It's certainly a story that didn't materialize for quite some years after the series was over.
Hikaru Solow?
- Thread starter kirkshairpeice
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It's certainly a story that didn't materialize for quite some years after the series was over.
^^I'm not sure of that. 1968's The Making of Star Trek did explicitly say that that Sulu was of "mixed Oriental and Filipino background," and it would be quite a coincidence if the author had singled out "Filipino" without being aware that the Sulu Sea was in the Philippines. So the idea was at least implicitly around while the show was still on the air.
As a Star Trek group in the early 80s, we frequented a great Sydney CBD restaurant called "The Filipino" and it had a huge banner of a map of The Philippines (and the clearly-marked Sulu Sea) hanging on the wall. We'd never really noticed it before but when we had the chance to take George Takei to dinner, we made sure to sit him right underneath the Sulu Sea - and he explained that it was no coincidence that his character had that name.
it's really not a mistake to assume a character named hikaru is japanese. if you heard someone named xiao ching, would you think "hmmm he must be english," or would your first assessment be chinese ancestry?
thinking about a character's name and background is different from equating a character with an actor. an actor assumes a character so it doesn't really matter much as long as they fit that character. if the actor does not fit the character, then that's a different matter.
as far as a character not fitting his own name, then that's also something to think about. the only reason it bothered me is because i'm used to seeing fake or made up japanese or chinese names by people who don't even know anything about he cultures. they simply pick them just because they "sound" like it. things like using chinese costumes in an a japanese setting. it's very laughable when people come up with stuff like that. it's like having russian things in an irish setting. makes you go "huh?" just cause they're both white doesn't mean it's the same thing. so for inquisitive people, it makes them ask the question why certain things that don't fit were chosen. there has to be a story behind it. if not then it was just a mistake. either way, it's not a mistake to wonder about it.
before i was made aware by japanese and chinese cultures, i would have never thought about the differences and similarities. however, after, i looked back and wondered why a japanese character had a non-japanese last name. i'm not 100% sure but i recall it being mentioned in the series that he was of japanese ancestry, plus his name was hikaru. so it wasn't a big stretch for me to assume that he was japanese. it just made me wonder why his last name wasn't japanese and it bothered me not knowing the reasoning behind it.
you need to be a bit careful with your words. especially since you're a writer, words should be your forté. it's just you can sound very condescending. i don't even know why you started on that actor/character thing when this was clearly just a character inquiry and trying to understand the inconsistency.
It's not a mistake to suspect that, but it's always a mistake to assume something is a fact when it's really just a first impression. Conclusions should be based on evidence, not guesswork.
Besides, Sulu wasn't given the conjectural name Hikaru until 1981 and it didn't become his canonical first name until it was spoken onscreen in The Undiscovered Country in 1991. Prior to that, and for the majority of the character's existence, he's just been Mr. Sulu, and Sulu is a blatantly non-Japanese name.
I can certainly sympathize with that. It annoys me no end, for instance, when stereotyped Chinese characters say "Ah, so" (which is Japanese) or invert their Ls and Rs (which is based on a mishearing of Japanese pronunciation).
As I said, his first name was not established onscreen until the final TOS movie. I don't think his ancestry was ever specified, although there was an unfilmed scene written for The Voyage Home which had him meeting a Japanese-American ancestor who was a child in 1986 San Francisco. "Shore Leave" did show him summoning up an illusion of a Samurai, but then "The Naked Time" showed him fantasizing about being D'Artagnan. As The Making of Star Trek indicates, the producers deliberately avoided pinning him too closely to any one culture.
You seem to have gotten the impression that my comments were directed specifically toward you. That's not the case. You'd wondered if "people" in general would be bothered by Sulu's non-Japanese name. Therefore, my response was about people in general. Some people did, in fact, object to John Cho's casting because of their mistaken belief that Sulu was meant to be purely Japanese. Takei himself made public comments saying there was nothing wrong with it because Sulu was in fact meant to be pan-Asian. I was therefore using that as an analogy for how people in general might react to the question of Sulu's surname, because the attitudes involved seemed to be similar. At no time was I directing any of my comments specifically at you.
Although for awhile the (semi) in-joke was that his first name was "Walter."
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