The World of Ninjago
The world of Ninjago was fundamentally created through the colonist lens. It was designed by white people who cannot imagine a world free of whiteness—more specifically, an Asian country without the influence of the West and colonialism. Its primary sins are oriental generalizations, choice-coding urban and rural areas, and the influence of "chop suey font" when designing their written conlang.
What's important to keep in mind is that cultural products like Ninjago don't exist in a vacuum. Ninjago may be a fictitious world, but the ideas its young audience gets about Asian culture and Asian people are very real.
Oriental Generalizations
Because of a lack of effort in research and design by the Ninjago team, the world of Ninjago is an orientalist fusion of the Japan and China of both today and yesterday. Over and over, it mixes architectural styles, wildly-different traditional clothing (even misnaming an outfit designed like the Chinese qipao to be the Japanese kimono), and lore from both mythologies, such as Japanese Oni with Chinese yin-yang concepts.
There's a fundamental lack of respect for both cultures that this random mixing shows. Clearly they didn't have a cultural consultant on hand for accuracy; it's much more likely the designers were just pulling up random reference images, or even working from their own ideas about what an oriental fantasy world would look like.
The exterior of Kai and Nya's weapon shop appears to have Chinese influences in the architecture (such as the curling tips on the roof top) and has a the Chinese character 忍(patience) on the flag above the door.
Wenshu monastery in China, for comparison.
Here is a real Japanese tatami room for comparison (modern, of course).
The exterior of Kai and Nya's weapon shop appears to have Chinese influences in the architecture (such as the curling tips on the roof top) and has a the Chinese character 忍(patience) on the flag above the door.
Click on these slideshows for commentary on the mix-ups!
Nya calls her outfit a kimono.
For reference, this is a Japanese kimono. Completely different.
Nya calls her outfit a kimono.
Choice-coding in the Ninjago World
The background characters in Ninjago are some of the only Asian representation in the whole show. However, not all of them are Asian-coded, and the representation from the ones that are is far from flattering. In fact, they're used more like a prop or set piece for the rest of the story to take place over.
See in the gallery to the right images of Jamanakai Village, a rural village the main cast often visited in the early seasons. The place is shoddy and poor—the people vulnerable and visually stereotypical of "the poor oriental". Red lanterns litter the whole place with a frequency one would only see in the real world during festivals, but they are necessary to remind the viewer of how Asian they are.
Notice the poor, defenseless Asian country people and the feudalistic overseers. Rural Ninjago is like the orientalist view of what Japan looked like in the past.
The word Jamanakai has no meaning. It's utter nonsense meant to evoke a Japanese feel.
Compare them to some inhabitants (left) of Ninjago City, the urban area implied to be the capital of Ninjago. Although there are Asian design elements infused with the architecture, the people all wear western clothes and appear white-coded. They also drive western vehicles. What the designers have failed to do is conceive of an image of modernity uninfluenced by the West.
Ninjargon
Ninjargon is the name of the written conlang (constructed language) for Ninjago's universe. It's seen throughout the show, on store names, on temples, and even on the ninja's gis. It's supposed to be stylized after katakana or hanzi (Japanese and Chinese writing systems), or at least imitate a language originally written in brushstrokes, but it’s in poor taste.
What it actually resembles is the exoticized imitations of Chinese on orientalized products, such as the albums pictured in the gallery below. This font, called "chop suey font" or "wonton font", was part of the way Chinese immigrants were forced to market themselves in the early days of their arrival. Due to work restrictions, many Chinese people opened restaurants and the font was an easy way to signal to white people that they were Chinese restaurants.
This shot of Ninjargon in Ninjago City is paired with a geisha-looking figure, with slanty eyes and what resemble chopsticks in her hair.
This is the exterior of Chen's Noodle House. Note the Fu Manchu mustache and the rice paddy hat.
However, it quickly evolved into a font that white designers haphazardly slapped onto any vaguely Oriental product in order to market it as "exotic" to the white consumer. It's also extremely stereotypical of what katakana and hanzi look like and has been historically paired with derogatory jokes or information about East Asians. While the font is not necessarily racist itself, in the context of what it resembles, and the fact that it's effectively the same method of "oriental branding", I find it to be in poor taste.
Click the pictures for descriptions and further commentary!
Errors Upon Errors
This list of grievances with the show's world-build is far from exhaustive. There are other flaws, such as the way dragons are depicted in-universe as their western counterparts—violent and brutish and not at all like the more spiritually-significant snake-like dragons of East Asia. There's also the fact that the designers treat the shrines and temples like glorified weapons caches for the ninja to pick up new toys, instead of with the respect and reverence of actual shrines and temples.
And there's the way they warped the concept of yin and yang in order to interpret it in an overtly western sense. Jay asks Nya to be the yang to his yin as, essentially, a marriage proposal. This is never something anyone would say in China and it completely ignores the fact that yang is the symbol for light and more masculine energy (fitting for Jay, the ninja of lightning), while yin is for feminine energy and can symbolize water (fitting for Nya, the ninja of water).
Lloyd's dragon (above) has huge wings, a solid main body, and is overall designed like the Western dragon. It has no real mind of its own and is used as a vehicle in the show.
Traditional Eastern dragons have a serpentine body, no wings, and are regarded as guardians and protectors of heaven. Some do command the elements, but they have minds of their own and are emperors of their own domains.
The lack of research for even bare minimum concepts like this is embarrassing, and yet, neither the designers nor the writers ever seem to make efforts to improve. While some of the flaws I highlighted are dropped in the later seasons, the yin-yang proposal is from season 10, which aired in 2019. The root problem of unwillingness to educate themselves or invite POC into the writing room continues to be made starkly obvious with every new season.
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