Twitter slams 'The Great British Bake Off' for mixing Asian cultures on Japanese Week

The Great British Bake Off has been called out for casually showing racism towards East Asian culture. In the latest episode, the contestants were tasked with making some items from the Japanese cuisines in the episode called Japanese Week to celebrate the culture and cuisine from the country. However, several contestants on the reality show pushed the authenticity of the Japanese food aside and mixed it with Chinese, Indian and American fillings. This offended many netizens, who took to social media to express their displeasure about the ‘borderline racism’ on the international reality show.

The Great British Bake Off faces flak from netizens

The Great British Bake Off is currently running its 11th season and in the 6th episode, the show had Japanese Week. The contestants were asked to make bao buns, Kawaii cakes and matcha mille-feuille. Even though the contestants were allowed to have fillings of their choice, people on social media were displeased that several contestants chose fillings which broke the authenticity of the Japanese food items and made it to ‘generalised Asian food’ list.

Numerous people flooded Twitter with tweets about how “cringy” it was to watch several contestants mixing the two cultures during the Japanese Week. A number of other people complained about how ignorant the programme was towards the Japanese cuisines. Several contestants were heard saying on camera during the show that their dish is “more Chinese inspired than Japanese”.

While some contestants filled the buns with Chinese fillings, an amateur baker styled her dish like Pandas, which originate from central China. Kawaii cakes are inspired by “cute” aspects of Japanese culture and the cakes are decorated depicting the Japanese cultural elements, however, they are not an established part of Japanese cuisine. Check out some of the tweets below.

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Some netizens support The Great British Bake Off's Japanese Week episode

While there was a heavy backlash, there were several netizens who supported the choices of the contestants. Some netizens wrote on Twitter that one must enjoy the show and that not everything is racism. Check out some of the comments below.

• Japanese Hirata buns are called bao in China and they have pork chashu, tempura or karaage chicken.
• Nikuman is a kind of chuka man and is the Japanese name for Chinese baozi and is also known as pork buns in English.

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