\/strong><\/em><em>, <\/em>but\u00a0<em>kampf\u00a0<\/em>is a normal German word meaning\u00a0<em>struggle<\/em>), it would appear that many people are simply jumping onto the most common Western association of the word and ignoring the actual culture that the performers are representing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday night&#8217;s edition of SmackDown Live, the new pairing of Asuka and former NXT Women&#8217;s Champion Kairi Sane were officially given a tag team name, when their advocate Paige called them the Kabuki Warriors. It set off a chain reaction of comments from fans around the world who immediately felt it was a cultural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":46150,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,26,317,3,320],"tags":[229,5174,1428,194,52],"class_list":["post-46146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-smackdown","category-women","category-wwe-universe","category-wwe-women","tag-asuka","tag-kabuki-warriors","tag-kairi-sane","tag-paige","tag-smackdown"],"modified_by":"Ben Kerr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}