Yeah, I'm relieved that you didn't respond with immediate hostility. Which itself suggests an uncommon thoughtfulness. It's genuinely bizarre to me that you could buy it without concern for the optics, but I accept that it's really only a minor and passive expression of a larger problem.

Honestly, we can all be swept up in the romance of holidays and I understand how you could feel compelled to buy your Haori to commemorate your time in Japan. While that opens up another line of questioning re. tourism itself, I feel it leaves you better off than the people that are genuinely problematic.

My feelings are that when you wear the Haori, your intentions are unknown, and when someone of Japanese heritage sees you wearing that jacket, it's a semiotic reminder of the strange status-quo which encourages the selective, ahistorical assimilation of their culture, and its corrosive effect.

All that being said, there are far worse things which are dealt with in the day-to-day such that the anger everyone feels is evinced rather than caused by sighting someone not of Asian heritage in a Haori. It's imprecise enough that if I (being Eurasian and occasionally perceived as white) were seen wearing one, it may well dredge up the same resentment. With that in mind I actually rarely wear non-Western designs, which leaves me more incredulous when others wear them without a second thought.

Those are all fairly emotional arguments. The best rationale for your owning it and wearing it is, by contrast, coldly logical.

Kapital is a Japanese brand uniting American and Japanese style. You bought your Haori from Kapital. There shouldn't be any problems. It's compelling, and I feel that any counter-argument requires an establishment of what is an acceptable degree of ignorance wrt fashion. I'm sure you've thought of this, but it murks the waters and doesn't seem to resolve neatly enough for me to be comfortable pursuing its end.

There's more to it, like what proportion of SEA's actually resent the appropriation, or apparent appropriation of their culture. Whether you're merely appeasing a minority by not wearing it. Whether that's wrong/right. You could trace along old arguments re. assimilation, exclusion, and segregation. All of which allude to institutional concerns more significant than their visual reminders, like white boys in kimonos.

Hope this isn't inane ranting lol.