About

White Man In A Kimono also known as WMAF In Kimonos refers to an image of a white man and an Asian woman posing together at a shrine in Japan while wearing traditional Japanese-style kimonos. The image first began making the rounds in 2021 after internet users theorized that the white man pictured may be Ken-Sama. Ken-Sama was a fictional character often created on 4chan, inspired by a photo of a white man in traditional Japanese attire as well. The image is often used to joke about Japanophiles or weebs, mocking their decision to use Japanese terms for certain anime and manga and otherwise display their knowledge of Japanese culture.

Origin

Precursor

Ken-Sama is a fictional character originating from a copypasta story about an adult American male obsessed with Japanese and Otaku culture. The picture that came to be associated with Ken-Sama was first posted to 4chan's /jp/^[9] board on July 6th, 2009.

White Man In A Kimono Image

On August 30th, 2021, a photograph of a man who was rumored to be Ken-Sama himself and his Japanese wife was posted on 4chan's /r9k/ by an anonymous user and captioned, "I can't fucking believe that this is Ken-sama. Not only he slimmed down, he now has a qt Japanese gf"^[7] (shown, below).

More 4chan boards discussed the image of the man thought to be Ken-Sama, including /fit/^[8] on September 6th, 2021.

On September 7th, 2021, Twitter^[1] / X user @KasaiKaiser posted the image and the original Ken-Sama post, with the tweet gaining over 14,300 likes in three years (shown below).

However, the earliest known viral meme featuring the image was a January 31st, 2024, tweet by user @Extralongdokkan,^[2] gathering over 18,000 likes in 10 months.

Spread

The image resurfaced many times in 2024, with Redditor^[3] /u/NeverrrGreen reposting the image on January 31st, 2024, to the subreddit /r/PirateFolk and gathering over 1,000 upvotes on a post captioned, "one piece fans who say tenryuubito or shichibukai instead of celestial dragon or warlord."

On April 5th, 2024, Redditor^[4] /u/Piotral_2 posted, "When you say 'Kamehameha' instead of 'Turtle Wave Beam,'" to /r/Ningen, gathering over 1,700 upvotes in six months

On June 23rd, 2024, X^[5] user @downsad69 reposted the image with the caption, "how n----- feel when they call Frieza 'Freezer,'" gathering over 25,000 likes in four months.

On October 25th, 2024, X^[6] user @dots2005 reposted the image with the caption, "N----- who call gary 'goku,'" gathering over 40,000 likes in three days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References